Monday, March 18, 2024

This Week in Television History: March 2024 PART III

      March 21, 1983

The last episode of the long-running TV series Little House on the Prairie aired. The series, based on the children's book by Laura Ingalls Wilder, premiered in 1974. 

The show was one of television's 25 most highly rated shows for seven of its nine seasons. When series star and executive producer Michael Landon decided to leave the show in 1982, the show's title changed to Little House: A New Beginning  and focused on character Laura Ingalls Wilder (Melissa Gilbert) and her family. The show lasted only one more season. Three made-for-television movie sequels followed: Little House: Look Back to Yesterday (1983), Little House: Bless All the Dear Children (1983), and Little House: The Last Farewell (1984). 




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Tony Figueroa

Monday, March 11, 2024

This Week in Television History: March 2024 PART II

     March 11, 1989

COPS debuts on Fox. 

The hit reality-based television show COPS premieres on the Fox television network, and audiences hear the reggae beat of its distinctive theme song, Inner Circle's "Bad Boys," for the very first time.

Created by the producing team of John Langley and Malcolm Barbour, COPS placed cameras and production crews in the car with real patrol officers around the country as they went on raids and did whatever was necessary to catch the perpetrators of various drug-related crimes. The pilot episode, like the rest of that debut season, was based in Broward County, Florida, and followed members of the Broward County Sheriff's Office. The actor Burt Lancaster provided the voice-over for the pilot episode, but the rest of the show, shot documentary-style, was not accompanied by any narration.

At the time, Fox was only a fledgling television network, having launched in October 1986. The network took a chance on COPS after other major networks passed on it, leaping on Langley and Barbour's idea in the middle of a five-month-long strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) during the summer of 1988. A reality-based show was ideal for the network at the time, as it would require no writers and was relatively inexpensive to produce.

COPS surprised the industry by becoming a hit; it is now one of the longest-running TV shows in history, with more than 700 episodes airing between 1989 and 2008. Its success spawned an entire new genre of reality programming that would gain traction during the 1990s and become a major cultural phenomenon by the next decade. Like any touchstone of popular culture, COPS has inspired numerous imitators--including the John Langley-produced series Jail and Street Patrol--and has been parodied extensively, most notably by the Comedy Central series Reno 911!

In February 2008, producers released a special two-disc DVD set to celebrate the 20th anniversary of COPS.


March 12, 1974

Wonder Woman debuted on ABC-TV. The show later went to CBS-TV.

Wonder Woman's first broadcast appearance in live-action television was a television movie made in 1974 for ABC. Written by John D. F. Black, the TV movie resembles the Wonder Woman of the "I Ching" period. Wonder Woman (Cathy Lee Crosby) did not wear the comic-book uniform, demonstrated no apparent super-human powers, had a "secret identity" of Diana Prince that was not all that secret, and she was also depicted as blonde (differing from the brunette image established in the comic books). This 1974 film follows Wonder Woman, assistant to government agent Steve Trevor (Kaz Garas) as she pursues a villain named Abner Smith (Ricardo Montalban) who has stolen a set of code books containing classified information about U.S. government field agents. Along the way, she has to outwit Smith's chief assistants: the handsome yet dangerous George (Andrew Prine) and a rogue Amazon, Angela (Anitra Ford), who Smith has taken on as a bodyguard; a brief duel between Wonder Woman and Angela is the film's only significant action sequence, which occurs during the final third of the story.

March 16, 1949

Henry Enrique "Erik" Estrada is born. 

Actor and reserve police officer, known for his co-starring lead role in the 1977–1983 United States police television series CHiPs. He later became known for his work in Spanish language telenovelas, and in more recent years, his appearances in reality television shows and infomercials and as a regular voice on the Adult Swim series Sealab 2021.



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Tony Figueroa

Thursday, March 07, 2024

Steve Lawrence

You will never see a portrait of my love, for miracles are never seen.

— Steve Lawrence

Steve Lawrence

born 
Sidney Liebowitz

July 8, 1935 – March 7, 2024

When he was 18 years old, Steve Lawrence was hired by Steve Allen to be one of the singers on Allen's local New York City late night show on WNBC-TV in 1953, along with Eydie Gormé and Andy Williams. When the show got picked up by NBC to be seen on the national network, becoming The Tonight Show, Lawrence, Gormé and Williams stayed on until the program's end in 1957.

