The Adventures of Tugboat Annie
| The Adventures of Tugboat Annie | |
|---|---|
| Format | Sitcom |
| Starring | Minerva Urecal |
| Country of origin |
 Canada  United States |
| No. of episodes | 39 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Syndication |
| Original run | 1957 – 1961 |
The Adventures of Tugboat Annie is a 1957 Canadian-filmed television series starring Minerva Urecal as Annie Brennan, the role originated by Marie Dressler in the 1932 screen classic Tugboat Annie. Thirty-nine episodes are believed to have been filmed.
Urecal was the fourth actress to portray Tugboat Annie; the others were Dressler, Marjorie Rambeau in Tugboat Annie Sails Again (1940), and Jane Darwell in Captain Tugboat Annie (1945).
Norman Reilly Raine's stories of the salty tugboat captain Annie Brennan, a character based on the life of Thea Foss,[1], first appeared in prose form in the weekly US journal Saturday Evening Post in the late 1920s. She was soon developed into a movie character, being depicted in three films (Tugboat Annie, 1933; Tugboat Annie Sails Again, 1940; and Captain Tugboat Annie, 1945), each time portrayed by a different actress. Finally, in 1954, a TV series was commissioned by the independent US production company TPA. It was far from plain sailing: the pilot took two whole years to complete and cost a then record $129,000. (Elsa Lanchester, Jay C Flippen and Chill Wills were all in line for major roles at one point or another at this early stage.) When the series finally followed it was filmed and first shown in Canada, attracting ratings good enough to interest US television stations. Sadly, what had gone down well in Canada proved something of a disappointment south of the border, where, perhaps, the viewing audiences had become used to greater sophistication than this series' simplistic humour could provide.
Former opera singer Minerva Urecal and Walter Sande were the main stars, she as the widowed captain of the tugboat Narcissus, he as the captain of the Salamander. Both were veteran actors with appropriately weather-beaten faces, and their characters 'enjoyed' a rivalry that could only be described as arch. Trading insults and trying to queer each other's pitch, they battled their way through 39 episodes, all of which then crossed the Atlantic for consumption by ITV viewers.
