I represent the first generation who, when we were born, the television was now a permanent fixture in our homes. When I was born people had breakfast with Barbara Walters, dinner with Walter Cronkite, and slept with Johnny Carson.
Read the full "Pre-ramble"
The U.S. Hockey Team won its “Do you believe in
miracles?” gold medal during the 1980
Olympic Winter Games beating Finland (4-2) in
their final medal round game.
The
Soviet Union took the Silver Medal by beating Sweden in their final game. Sweden took home the Bronze
Medal, with Finland finishing fourth.
Two days prior on February
22, 1980 was the "Miracle on Ice". The U.S. men's ice hockey team, led by coach Herb Brooks, defeated the Soviet Union team, 4 - 3. The Soviet Union team, who were
considered to be the best international hockey team in the world, they entered
the Olympic tournament as heavy favorites, having won every ice hockey gold
medal since 1964, and all but one gold medal since 1956. On February 9, the American and Soviet teams met for an exhibition
match at Madison Square Garden in order to practice for the upcoming competition.
The Soviet Union won (10-3) so the odds were in favor of the Russians.
The day before the match,
columnist Dave Anderson
wrote in the New York Times,
"Unless the ice melts, or unless the United States team or another team
performs a miracle, as did the American
squad in 1960, the
Russians are expected to easily win the Olympic gold medal for the sixth time
in the last seven tournaments."
The game ended with Al
Michaels delivering the most famous call in Hockey history, "Eleven
seconds, you've got ten seconds, the countdown going on right now! Morrow, up
to Silk...five seconds left in the game... Do you believe in miracles? YES!!!"
Though the Olympic Games are
supposed to be an arena free of politics the Soviet and American teams were
long time rivals due to the Cold War.
At the same time there was
another international drama playing out. Despite President Carter’s initial
refusal to admit the Shah of Iran into the United States, on October 22, 1979,
he finally granted the Shah entry and temporary asylum for the duration of his cancer treatment. In response to the Shah's entry into the
U.S., Iranian militants seized the American embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days from
November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981.
The "Miracle on
Ice" was a shot in the country’s morale during a time of great
uncertainty.
February 25, 1950
Comedy program Your Show of Shows, hosted by
Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, first airs.
Although the show lasted only four seasons, it became a
classic of television's golden era, featuring comedy by future stars Carl
Reiner, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, and others. The series was one of
television's Top 20 hits for three of its four years.
The actor who has
appeared in more than two hundred film and television productions. He is perhaps best known for three of
his roles: as the convict "Dragline" in Cool Hand Luke, for which he won an Academy Award; as airline mechanic Joe Patroni in all four of the
1970s Airportdisaster films; and as Captain Ed Hocken in the Naked Gun series of comedy films.
It was played between the hosting United States and the Soviet Union on February 22, 1980, during the medal round of the men's ice hockey tournament. Although the Soviet Union was a four-time defending gold medalist and heavily favored, the United States achieved an upset victory, winning 4–3.
A veteran of many films in the 1950s and '60s,
Wagner gained prominence in three American television series that spanned three
decades: It Takes a Thief (1968–70), Switch (1975–78), and Hart to
Hart (1979–84). In movies, Wagner is known for his role as Number Two in the Austin Powers films (1997, 1999, 2002). He
also had a recurring role as Teddy Leopold on the TV sitcom Two and a Half Men.
Wagner's autobiography, Pieces
of My Heart: A Life, written with author Scott Eyman, was published on
September 23, 2008.
In 1967, Wagner signed
with Universal Studios. In 1968, Lew
Wasserman convinced Wagner to make his television series debut in It Takes a Thief. While the success of The
Pink Panther and Harper began Wagner's comeback, the successful two
and a half seasons of his first TV series completed it. In this series, he
acted with Fred Astaire, who played his father. Wagner was a long-time
friend of Astaire's, having gone to school with Astaire's eldest son, Peter.
Wagner was suggested to play James
Bond
after On Her Majesty's
Secret Service was released.
By the mid-1970s,
Wagner's television career was at its peak with the television series Switch opposite Eddie
Albert,
after re-signing a contract with Universal Studios in 1974. Before Switch,
Albert was a childhood hero of Wagner's, after he watched the movie Brother
Rat
along with a few others. The friendship started in the early 1960s, where he
also co-starred in a couple of Albert's movies. After the series' end, the two
remained friends until Albert's death on May 26, 2005. Wagner spoke at his
funeral, and gave a testimonial about his longtime friendship with him.
