Back in the '80s, America had an insatiable appetite for cheesy sitcoms about plucky orphans who get adopted by curmudgeons the internet, with its Netflix and cat videos, wasn't a thing yet, so we had to make do. The latter starred adorable kid star Emmanuel Lewis as Webster Long, who goes to live with George Papadopolis, a former football teammate of Webster's late father, and George's wife, Katherine who Webster called "Ma'am".
Webster ran from to , and Emmanuel Lewis was one of the most famous young stars of the era, and then he pretty much vanished from the small screen. Let's find out what happened to him. Usually a person gets a degree in theater and then, if they're lucky, they go on to star on a major network television series.
Emmanuel Lewis did it the other way around. The character of Webster was much younger than Lewis was in real life; Lewis looked young and was small for his age. When Webster wrapped in , Lewis was 18, the age most Americans are when they begin college. He enrolled at Clark Atlanta University his older brother, Chris, went there, too, a year ahead of Emmanuel.
He initially majored in mass communications, and also initially got to and from his classes in a chauffeured Mercedes. Lewis took his time with school, and eventually graduated in with a degree in theater arts. Alternate versions In addition to being cut by two minutes each, the syndicated versions have a shorter version of the theme song. Connections Featured in I Love the '80s: User reviews 4 Review. Top review.
Great family entertainment!!! This was, in my opinion, one of the best sitcoms of the s. It was funny, yet serious at the same time. It showed how families come in all shapes, sizes, and in this case, colors.
I still enjoy watching these reruns whenever I can. Details Edit. Release date September 16, United States. United States. Then Came Your. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 30 minutes. Stars Karras and Clark liked the idea about the sudden marriage and instant adoption of a young black boy, and the Webster character was thus created. The premise of Webster's parents' death and his inclusion into the Papadopoulos household, originated with the second phase of the pilot which had the show's title changed to "Then Came You.
The character of George Papadopolis' buddy and broadcasting colleague, played by Art LaFleur, was summarily dropped from the regular cast; once getting to air, LaFleur only appeared in the pilot. However, Karras and Clark did not approve this round of changes, as creative control was still in their hands with Georgian Bay.
However, Clark originally prevented their co-producers and ABC from changing the series' title to "Webster" since she wanted to maintain the ensemble aspect of the series. While early promotions for the sitcom carried the title "Then Came You", network politics would end up violating Clark's request; the brass ultimately settled on Webster just before its fall premiere.
Webster premiered in September of and was an instant hit. From the start, the final product was drawing close comparisons to NBC's popular sitcom, "Diff'rent Strokes" which featured the diminutive Gary Coleman as a young black boy adopted by a white family.
However, the main differences were that Lewis' character of Webster Long had an adoptive mother and father from the start who had no children, whereas Coleman's character Arnold Jackson was adopted by a widower with a daughter.
Also, Coleman's short stature was due to a congenital kidney condition, whereas Lewis was completely healthy and had no pre-existing condition to explain his height. Eventually, in the fall of , "Webster" would be joined on ABC's Friday night lineup by "Diff'rent Strokes" when the latter moved to ABC for what turned out to be its eighth and final season. Despite the early success, the show that made it to the air as "Webster" was not what Karras and Clark foresaw as their ideal starring vehicle.
The first season was fraught with tension, between the couple's disagreements and their protests with Paramount and ABC. After the initial episodes that set up the show's premise George and Katherine's wedding, Webster's arrival and the resulting adjustments were shot, most of the plots became exclusively Webster-driven, even though it was the writers' intention to include story elements that focused on George and Katherine as much as possible.
The show's married stars did win many of the early script disputes and several first-season episodes did get to focus on the new marriage and lives of the adult leads. The in-fighting on set continued, and especially had an effect on Lewis. Reportedly, Lewis was often whisked away from the set whenever Karras and Clark argued and demanded rewrites.
It became so severe that Lewis blamed the trouble on himself. He believed fervently in the developing cultural independence of the United States, a chief part of which was to be a distinctive American language with its own idiom, pronunciation, and style. Immediately thereafter he went to work on his magnum opus, An American Dictionary of the English Language, for which he learned 26 languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit, in order to research the origins of his own country's tongue.
This book, published in , embodied a new standard of lexicography; it was a dictionary with 70, entries that was felt by many to have surpassed Samuel Johnson's British masterpiece not only in scope but in authority as well.
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