"[2] In the spring of 1954, Television Programs of America (TPA) announced plans to produce 39 episodes of the TV show, starring Colman and Hume, at a cost of $2 million.
[7] Dr. William Todhunter Hall was the "literate, witty" president of fictional Ivy College in the midwestern United States.
[1] Other regular characters were the president's "patient, understanding, long-suffering, witty" wife,[8] Vicky, their housekeeper, Alice, and Clarence Wellman, who chaired the college's Board of Governors.
The Halls of Ivy sometimes had difficulty gaining clearance to be carried on stations because of a policy that prohibited back-to-back scheduling of programs sponsored by competing products.
For example, a report in The Des Moines Register in November 1954 said that only three of 14 TV stations in that newspaper's coverage area carried The Halls of Ivy.
[10] By February 1955 the trade publication Billboard reported that the program's "future is uncertain", adding, "If it remains around next season it will be shifted into another time period.
[1] The Halls of Ivy was produced in black-and-white[15] at the Motion Picture Center[16] on film using a four-day shooting schedule, which the trade publication Billboard reported was "probably the only TV show of which that's true".
"[21] Associated Press writer Bob Thomas commented that the show "goes against the trend in TV comedy" with a lack of "hurled pies, splashing seltzer bottels or baggy pants".
[14] The review complimented the performances of Colman, Hume, Wickes, and Butterfield, but it added that often a scene depended on what was said, a technique that was natural for radio, but "On television, things have to happen as well as be discussed.