‘Nanny and the Professor’ Was Magic on TV, But Was Also Tough — and Often Tragic — for Much of Its Cast

Too Much Magic?

For Herbie J Pilato, decisions like that — as well as an unwillingness to embrace whatever Nanny truly was — is not entirely surprising. “By the time of Nanny, Elizabeth Montgomery was kind of done with Bewitched and ABC might have been looking for something to take its place. At the same time, it reminds me of what would eventually happen with Wonder Woman and The Bionic Woman. They made a Wonder Woman TV movie with Cathy Lee Crosby that nobody cared about. Then they redid it with Lynda Carter and went back to the original mythology and — bam! — The New Original Wonder Woman TV movie, which was gangbusters. At the same time, Lindsay Wagner is being introduced, in a casual way, really, on The Six Million Dollar Man and she gets a series. All of a sudden, ABC has two superhero women’s shows. And what do they do? They cancel both, because they couldn’t decide between them and the shows go to different networks. Which is all a long about way of saying that with Nanny, just in case Elizabeth doesn’t want to move on with the show, they’ll have a replacement series. But then, it’s like, okay, wait a minute: All in the Family is on, nobody cares about Petticoat Junction anymore, and everything just starts getting cancelled.”

Juliet Mills (‘Nanny’ Phoebe Figalilly)

Front and center on Nanny and the Professor is British-American actress Juliet Mills, who was born November 21, 1941 in London to a showbiz family. Her father, mother and sister (respectively Sir John Mills, Mary Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills) are all actors, while her brother, Jonathan Mills, is a director. Juliet began her career as a child actress and, in 1960, found herself nominated for a Tony Award for her role in Five Finger Exercise. Before and after Nanny, she appeared in numerous films and TV shows, though her longest-lasting role was 990 episodes of Passions between 1999 and 2008, playing Tabitha Lenox. She is currently on a U.K. tour of The Lady Vanishes. Since 1980, she has been married to Grease 2‘s Maxwell Caulfield.

Observes Ed Robertson, “In the ’60s, Juliet was upstaged by her sister, Hayley, but by the time Nanny went on the air, that was starting to change, because Hayley was getting older and Juliet was coming into her own. She’s a good actress and has had a nice career on stage and television. After Nanny, she did a lot of guest roles and things like that. She even spent some time playing a witch on the daytime soap, Passions.”

Richard Long (Professor Harold Everett)

The character is a widower and a mathematics teacher at Collier University, and the father of three kids (two sons, one daughter). He warily hires Nanny and finds himself confounded by the things she seems to do, much of which makes no logical sense to him. There is also a growing affection between them as the show goes on.

Playing the Professor part of the title is Richard Long, born in Chicago in December 17, 1927. Discovered by Universal Pictures’ casting director while performing in a college production, Richard made his film debut in 1946’s Tomorrow Is Forever, followed by a number of movies throughout the 1940s and ’50s, including a series of Ma and Pa Kettle adventures.

Television would end up being his greatest success. Between 1958 and 1963, he appeared in 31 episodes of 77 Sunset Strip as Rex Randolph, a character he also played in the 1959 spinoff, Bourbon Street Beat. The Western The Big Valley was next, with Richard appearing in 112 episodes between 1965 and 1969.

“Richard had done Nanny almost immediately after Big Valley,” points out Ed Robertson, “and it was a nice role for him. As I understand it, it got to show a lot more of his real-life personality in that he was very dry and droll and very, very funny off camera — which you didn’t get in what you saw of him from other shows like 77 Sunset Strip. On top of that, he and Juliet Mills had a really nice chemistry to the extent you got a sense of a romance between the two of them. It was not overt; it was very subtle, and perhaps had the show gone beyond two and a half years it was something that would have been explored a little more overtly.”

Although a few more roles would follow the end of Nanny and the Professor, Richard’s life would tragically be cut short at the age of 47. Having suffered from pneumonia when he was a kid, he lived with a weakened heart (not helped by the fact that he was a drinker and a smoker). In the late 1950s he had suffered a heart attack. Then, following a series of heart attacks, he died on December 21, 1974 — just four days after his 47th birthday.

David Doremus (Harold ‘Hal’ Everett, Jr.)

