Topper Influence

When Alex stopped manifesting to Kona, Kona filled the gap with his own imaginary friend. I think that's pretty cool, when you consider that Kona began life as an imaginary friend of Alex. So I didn't just have imaginary friends when I was a kid, my imaginary friends had imaginary friends of their own!

The imaginary friend's name was George, and he was an invisible ghost.

The idea for George was lifted whole from the TV show Topper. Topper was a half-hour comedy that ran for two years from Fall '53 to Fall '55, and was shown in repeats for ages after. It was based on movies that had been based on books. The TV set up was that a wealthy handsome and fashionable but whacky young couple George and Marion Kerby [pictured] are buried by an avalanche, along with an alcoholic St. Bernard named Neil, while skiing in the Alps. Staid down-to-earth sophisticated bank vice-president Cosmo Topper (played by Leo G Carroll) and his not-too-bright wife Henrietta buy the Kerby estate in Los Angeles. Just as they are moving in, George, Marion, and Neil, return home as ghosts to haunt their old digs. For some reason Cosmo Topper is the only one who can see or hear the ghosts, but the ghosts can manage to move furniture and appliances, which they do a lot, because they're party animals. Laughter ensues when Topper finds out that if he tells people what is causing all the activity, they think he is crazy, and the premise was you can't have a crazy man in charge of other people's money, so his job would be on the line, and he still had the mortgage to pay.

Plus, Topper was a straight up tee-totaller, while the Kerbys were cocktail lushes and smokers. So Topper had to keep after them to hide the booze and cigarettes.

The whole thing was designed to appeal to me. You had people who were drunks just like my own parents, but they were fun drunks. They didn't yell and hit. They just joked around and had a good time. They were mischievous but not mean. Just like me!

Marion Kerby was yet another hotty I had an age-inappropriate crush on. It was a little disappointing to learn that the actors, Robert Sterling and Anne Jeffreys, who played the Kerbys, were married in real life. As my Mother said of that, "It explains the chemistry." I wanted to be Robert Sterling and have it so good.

Then, too, there was the fact that for quite a while (close to two years) whenever anything was spilled or knocked over, George had something to do with it. "How did the lamp get broken?" "George did it, Mommy," was how it would go.

This didn't go over well with everybody. My Mother was surprisingly cool about it. She'd say, "Tell George to be more careful." My Dad would scream and sputter and fume, "I won't stand for any son of mine making up fibs!" "He's not fibbing, dear, he's using his imagination."