Can ‘Nutt House’ Crack the Ratings?

“I have to box his ear,� Cloris Leachman said. “First, I twist his ear, then I step on his toe, and I thought it would be funny if his head hit my chest, because I have a big chest, and then I box his ear.�

Leachman, one of the stars of the new NBC series “The Nutt House�--about the off-kilter denizens of a crumbling Manhattan hotel--was recapping the scene she had just finished filming before a lunch break at her trailer at Walt Disney Studio.

Although “The Nutt House� is a half-hour, one-camera show like the so-called “dramedies� of the past two seasons (“The Wonder Years,� “Hooperman,� “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd�), there the resemblance ends. Like most vignettes from “The Nutt House,� Leachman’s scene less resembles a poignant moment in dramedy than a close encounter with Larry, Moe and Curly.

“It tickles you, it just tickles you,� Leachman said. “This kind of humor is the kind that sneaks up behind you and kicks you behind the knees.�

Created by Mel Brooks and Alan Spencer for Disney’s Touchstone Television, “The Nutt House� stars Leachman and Harvey Korman--both veterans of Brooks’ feature films--as the buxom and starchy German housekeeper, Ms. Frick, and the ultra-suave hotel manager, Reginald J. Tarkington (on whom Ms. Frick maintains a not-so-secret crush).

Other series regulars include Brian McNamara as the owner’s ne’er do well grandson, Charles Nutt III; Molly Hagan as Sally the secretary; Gregory Itzin as desk clerk Dennis, and Mark Blankenfield as the hopelessly myopic elevator operator, Freddy.

“It’s like a throwback to an older style of comedy,� said the 29-year-old Spencer. “I’m not saying there aren’t some things about it that are contemporary, but its sole purpose is to make you laugh.

“When you switch around your TV dial and watch what’s purportedly called a comedy, it doesn’t make you laugh. It may make you smile a little bit, kind of chuckle; maybe it lulls you to sleep, if you need that. But it doesn’t just reach out and grab you and assault you and say, ‘Hey, we’re really trying to do something funny here!’ �

Said Korman: “We’re trying to blend slapstick with people who really care about each other. It’s a fragile, fragile kind of comedy we’re doing, I don’t think anybody else is doing it at the moment, so I think we’re kind of courageous.�

(TV viewers haven’t been noticably impressed, however. The show attracted about 2.8 million fewer households the second week out than it had the first, and it finished third in its Wednesday night time slot last week, ranking 44th among the week’s 88 prime-time programs. It is preempted tonight by the baseball playoffs.)

Even the birth of “The Nutt House� has a goofy quality to it. Disney still had the expensive New York hotel set used in the 1988 feature film “Big Business,� starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, and decided not to let it go to waste. So they invited Brooks to fashion a comedy series around it. Brooks called on Spencer, creator of ABC’s off-the-wall detective series “Sledge Hammer!� to become his production partner.

In his high school yearbook, Spencer wrote that his goal in life was to work with Brooks someday. Brooks was a co-creator of the series that inspired “Sledge Hammer!� and “Get Smart� (1965-70). Spencer said tht as a teen-ager in 1974 he actually snuck onto the set of Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein� and tactfully asked him in the middle of shooting: “Are you busy?� Brooks brushed Spencer off then, but later offered the young writer some valuable tips on getting into the comedy writing business.

Spencer wrote jokes for another Brooks series, “When Things Were Rotten,� while in high school, but this is their first collaboration. Brooks, however, is currently traveling in Europe doing work on his upcoming autobiographical feature film, “Life Stinks.� Spencer handles the day-to-day “Nutt House� operations and supervises the scriptwriting.

Despite the difference in age, Spencer has found that his comic sensibility fits well with those of Brooks and comedy veterans Leachman and Korman. “I loved ‘Your Show of Shows’; I’ve always been a student of the older style, the classic comedy. I reminisce about the good old days, even though I wasn’t there,� he said.

Both he and Warren Littlefield, NBC executive vice president of prime-time programs, admit that the network had some doubts about bringing back slapstick comedy; the original half-hour pilot for “The Nutt House� was re-tooled and expanded to an hour.

Littlefield said the pilot needed altering to avoid letting the physical comedy get in the way of developing sympathetic characters. “What we didn’t have was the kind of bond between Harvey and Cloris and the others, the sense that they were a family,� he said.

Leachman, whose last comedy role was as house-mother on NBC’s long-running comedy about an Eastern girls’ school, “Facts of Life,� said that “The Nutt House� comedy is easier than traditional situation comedy.

“Situation comedy is harder because there are written jokes . . . what they call ‘sitcoms’ really aren’t, they’re jokes, and they can really be pretty bad,� she said. “I would never put down the sitcom, because it’s been very good to me, but this is more like a feature film. Here I feel like a rabbit in a briar patch--I’ve found my metier, I think. I had a devil of a time in ‘Facts of Life’ trying not to play an (outrageous) character. It’s so hard for me because I think silly.�

Korman, best known for his sketch comedy on “The Carol Burnett Show,� tried two traditional sitcoms afterward: ABC’s “The Harvey Korman Show� and CBS’ “Leo and Liz in Beverly Hills.� Neither lasted long. “I did a significant failure for ABC, I did a failure for CBS, so I’m in the last store in town,� he said cheerfully.