Professor Everett’s oldest son, he’s of above average intelligence and follows in his father’s footsteps in terms of viewing the world in practical terms. Playing him is David Doremus, born in Palmdale, California, on December 23, 1957. In addition to Nanny and the Professor, he spent five years on The Waltons, playing George G.W. Haines, boyfriend of Mary Ellen Walton, the character eventually being killed off during a training exercise at the start of World War II. Other credits include an episode of Bonanza in 1972 an the 1981 TV film Rivals. Since 1980 he’s been working in the mobile electronics world.

Trent Lehman (Bentley ‘Butch’ Everett)

Butch is the middle child on the show and definitely has issues, including being jealous of Hal, is someone who hates his real name and is a prankster, determined to scare Nanny (though it never quite works). Sadly, in real life Trent Lehman had issues as well. He was born in L.A. on February 23, 1961, and prior to Nanny had appeared on an episode of Gunsmoke and the 1970 film The Christine Jorgensen Story. Following the show he appeared in a 1972 episode of Emergency. In 1982, unable to secure acting jobs, having broken up with his girlfriend and losing what little money he had in a burglary, he hung himself on the chain-link fence outside of Vena Avenue Elementary School in Pacoima, an L.A. neighborhood. If anything positive came out of his suicide it’s that, along with those of Rusty Hamer and Tim Hovey, it inspired former Donna Reed Show star Paul Petersen to create A Minor Consideration, the premier advocacy group for child stars, which has made a huge difference in a lot of lives.

Kim Richards (Prudence Everett)

Of the three kids, Prudence is the one who instantly takes a liking to Nanny when she arrives. She is, of course, portrayed by Kim Richards, who was more recently a part of the reality show The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Notes Ed Robertson, “Kim’s problems have been pretty well chronicled, although she did have a pretty good career at least in the decade or so after Nanny. She did a lot of TV, including being a part of the cast of Hello, Larry.”

Kim was born in Mineola, New York, on September 19, 1964. Check out this bloodline: Her sisters are Kathy Hilton (from her mother’s first marriage) and Kyle Richards (born five years after her and still a member of RHOBH). Nicky Hilton and Paris Hilton are her nieces.

She had done commercials before Nanny, and after appeared in the Disney films Escape to Witch Mountain, No Deposit, No Return, and Return to Witch Mountain. Kim also appeared on many different TV shows, including 13 episodes of Here We Go Again, 21 episodes of James at 15/16, and three episodes of Diff’rent Strokes as Ruthie Alder, who was her Hello, Larry character.

Now Kim seems to be getting her life in order: she’s a grandmother, is working through problems with Kyle, is fighting for her sobriety — still attending AA meetings — and has completed her community service. All in all, she seems to be turning a trouble life around.

Unfortunately, Kim’s adult personal life hasn’t gone as well as her younger acting life. She was married twice, engaged to a third man who was allegedly involved in a criminal scheme that ultimately cost him his life when he was murdered outside a deli in Northridge, California (he was on the phone with Kim when he was shot). Additionally, in April 2015, she was charged and arrested with public intoxication, trespassing, resisting an officer and battery on a police officer at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Four months later she was arrested again for allegedly shoplifting at a Target department store in the San Fernando Valley.

‘Nanny and the Professor’ Animated Movies

Fairly lost to the mists of time is the fact that, following the end of the series, there were two animated movies produced for television as part of The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie. The first, which is simply named after the live action series, has Nanny and the family (all the actors return to voice their characters) getting involved in a mystery involving a “microdot.” Unlike the show where Nanny suggested there was something different about her, in this case she blatantly performs acts of magic.

The second, Nanny and the Professor and the Phantom of the Circus, aired in November 1973. The plot is described as follows: “Nanny’s Aunt Henrietta’s circus is in trouble. with performers disappearing and acts being sabotaged. Nanny, the Professor, and the children help by trying to track down the phantom who is kidnapping the performers. They are aided by Nanny’s Uncle Skylark and his assistant, Dr. Watchem, detectives whose bumbling causes more confusion than help.” With that, Nanny and the Professor was over. But not forgotten.

And Don’t Forget Our Other Favorite ‘Nanny’

If this look back at Nanny and the Professor has gotten you nostalgic for all things nannies, may we suggest our exclusive interview with actress Fran Drescher, star of The Nanny?