"The Abby Singer Show"

Description: An ebullient Novino pursues Morrison. Fiscus tries to revitalize his mother's life. Rosenthal returns to duty. Wade tries to help a dying child deal with her bitterly divided parents. Turner returns and helps Chandler make a decision about his future. The Oseranskys return to take Lucy, worried about her missing husband, to the 'Doctor of the Year' dinner, which gets interrupted by a fire.

Originally aired May 18, 1988.



Cast

Starring
William Daniels as Dr. Mark Craig
Norman Lloyd as Dr. Daniel Auschlander
Ronny Cox as Dr. John Gideon

Also Starring (in alphabetical order)
Bonnie Bartlett as Ellen Craig
Ed Begley, Jr. as Dr. Victor Ehrlich
Stephen Furst as Dr. Elliott Axelrod
Bruce Greenwood as Dr. Seth Griffin
Eric Laneuville as Luther Hawkins
Sagan Lewis as Dr. Jacqueline Wade
Howie Mandel as Dr. Wayne Fiscus
David Morse as Dr. Jack Morrison
France Nuyen as Dr. Paulette Kiem
Cindy Pickett as Dr. Carol Novino
Christina Pickles as Nurse Helen Rosenthal
Jennifer Savidge as Nurse Lucy Papandrao
Denzel Washington as Dr. Philip Chandler

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On Call, Vol. 2, No. 2 - O.R. Scheduling: Abby Singer, and the Shot Heard Round the World

From On Call, the official newsletter of the St. Elsewhere Appreciation Club, volume 2, number 2, July 1998.

Industry insiders speak with reverence about the "Abby Singer Shot", while fans of St. Elsewhere continue to ask about the origin of the episode titled "The Abby Singer Show". To understand the derivation of both, we spoke with a number of people who know Abby, including Abby himself. Part of our article is taken from a humorous (and informative) conversation ON CALL had with Abby and his protege Bernie Oseransky, who gathered in Bernie's office for the interview.

"Dear Abby"

ABBY SINGER ... "I was born in New York City, and after high school in 1936 I went to night college in NY. My father was a designer and my mother was a housewife. I came out here during World War II when I was in the Navy, and stayed here after the War. I got into the business in 1946 and I was hired as Secretary to the head of Production at Columbia Pictures - a man by the name of Jack Fear... "Black Jack Fear" (Bernie, then Abby in unison) We used to say 'We have nothing to fear, but Fear himself'" (laughs).

NORMAN LLOYD ... "Jack Fear had the wrath of God put into him by Harry Cohn who ran the studio, the toughest, meanest guy in the business. Jack Fear translated that to the guys who worked for him, of whom Abby was one. Now, the other guys came out of that rather unpleasantly, but Abby's the one guy who came out of Columbia with an amenable personality... there was a kindness, a goodness in him. They all came out with a tremendous ability on their jobs - it was the best training ground in the world."

The Abby Singer

Neat little bit of trivia I learned recently about St. Elsewhere's co-ordinating producer, Abby Singer.

As long as I've watched television, which is practically as long as I've been alive, I've made a point of watching the closing credits of TV shows. Growing up in the early eighties, I saw a lot of reruns of WKRP in Cincinnati in syndication, so much so that I've probably seen every episode of the series a dozen times over. WKRP and St. Elsewhere were both produced by MTM Enterprises (along with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, The Bob Newhart Show, Newhart, Hill Street Blues, The White Shadow, and Remington Steele among others), the television production company created in 1969 by Mary Tyler Moore and her husband Grant Tinker (chairman of NBC from 1981 to 1986), whose shows were recognizable by the distinctive logo that replaced the roaring MGM lion with the meowing Mimsie the Cat. When I started watching St. Elsewhere, I recognized several of the names from the credits of WKRP in St. Elsewhere's closing credits. One of those names was Abby Singer.

Abner E. "Abby" Singer started working as an assistant director in Hollywood in the early fifties. According to his Wikipedia entry, his name has become incorporated into standard Hollywood terminology. The last shot to be completed in a production day is called the "martini". The second-last shot is called the "Abby Singer". That evolved from when Singer was an assistant director. He would be asked how many shots were left to do before lunch, and he'd say "we'll do this one and one more". His reasoning for calling the second-last shot was so that the crew would have time to start packing up, and get out more quickly.

St. Elsewhere's second-last episode is therefore appropriately titled "The Abby Singer Show".

Random bit of MTM trivia...I think I read somewhere, possibly in the Robert Thompson book, that WKRP ended up being the biggest moneymaker of all the MTM shows because of its success in syndication. St. Elsewhere, on the other hand, fared poorly in the syndication markets, and this was a contributing factor to the decision to stop making the show after season six.