In part payment for
starring together in the Aaron
Spelling and Leonard Goldberg production of the TV movie The
Affair, Wagner and Natalie
Wood
were given a share in three TV series that the producers were developing for ABC.[5] Only one reached the
screen, the very successful TV series Charlie's
Angels, for which Wagner and Wood had a 50% share, though Wagner was to spend
many years in court arguing with Spelling and Goldberg over what was defined as
profit.
His third successful
series was Hart to Hart, which co-starred Stefanie
Powers.
Before those roles, Wagner also made guest appearances in the pilot episode of The Streets of San Francisco. He would later be
nominated for an Emmy Award for Best TV Actor for his performance in It Takes a
Thief and for four Golden
Globe
awards for his role as Jonathan Hart in Hart to
Hart.
In 2005, Wagner became
the television spokesman for the Senior Lending Network, a reverse
mortgage lender and in 2010 began as a spokesman for the Guardian First Funding
Group, also a reverse mortgage lender. As of June 2011, Guardian First Funding
was acquired by Urban Financial Group, who continue to use Mr. Wagner as their
spokesperson.
In 2007, Wagner had a
role in the BBC/AMC series Hustle. In season four's premiere, Wagner played a crooked
Texan being taken for half a million dollars. As Wagner is considered "a
suave icon of American caper television, including It Takes a Thief and Hart
to Hart", Robert
Glenister (Hustle's fixer, Ash Morgan) commented that "to have
one of the icons of that period involved is a great bonus for all of us".
Wagner also played the
pivotal role of President James
Garfield in the comedy/horror film Netherbeast Incorporated (2007). The role was
written with Wagner in mind. He had a recurring role of a rich suitor to the
main characters' mother on the sitcom Two and a Half Men. His most recent appearances on
the show were in May 2008.
Wagner's radio and
television career was recognized by the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters on January
30, 2009, when they presented him with their Art Gilmore Career Achievement
Award.
Wagner has guest-starred
as Tony's father, Anthony DiNozzo Sr., in three episodes of NCIS: "Flesh and Blood" (2010), "Broken
Arrow" (2010), and "Sins of the Father" (2011).
Wagner was set to star as
Charlie in the 2011 reboot of Charlie's Angels, but due to scheduling
conflicts, had to exit the project.
At 27, Wagner became
involved with teenage actress Natalie
Wood and
married her on December 28, 1957. The couple soon became involved in financial
troubles. At Fox, Wagner's career was slowly being overtaken by actors such as Marlon
Brando
and Paul Newman. Wagner and Wood separated in September 1961 and
divorced on April 27, 1962. Wagner, with his career stalled because of a lack
of studio support, broke his studio contract with 20th Century Fox and moved to
Europe in search of better film roles.
While in Europe he met an
old friend, actress Marion Marshall. In the spring of 1963, after a
brief courtship, Wagner, Marshall, and her two children from her marriage to Stanley
Donen
moved back to America. Wagner and Marshall married on July 22, 1963, in the
Bronx Courthouse. Soon after, they had a daughter, Katie
Wagner
(born May 11, 1964). The two were together for nearly nine years before they
separated in late 1970. They were divorced on April 26, 1971. Wagner then had a
relationship with Tina Sinatra in 1971.
Wagner kept in contact
with Natalie Wood, whose short-lived marriage to Richard Gregson ended in early
1972. Wagner remarried her on July 16, 1972. Their only child, Courtney Wagner,
was born on March 9, 1974. On November 29, 1981, Natalie Wood drowned near
their yacht Splendour while it was moored near Catalina Island; also on board were Wagner and Christopher Walken, who was co-starring with her in
the motion picture Brainstorm. Wagner subsequently became the
legal guardian of Wood's daughter Natasha
Gregson.
He is estranged from Natalie Wood's sister Lana Wood, who claims Wagner
refused to let her see her nieces after Natalie Wood's death. In November 2011,
the Los Angeles County Sheriff's
Department reopened its investigation into Wood's death. Wagner is not considered a
suspect.
In early 1982, Wagner
began a relationship with actress Jill St.
John,
who coincidentally was a childhood acquaintance of Natalie Wood and Wagner's Hart to
Hart co-star Stefanie Powers, as well as starring alongside Natalie's sister Lana Wood in Diamonds Are Forever. The couple had first
met years earlier on a film set when St. John was a teenager. After an
eight-year courtship, they were married on May 26, 1990. On September 21, 2006,
he became a first time grandfather when his daughter, Katie, gave birth to a
son, Riley Wagner-Lewis.
February 10, 1960
Jack Paar told the following joke.
"An English lady, while visiting Switzerland, was looking for a
room, and she asked the schoolmaster if he could recommend any to her. He took
her to see several rooms, and when everything was settled, the lady returned to
her home to make the final preparations to move. When she arrived home, the
thought suddenly occurred to her that she had not seen a "W.C."
around the place. So she immediately wrote a note to the schoolmaster asking
him if there were a "W.C." around. The schoolmaster was a very poor
student of English, so he asked the parish priest if he could help in the
matter. Together they tired to discover the meaning of the letters
"W.C.," and the only solution they could find for the letters was
letters was a Wayside Chapel. The schoolmaster then wrote to the English lady
the following note:
Dear Madam:
I take great pleasure in informing you that the W.C. is situated nine
miles from the house you occupy, in the center of a beautiful grove of pine
trees surrounded by lovely grounds. It is capable of holding 229 people and it
is open on Sunday and Thursday only. As there are a great number of people and
they are expected during the summer months, I would suggest that you come
early: although there is plenty of standing room as a rule. You will no doubt
be glad to hear that a good number of people bring their lunch and make a day
of it. While others who can afford to go by car arrive just in time. I would
especially recommend that your ladyship go on Thursday when there is a musical
accompaniment. It may interest you to know that my daughter was married in the
W.C. and it was there that she met her husband. I can remember the rush there
was for seats. There were ten people to a seat ordinarily occupied by one. It
was wonderful to see the expression on their faces. The newest attraction is a
bell donated by a wealthy resident of the district. It rings every time a
person enters. A bazaar is to be held to provide plush seats for all the
people, since they feel it is a long felt need. My wife is rather delicate, so
she can't attend regularly. I shall be delighted to reserve the best seat for
you if you wish, where you will be seen by all. For the children, there is a
special time and place so that they will not disturb the elders. Hoping to have
been of service to you, I remain,
Sincerely,
The
Schoolmaster."
The "Water
Closet" joke involved a Enlish woman writing to a vacation resort in
Switzerland and asking about the availability of a "W.C." the
initials for "Water Closet" or bathroom, but the gentleman who
received the letter was a schoolmaster who had a very lmitid English
vocabulary, so he asked the parish priest if he could help in the matter.
Together they tired to discover the meaning of the letters "W.C.,"
and the only solution they could find for the letters was letters was a Wayside
Chapel. The full text of the joke contains multiple double
entendres like, “It is capable of
holding 229 people and it is open on Sunday and Thursday only”. This is mild by
today's standards, but too much for the network to bear in 1960.
The NBC censors thought the
joke was dirty and cut it from the February 10th, 1960 broadcast and
replaced that section of the show with news coverage. All of this was done
without consulting Paar.
When Paar discovered that
his four-minute story had been cut, he retaliated by walking off in the of the
February 11th show during the opening monologue saying, "I've
been up thirty hours without an ounce of sleep wrestling with my conscience all
day. I've made a decision about what I'm going to do. I'm leaving THE TONIGHT SHOW. There must be a better
way to make a living than this, a way of entertaining people without being
constantly involved in some form of controversy. I love NBC, and they've been
wonderful to me. But they let me down."
Paar walked offstage, leaving
his announcer Hugh Downs
to finish the show for him.
Paar returned to the show on
March 7th, looked right into the camera and said, "As I was saying before
I was interrupted. When I walked off, I said there must be a better way of
making a living. Well I've looked and there isn't. Be it ever so humble, there
is no place like Radio City. Leaving the show was a childish and perhaps
emotional thing. I have been guilty of such action in the past and will perhaps
be again. I'm totally unable to hide what I feel. It is not an asset in show
business. But I shall do the best I can to amuse and entertain you and let
other people speak freely, as I have in the past."
February 11, 1980
In Concert is the 19th episode of the second season of the television
series WKRP in Cincinnati.
The
concept for the episode was described as "admirably ambitious" by
William Beamon, writing in the Evening
Independent before he had viewed the episode. The radio station promotes a concert by The Who, and employees
prepare to attend the concert. Station employees are overcome with guilt
after a stampede for seats by attending fans results in some fans
dying. They discuss the tragic events the next morning. The plot is based
on the events of The Who concert disaster in Cincinnati of December 3, 1979
during the band's U.S. tour. Of the 18,348 tickets sold for the concert,
14,770 were for unassigned seats known as festival seating, obtained on a first-come, first-served basis. City officials had objected to
the use of festival seating at the facility as early as October 1976.
Attendees
arrived as much as six hours before the start of the concert to attempt to
garner the best available seats, and a crowd had gathered by 3:00 p.m.
ET. An hour before the start of the concert, "thousands were tightly
packed around the entrance doors", and by 7:20 p.m. ET the crowd
consisted of 8,000 people. Some members of the crowd rushed the gates on
the plaza level on the west side of the Coliseum, crushing those at the
front. The incident resulted in the death of 11 individuals by compressive asphyxia and injuries to 23. In a press conference after the concert,
police lieutenant Dale Menkhaus stated that too few gate doors had been
opened, and witnesses stated only one door had been opened at the main
gate. Menkahus stated that the doors had been purposely kept closed
because The Who had arrived late for a sound check. An emergency room
supervisor stated that the victims had sustained "multiple contusions and hemorrhages".
The
facility and its executives had received lawful orders from the city's fire chief as early as 1976
concerning event actions, such as "locking and barring of exit doors
during performances, overcrowded conditions and the blocking of
aisles". Executives were later charged for failure to comply with
those lawful orders.
Security
for a concert by The Who in Buffalo, New York the next night was
doubled, and the band dedicated it to the victims. Two concerts
scheduled at Riverfront Coliseum were postponed: that by Blue Öyster Cult on December 14, and that by Aerosmith on December 21.
"Danny Meets Andy Griffith" was telecast on The
Danny Thomas Show. In the
episode, Griffith played fictional Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry, North
Carolina, who arrests Thomas for running a stop sign. Future players in The Andy
Griffith Show, Frances Bavier and Ron Howard, appeared in the episode as
townspeople, Henrietta Perkins, and Sheriff Taylor's son, Opie.
February 16, 1950
What's My
Line debuts on TV.
TV game show What's My Line debuts on this day in 1950.
The show,
produced by game show magnates Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, became the
longest-running prime-time game show in the history of television. It ran for
18 years. A radio version launched in 1952 but was cancelled in 1953.
Television journalist and
author best known as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004. He
is the author of The Greatest
Generation (1998), a runaway bestseller, and other books and the
recipient of numerous awards and honors. He is the only person to host all
three major NBC News programs: The Today Show,
NBC Nightly News, and, briefly, Meet the Press. He currently serves as
a Special Correspondent for NBC News and works on documentaries for other
outlets.
February
8, 1985
The last episode of The Dukes of Hazzard aired.
Boss
Hogg grudgingly agrees to participate in Rosco's magic act during a talent
revue at the Boar's Nest. Boss plans to use the "disappearing lady"
act as a way to get to a scheduled appointment, but it works out too well. A
pair of escaped felons, whom Boss helped put away, kidnap Boss and hold him for
ransom. When Rosco is unable to make Boss "reappear," Bo and Luke
investigate and determine foul play was involved. Rosco is convinced Boss
really did disappear into thin air, leaving the Duke boys to ride to Boss'
rescue.
The
Jay Leno Show aired for the last time in primetime.
The showaired at 10 p.m. from September 14, 2009, to February
9, 2010, on NBC, after
Leno's initial retirement from hosting The
Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In
January 2010, NBC announced that due to affiliate concerns about its effect on
their newscasts, The Jay Leno Show would be shortened to 30
minutes and moved from primetime to 11:35 p.m., the timeslot that had been
occupied by The Tonight Show for nearly 60 years.
The
Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien released
a public statement saying that he would not participate in moving Tonight to
12:05 a.m., asserting that it would damage the highly respected
franchise. Despite much support for O'Brien from both the public and
media professionals alike NBC maintained its plan to move Leno to 11:35.
On January 21, 2010, NBC reached a $45 million settlement with O'Brien in order
to end his contract. Leno ended on February 9, 2010, after
being on the air for only four months, with Entertainment
Weekly calling the program
television's "Biggest Bomb of All Time." Leno resumed his duties
as host of Tonight on March 1, 2010, which lasted until 2014
A spin-off from the original Battlestar
Galactica television series.
