TV Loves Twins

Essay and Images

Date unknown

Donated by Charles Blakemore

The Patty Duke Show [Fig. 1] ran for several seasons in the 60’s, when I was a mere whisper on the wind. I think my sister liked it better than I, but Patty’s house seemed cool to me and her TV family lived in Brooklyn, where my mother grew up. Patty played identical cousins, one British and stiff-upper-lipped, the other American and cool, daddy-oh. The point was, they looked the same and could, if pressed, act the same — though the ‘comedy’ generally hinged on the inevitable collapse of this ability.

Were they doubles? Well, they were played by one person. And the gag was, see how deceptive appearances are? See how we’re really not doubles at all but distinct and highly differentiated individuals?

I remember it was a running cultural debate, which girl was cuter. And now, for the life of me, I can’t remember my position, though I must I have opted for the British version, as I was enamoured with Hayley Mills — whom the British Patty was surely meant to stand in for, and whose Disney hit The Parent Trap [Fig. 2] was a certain analog for Patty’s show. Hayley was way cuter. At the time, Enguhland swung like a pendulum done.So… The Patty Duke Show was a remake/spin-off/rip-off (read: spurious double) of a movie about two identical girls (both played by Hayley). Does this make the PDS a quadruple, or merely a doubled double of a double? Whatever, it’s a fascinating example of Hollywood’s inability to generate independent, original thought. And a showcase for the attractions of the double.

As if to HAMMER HOME these two (not twinned) concepts, in the mid-80’s, NBC aired a miserable excuse for a remake of the PDS, Double Trouble, [Fig. 3] about two very different identical teenagers. It wheezed it’s way through two desperate seasons then expired, unmourned and forgotten. It had lacked even the modest tang of Patty in two roles, it’s sister-act performed by actual and uninspiring twins. TV seems to adore twins (Mary Kate and Ashley, the unspeakable and inexplicably-long-lived DoubleMint Gum campaign), probably because as a medium it is always starving for physical objects to fill its voraciously barren space and twins take up twice the room of genetically-ordinary fodder.

Just to further complicate things, Disney remade The Parent Trap in 1998. So we end up with: The Parent Trap (1961) which spawned The Patty Duke Show (1963) as well as The Parent Trap (1998); & The Patty Duke Show (1963) which spawned Double Trouble (198?) and perhaps even Two of a Kind (1990’s) featuring Ashley & Mary-Kate Olsen.Oooff. Will we never learn? Well, some of us will. Apparently, Hayley Mills successfully resisted the urge to double and declined to appear in the 1998 remake, although the woman portraying the luscious homewrecker in the orignal was not so ethical. Which once again ignites my ancient passion for Hayley (still a babe).