Nurse Annie Carlisle..... Joan Van Ark

Nurse Mildred MacInerny..... Reva Rose

Student Nurse Ellen Turner..... Nancy Fox

Dr. David Amherst..... David Bailey

Cast - 1973-1974

Dr. Paul Mercy..... Paul Lynde

Dr. Jerry Noland..... Cleavon Little

Martha Mercy..... Sudie Bond

Miss Tillis..... Barbara Carson

Nurse "Windy" Winchester..... Jennifer Darling

Dr. Lloyd Axton..... Jeff Morrow

Dr. Charles Cleveland Claver..... John Dehner

Cast - Summer of 1974

Dr. Paul Mercy..... Paul Lynde

Dr. Jerry Noland..... Cleavon Little

Edwina Moffitt..... Alice Ghostley

Nurse Ellen Turner..... Nancy Fox

Nurse Amanda Kelly..... Barbara Rucker

SYNOPSIS

ABC evidently had a good deal of faith in this medical comedy, trying three different casts and formats in two years before finally giving up!

For the first season, the show was set at Capital General Hospital in Washington, D.C., presided over by no-nonsense chief of surgery, Dr. Vincent Campanelli and his all-nonsense staff. The latter consisted of: prankster Jerry Noland, a free-swinging product of the ghetto and the hospital's chief bookie; sexy young nurse Annie Carlisle; her mischievous companion Mildred MacInerny, and Dr. David Amherst, the handsome love interest of practically every female in the place! There were also the patients: the old codger who liked to drag-race in his wheelchair, the paranoid young man who wanted his medication pre-tasted and then slipped under the door, etc...

The program returned for its second season re-titled The New Temperatures Rising Show, with new producers and almost completely recast. Capital General was now a private hospital, run by penny-pinching Dr. Paul Mercy and owned by his meddlesome mother, Martha, who was permanently in residence and who kept calling her son via a beeper on his belt. Miss Tillis was the efficient accountant, and Dr. Axton, the cheerfully fraudulent surgeon who had recently published two books, Profit in Healing and Malpractice and Its Defense. Only intern Jerry Noland remained from the first season.

The second version of Temperatures Rising was no more successful than the first, however, and lasted only through mid-season. Apparently, viewers did not appreciate seeing doctors as the butt of comedy. The show did come back for another short run in the summer of 1974, with more new episodes, and still more changes in cast and plot. This time the meddling mother was gone, and Dr. Mercy ran the place with the help of his sister, Edwina. Intern Jerry Noland was back, along with a couple new nurses.

Third time was not the charm, however. Temperatures Rising was finally cancelled once and for all after the summer of 1974 run.