It was first broadcast on the ABC
network in the United States from
January 27 to May 4, 1980, lasting for 10 episodes. Set during the year 1980,
and a generation after the original series, the Galactica and
its fleet of 220 civilian ships have finally discovered Earth, only to find that its
people are not as scientifically advanced and that the planet can neither
defend itself against the Cylons nor
help the Galactica as originally hoped. Therefore, teams of
Colonial warriors arecovertly sent to the planet to work incognito
with various members of the scientific community, hoping to advance Earth's
technology.
Commander Adama and Colonel Boomer —
now second-in-command — on the advice of Doctor Zee, a teenage prodigy
serving as Adama's counsellor, sends Captain Troy,
who is the adopted son of Adama's own son Apollo, and
Lieutenant Dillon to North America,
where they become entangled with TV journalist Jamie Hamilton. After an
initial, epictime travel adventure to Nazi Germany in
the 1940s (to stop rebel Galactican Commander Xavier, trying to change the future to improve Earth's technology level), the
three friends devise ways to help Earth's scientists and outwit the Cylons in
the present day. Meanwhile, Adama sends a group of children from the Galactica fleet
(the Super Scouts) to Earth in order to begin the process of
integrating with the population. However, due to differences in gravity and
physiology, the children must deal with the fact they have nearly super-human
powers on Earth.
The
fates of several characters from the original series are explained during the
course of the series. Apollo is apparently dead, the cause of his seeming death
not addressed. Starbuck was marooned on a desert planet, although the script
for the episode "The Wheel of Fire" (unfilmed at the time of
cancellation) indicated that Starbuck was eventually rescued from the planet by
the inhabitants of the Ships of Light and became one of their inhabitants. Captain Troy is revealed to be Boxey, and Lt. Boomer has
risen to the rank of Colonel and has become Adama's second in command. Baltar
was apparently rescued from the planet he was marooned on in "Hand of
God", and is now Commandant Baltar of the Cylon fleet pursuing the
Galacticans. The fates of several other characters, including Adama's
daughter Athena, Colonel Tigh,
Starbuck's girlfriend Cassiopeia, and Muffit the robot dog are not revealed. These
characters are absent from the second series.
January 27, 1980
Tenspeed and Brown Shoe preimered
on the ABC network.
The series was created and executive
produced by Stephen J. Cannell. The one-hour program revolved around two detectives who
had their own detective agency in Los Angeles. E. L. ("Early Leroy") "Tenspeed"
Turner (Ben Vereen) was a hustler who worked as a detective to satisfy
his parole requirements. His partner Lionel "Brownshoe" Whitney (Jeff Goldblum)
was an archetypal accountant, complete with button-down collars and a nagging
fiancee (at least for the pilot episode), who had always wanted to be a
1940s-style Bogart P.I. A running joke was his penchant for reading
a series of hard-boiled crime novels, sub-titled, "A Mark Savage
Mystery", written by Stephen J. Cannell (though he never wrote such a
series of novels), with Goldblum reading particularly purple passages in
voice-over. He was sharper than he seemed, although a little naïve and more
reasonable than his career path demanded, and had picked up karate to Black Belt
standard.
This
was the first series to come from Stephen J. Cannell Productions as an
independent company (it was distributed throughParamount
Television, one of only two such
collaborations - the other was Riptide) and is also the only one not to carry the famed
Cannell logo on any episodes, having "A Stephen J. Cannell
Production" appearing in-credit (the logo was introduced in 1981 whenThe
Greatest American Hero began
airing). It was heavily promoted by ABC at the time it premiered in late
January 1980. The series attracted a substantial audience for its first few
episodes (indeed, the series was the 29th most-watched program of the 1979–80
U.S. television season, according to Nielsen ratings),
but viewership dropped off substantially after that and the series was not
renewed for the 1980–81 season.
January 28, 1985
American recording artists gather to
record "We Are the World"
After its cancellation by CBS in 1967, it returned in syndication as a daily
production which ran from 1968 until 1975. There have been several
international versions, radio versions, and a live stage version.In 2013, TV Guide ranked
it #9 in its list of the 60 greatest game shows ever.
The
Soviet Union took the Silver Medal by beating Sweden in their final game. Sweden took home the Bronze
Medal, with Finland finishing fourth.
