Mr. Smith (partially found NBC sitcom; 1983)

Promotional poster for Mr. Smith.

Status: Partially Found

Mr. Smith is a sitcom aired on NBC from September 23 up until December 16 in 1983. It only aired for 13 episodes after NBC executives cancelled it due to having low ratings from television viewers and critics alike, also reported to rank 47th out of the 52 shows that aired that few months.^[1]^[2]^[3]

The show follows a talking orangutan, named "Mr. Smith", who possesses a human intellectual quotient of 256, living his life as a top-level political advisor in Washington D.C.. The series was executively produced by Ed Weidenberger^[4], who provided the voice for the orangutan, "Mr. Smith".

Premise

Being initially an entertainment and travel act going on in various states, the orangutan who was originally called ChaCha was taken captive by a government research team in Washington D.C. after ChaCha causes a commotion on the streets after escaping its owner, Tommy Atwood, (played by Tim Dunigan^[5]) who was knocked down unconscious. Having escaped the research lab weeks later, ChaCha ended up in a different research lab where he finds a concoction, which could increase human intelligence, and consumes it.^[2]

Hence after drinking said concoction, ChaCha was able to talk and had risen his intelligence I.Q. to 256. He was then called "Mr. Smith", and due to his intelligence and skill, was made a political advisor in the United States government who solves various political issues and controversies, in secret to the public eye. His previous owner, Tommy Atwood, was then placed charged as his assistant to keep him company. ^[2]

A Washington Post article published on September 23rd, 1983, took note of an episode that featured Mr. Smith imitating and spoofing the then-president, Ronald Reagan.^[6]

Cast

The main star of the show, an orangutan named Mr. Smith, was played by a real-life orangutan named "C.J.", which has previously worked on various films beforehand, such as the 1978 film, Every Which Way But Loose, and its sequel, Any Which Way You Can starring with Clint Eastwood, Hillstreet Blues, and Tarzan. ^[7]^[8]. C.J. is commonly dressed in a tuxedo and eyeglasses for his appearance as "Mr. Smith". C.J. had unfortunately died due to cerebral hemorrhage, with reports stating that the company that he belongs to, Gentle Animal, has a poor reputation for looking after animals they took care of, and other reports stating how the orangutan was badly treated by and harmed while misbehaving in films starring him such as Any Way Which You Can and died shortly after.^[9]

C.J. the Orangutan and Ed Weidenberger (voice) as Mr. Smith / ChaCha^[7]^[4]
Leonard Frey as Raymond Holyoke^[4]
Tim Dunigan as Tommy Atwood^[5]^[4]
Terri Garber as Dr. July Tyson^[4]
Laura Jacoby as Ellie Atwood^[4]
Stuart Margolin as Dr. Klein^[4]
Delores Cantú as Laraine Sanchez^[10]^[4]

Pilot & DVD Release

A blog post archived from the Wayback Machine by ReverseShot announced that they had put on DVD the whole 13 episodes of Mr. Smith^[11], and had been shared on forums^[12]. Although the blog post claims that they had put it on a DVD Release, no supporting claims of this can be found.

An eBay listing however of the script for the pilot of the series is available online.

Availability

With the supposed DVD release, however, no episodes has fully resurfaced online. Albeit, footages of the series are available from resurfaced NBC bumpers that include footage of the series, and a handful of series credits can be found online as well.

The actress, Delores Cantú, who starred as Laraine Sanchez, has posted clips of the series on her Twitter account, which features her role as Sanchez.^[10]

No episodes has resurfaced as of November 2022, and given the poor reception and cancellation, is very unlikely we will ever receive a proper DVD release.

Episode Listing

Pilot

#	Episode Title	Air Date	Status	Notes
n/a	Pilot	n/a	Lost	Script can be found here.

Episodes

#	Episode Title	Air Date	Status
1	Welcome To Washington Part 1	September 23, 1983	Lost
2	Welcome To Washington Part 2	September 23, 1983	Lost
3	Mr. Smith Operates	September 30, 1983	Lost
4	Mr. Smith Finds His Brother	October 14, 1983	Lost
5	Goodbye, Mr. Smith	October 21, 1983	Lost
6	Mr. Smith Rescues Bobo	October 21, 1983	Lost
7	Mr. Smith Falls In Love	October 28, 1983	Lost
8	Mr. Smith Gets Physical	November 4, 1983	Lost
9	Mr. Smith Loses A Friend	November 11, 1983	Lost
10	Mr. Smith Makes A Commercial	November 18, 1983	Lost
11	Mr. Smith Plays Cyrano	November 25, 1983	Lost
12	Mr. Smith Goes Public	December 2, 1983	Lost
13	Mr. Smith Goes To Court	December 16, 1983	Lost