Jim Nabors – "The Impossible Dream" (1966)

To be willing to march into Hell

For a heavenly cause!

[NOTE: If you somehow neglected to read the last 2 or 3 lines, you’re probably asking yourself “Why in the hell is 2 or 3 lines writing about author Ira Levin and No Time for Sergeants today?”  Click here to read that previous post, which will explain how I came to write this one.]

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By the way, Ira Levin was a playwright as well as a novelist.  His first produced play was titled No Time for Sergeants, which was based on the 1954 novel of the same name about a hillbilly who was drafted into the Air Force.

The play – which starred Andy Griffith and also featured Don Knotts (who would pair up with Griffith on the long-running CBS series, The Andy Griffith Show) – opened on Broadway in 1955, and ran for almost two years.  

Griffith, Knotts, and most of the rest of Broadway cast also appeared in the No Time for Sergeants movie that Warner Brothers released on May 29, 1958 – which just so happened to be the day before my 6th birthday.

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I vividly remember seeing that movie in a downtown theatre in my hometown of Joplin, Missouri – it may have been the first movie I ever saw in a theatre.  

I’m sure it took a few months for the movie to make its way from the bigger American cities to Joplin, but I doubt that it took as long as a year.

So why did my parents (or, more likely, my mother) take a six-year-old to see a movie – especially a movie that wasn’t a kids’ movie?  That’s a very good question. 

My parents were very frugal, and we went to very few movies.  After all, TV was free, which the movies certainly were not.  

The next-oldest movie I remember seeing in a theatre was The Absent-Minded Professor, which wasn’t released until 1961.  I wouldn’t swear on a stack of Bibles that I went three years between trips to the movie theatre – I might have seen one or two others that I’ve forgotten – but it wouldn’t surprise me.

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The No Time for Sergeants movie inspired not one, but two television series.

One of those series was also called No Time for Sergeants.  It debuted on ABC in the fall of 1964, but was canceled after one season due to poor ratings.  (The show was scheduled opposite – what else? – The Andy Griffith Show, which was extremely popular.) 

The other series – a spinoff of that selfsame Andy Griffith Show that also debuted in 1964 – was Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., which was one of the very worst network sitcoms that ever aired.  (Naturally, Gomer Pyle was consistently among the most-watched television shows of its era.)

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I don’t remember ever watching the No Time for Sergeants TV show.  That was either because my parents like The Andy Griffith Show better, or because No Time for Sergeants wasn’t carried by either of Joplin’s two TV stations.  

One of those stations was an affiliate of CBS, which was the dominant network in the sixties.  The other station aired a mix of ABC and NBC programs.  (That’s why I couldn’t watch the first season of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. – that station chose to air Wagon Train, which was the ABC series in the same time slot.)

 

Joplin finally got a third TV station in 1968, when I was in high school.  That station broadcast on UHF channel 16.  Older TV sets received only channels 2 through 13, but my parents gave me a snazzy little RCA black-and-white portable TV for Christmas about that time, so I could watch channels 14 through 83 as well.

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Gomer Pyle was originally a supporting character on The Andy Griffith Show.  He became so popular that the show’s producers created a new series starring Pyle as an unbelievably naive Marine recruit.  (I’m using “naive” in place of “stupid” – which is more accurate – because at least two of my children and their spouses have prohibited their small children from using the word “stupid.”  Every time I visit one of their homes and my grandchildren hear me use “stupid” in conversation, they get very upset.)

Jim Nabors portrayed Pyle as a high-voiced simpleton who spoke mostly in annoying catchphrases – like “Gol-l-l-l-y!” and “Shazam!” and “Surprise, surprise, surprise!”

But Pyle regularly broke out into song in a deep baritone voice.  (Nabors showed that voice off in his regular guest appearances on The Carol Burnett Show and in his eponymous variety show that CBS aired for two seasons after Nabors walked away from Gomer Pyle.)

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In an episode of season four of Gomer Pyle, Private Pyle sang “The Impossible Dream” at a fundraising concert in Washington, DC:

Click here to watch Jim Nabors (as Gomer Pyle) singing “The Impossible Dream” – the signature song from the 1965 Broadway musical, The Man of La Mancha – with the Marine Band.

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: