How Much Did Tim O’Hara Actually Make?

My Favorite Martian, priced in real 1960s dollars: could reporter Tim O’Hara support Uncle Martin, a grown man with no job and no papers, on about $100 to $130 a week? And why was Martin’s solid gold furniture illegal in 1965? Ray Walston’s antennae and Bill Bixby’s cover stories hid a money problem. One young Los Angeles reporter was paying for two men in a garage apartment built for one, and the rent kept coming due. Spotlight Moments: - An X-15 test flight knocks a Martian out of the sky at the height of the space race - Martin gets his first job, tutoring, and it costs him his brains - Martin borrows a stranger’s fingerprints for a driver’s license and gets mistaken for a jewel thief - The furniture turns to solid gold, one chair worth about $217,000 in 1965, while owning gold bullion is a federal crime - Mrs. Brown, a landlady and Navy WAVE veteran, keeps losing money to bad deals, a $500 “wife saver” machine and a cat burglar - Mariner 4 reports that Mars is probably a dead planet, and Walston later says he never should have taken the part The classic TV shows we grew up on were full of money problems nobody did the math on. With real Newspaper Guild pay scales, the 1963 median family income and the gold laws of the time, a Sunday night fantasy sitcom turns out to be about a young man carrying a hardship on one paycheck. 00:00 A Roommate From Mars 01:25 The X-15 Crash 03:20 Tim O’Hara’s Paycheck 05:40 Life Without Papers 08:00 Martin Goldfinger 09:40 Pricing the Gold 11:20 Mrs. Brown’s Money 14:55 Mariner 4 and Ratings 16:40 Ray Walston’s Regret 18:15 The 1999 Movie Bomb 18:40 Could Tim Afford Martin If you enjoyed this, hit like, subscribe for more classic TV money breakdowns and share it with a fan of My Favorite Martian. When Uncle Martin put up his antennae, did you ever wonder who was paying the rent on that garage apartment? Tell us in the comments. #MyFavoriteMartian #ClassicTV #RayWalston #BillBixby #1960sTV #SitcomHistory #RetroTV Before television had color, it had characters we never forgot. TV Life Black & White celebrates classic black-and-white television, from the laughs of I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners to the mysteries of The Twilight Zone and the dusty streets of Gunsmoke. Rediscover your favorite shows through behind-the-scenes stories, memorable moments, and a closer look at the lives those characters lived. Could they really afford those homes? How realistic were those picture-perfect families? And what did we miss when we watched the first time? From sitcoms and Westerns to crime dramas and science fiction, these shows still give us plenty to talk about. Subscribe, settle into your favorite chair, and revisit a world that never needed color to come alive. https://www.youtube.com/@TVLifeBlackWhite?sub_confirmation=1 Subscribe to Our Sister Channel in Color TV Life YT: https://www.youtube.com/@TVLIfeYT?sub_confirmation=1