Jane Curtin: Kate and Allie and more

Jane Curtin, at left, starred with Susan Saint James as the title characters in the 1980s sitcom "Kate & Allie".

Source:https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/kate-allie-remake-in-works-nbc-4124719/

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“Sometimes tears and sorrow, are all the things you’ve got.”

“And just when you think you’re all by yourself, you’re not.”

Those few lines sung during the closing credits pretty much sum up the premise of “Kate and Allie” – two divorced women, with children, pull together for support under one roof.

Jane Curtin played Allie Lowell and Susan Saint James played Kate McArdle on the sitcom that ran from 1984 to 1989.

Today is Jane Curtin’s birthday, the perfect opportunity to look back at “Kate and Allie” and more.

Live, it’s Saturday night
Jane Curtin was one of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players on “Saturday Night Live” starting in 1975 and going right through the 1979-1980 season. She became well known for the “Weekend Update” segment and her role as one of the alien “Coneheads”.

She was low key and often played the straight woman while others were going crazy all around her.

Curtin would reprise that straight laced persona again.

Kate and Allie
Curtin would appear in the movie “How to Beat the Cost of Living”, with Susan Saint James; and had roles on television in an episode of “The Love Boat”; and the TV movies “Divorce Wars: A Love Story” and “Bedrooms”.

Her career took off in 1984 when she landed the role of Allie Lowell in “Kate and Allie”.

Allie was a calm, straight laced, conservative woman, divorced with two children. Kate McArdle was more free-spirited and outgoing. She was also divorced with a daughter.

Kate and Allie grew up together, and decided to move in together after their respective divorces.

I recall watching the first episode on CBC Channel 9 of the peasant vision dial, and immediately fell in love with the show. There was strong chemistry between Curtin and Saint James, and between Allison Smith, Frederick Koehler and Ari Meyers who played their children.

Every week they would explore different situations experienced by divorced people and teenagers. It was a good show.

It was also really funny, with Curtin acting as the straight person.

There is one episode in particular I remember where Kate and Allie and their children are snowed in at a local television station, and have to fill the airwaves with something. At one point, Allie does a cooking show. She does not have all the actual ingredients to make the dish she is demonstrating. Instead, she uses ingredients that look like the proper ingredients, but really don’t go together or taste very good. She gets into explaining how to make the dish and absently tastes it. The look on her face is priceless, but she just grins and bears it.

That demonstrated how great a comedian Jane Curtin is.

For her efforts she won the Emmy for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 1984 and 1985, and was nominated again for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 1987.

Over time, I got into other things and lost track of “Kate and Allie”. I was glad when I came home from university after my first year of university in the summer of 1988 that the show was still on. I later discovered Allie got married, and Kate moved in with them because the new husband worked away from home a lot. That pretty much spelled the end of the show.

“Kate and Allie” ran six seasons from 1984 to 1989 for a total of 122 episodes.

Post script
Years later, in the summer of 1993, I was working as an interior painter. Reruns of “Kate and Allie” aired on CBC again right before I went to bed on weeknights. I recall getting back into the show. The next day I would often reflect on the plot and the lines of that aforementioned song would repeat in my head. It was such a good show.

The years after
Jane Curtin keeps on acting to this day. She was in movies such as “Coneheads”; led her voice to the cartoon “Antz”; “The Shaggy Dog”; “I Love You, Man”; “The Spy Who Dumped Me”; and more. Her most recent movie was “Jules” in 2023.

She had a lot of work on television, such as 13 episodes of the show “Working it Out” in 1990; an episode of “Dave’s World”; and a starring role in “Third Rock from the Sun” from 1996 to 2001 for 137 episodes.

Curtin was also in TV movies such as “Catch a Falling Star” and “Our Town”; several “The Librarian” movies; two episodes of “Gary Unmarried”; a recurring role in “Unforgettable” for 34 episodes; a recurring guest role as the same character in “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight”; an episode of “The Conners”; and more. Her most recent role was in an episode of “Bupkis” in 2023, and she has a guest role in the upcoming Netflix series “The Residence”.

Parting thoughts
I really enjoyed Jane Curtin’s work. She had this great comedy timing because she was so dead pan, and often the straight person in a joke or situation. She not only was rewarded for her work, but went on to turn in another memorable performance in “Third Rock from the Sun”. Again her strength was in being the serious one.

Yet, whenever I hear her name, I think of a single mom living with her best friend as they raise three children. It was a ground breaking show at a time when there were not a lot of shows that had female leads, much less no male leads at all.

It shone a light on the life of divorced families and single parents. It was not always serious though, and had some great, funny moments.