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Back In the ’40s When Everyone Cared

By Jaime Weinman

In the category of “Theme songs from shows you’ve never heard of before,” I can safely say that I never have seen and probably never will see an episode of this 1980 flop from ABC and Paramount: Goodtime Girls, about four women who have to share an apartment together in the ’40s during World War II. The premise sounds like a combined knock-off of Laverne and Shirley and M*A*S*H. This being another production of the incredibly prolific Miller-Milkis-Boyett, it had a mostly young, mostly unknown cast, including some unknowns who went on to bigger things like Annie Potts, Peter Scolari and, er, Adrian Zmed. It doesn’t look like anything I would want to see, but somehow I always like coming across theme songs/intros I hadn’t seen before. Even though this Gimbel/Fox theme song kind of stinks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQyyAlHZ0ZY

If you’re looking for a broader cultural explanation of how shows like this came about, maybe you could tie the open nostalgia and flag-waving of this intro to the cultural transition from the ’70s to the ’80s. However, while Reagan won, this show lost, so bang goes that explanation.