I enjoyed the New York Times obituary for Gale Storm, the actress whose career peaked in the 1950s on sitcoms “My Little Margie” and “The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna.” The title character of the latter, writes Anita Gates, “was a social director on a cruise ship who, with her beautician sidekick (ZaSu Pitts), regularly confounded the ship’s stuffy captain and, every third episode, burst into song (a condition of Ms. Storm’s contract).”

More contracts should have such a provision.

Other fun facts: Her screen name (so great, by the way) was “preordained” as part of the prize package she won in the 1939 Gateway to Hollywood talent contest. (Ultimately, I suppose, “The Josephine Cottle Show” wouldn’t have had quite the same ring to it.) Also, she did a 1979 episode of “The Love Boat,” “considered something of an ‘Oh! Susanna’ copycat.”

Words of wisdom: “I’d get tired, but I’d wake up every morning looking forward to the day’s work,” Storm once wrote, referring to the challenges of her first weekly TV series. “I think that the secret to happiness is being surrounded by people you love and having work that you look forward to doing.”

Copy editor’s nitpick: I would have chosen a different phrase than Gates did to describe Storm’s widowed mother, who “became a seamstress to make ends meet.”