In the late 1950s, Lawrence was drafted into the U.S. Army and served as the official vocal soloist with the United States Army Band "Pershing's Own" in Washington, D.C.

Lawrence had success on the record charts in the late 1950s and early 1960s with such hits as "Go Away Little Girl" (U.S. No. 1), "Pretty Blue Eyes" (U.S. No. 9), "Footsteps" (U.S. No. 7), "Portrait of My Love" (U.S. No. 9), and "Party Doll" (U.S. No. 5). "Go Away Little Girl" sold over one million copies and was awarded a Gold record.[6] However, much of Lawrence's musical career was centered on nightclubs and the musical stage.

Lawrence was also an actor, appearing in guest roles on television shows in every decade since the 1950s. After getting his start with Steve Allen's late night show, he was seen in programs such as The Danny Kaye ShowThe Judy Garland ShowThe Julie Andrews HourNight GalleryThe Flip Wilson ShowPolice StoryMurder, She Wrote; and CSI.

Lawrence and Gormé starred in the 1958 summer replacement series on NBC, The Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé Show. Lawrence made many appearances on The Carol Burnett Show (1967–78), with and without Eydie. The Steve Lawrence Show, with supporting actor Charles Nelson Reilly, ran for 13 weeks in 1965, a variety show that was one of the last CBS television shows to only air in black and white. Lawrence also served as a panelist on What's My Line? (1950–67).

In 1964, Lawrence starred in the Broadway musical What Makes Sammy Run?. It centered on an ambitious young man clawing his way to the top in Hollywood. It ran for 504 performances at the 54th Street Theater.

Lawrence and Gormé appeared together in the Broadway musical Golden Rainbow, which ran from February 1968 to January 1969. Although the show was not a huge success (a summary of this experience is chronicled in unflattering detail in William Goldman's 1968 book The Season), the show contained the memorable song "I've Gotta Be Me". This song was originally sung by Lawrence at the end of the first act of the musical. Sammy Davis, Jr. later recorded a version of the song that hit number 11 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in 1969.



Lawrence starred as Gary McBride in the 1972 film Stand Up and Be Counted, opposite Jacqueline Bisset and Stella Stevens. In 1980, he was introduced to a new generation of fans with his portrayal of Maury Sline in The Blues Brothers, and reprised the role in the 1998 sequel Blues Brothers 2000. Lawrence's other films include the Steve Martin comedy The Lonely Guy (1984) and the crime thriller The Yards (2000).

In 1984, Lawrence and comedian Don Rickles hosted ABC's Foul-Ups, Bleeps & Blunders.

In 1985, Lawrence and Gormé played Tweedledee (Gormé) and Tweedledum (Lawrence) in Irwin Allen's film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

Lawrence played Mark McCormick's father, Sonny Daye, in two episodes of Hardcastle and McCormick. He appeared on The Nanny several times — first as himself in season 2, episode 14, and then as the much-talked about, but never really seen, Morty Fine, father of Fran Fine in a few of the final episodes of the show. In 2011, he portrayed Jack, a wealthy love interest of Betty White's character, Elka Ostrovsky, on Hot in Cleveland. In 2014, he guest-starred in an episode of Two and a Half Men on CBS, and sang the theme song to the parody miniseries The Spoils of Babylon.

Lawrence and Gormé married on December 29, 1957, at the El Rancho Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada. They had two sons together; David Nessim Lawrence (b. 1960) is an ASCAP Award-winning composer, who wrote the score for High School Musical, and Michael Robert Lawrence (1962–1986), who died suddenly from ventricular fibrillation resulting from an undiagnosed heart condition at the age of 23. Michael was an assistant editor for a television show at the time of his death and was apparently healthy despite a previous diagnosis of slight arrhythmia.

Gormé and Lawrence were in Atlanta, Georgia, at the time of Michael's death, having performed at the Fox Theater the night before. Upon learning of the death, family friend Frank Sinatra sent his private plane to fly the couple to New York to meet David, who was attending school at the time. Following their son's death, Gormé and Lawrence took a year off before touring again.

Eydie Gormé died on August 10, 2013, at age 84, after a brief, undisclosed illness.

In June 2019, following public speculation about his health, Lawrence announced that he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and that treatment to slow its progression had so far been successful.

Lawrence died from complications due to Alzheimer's disease in Los Angeles, on March 7, 2024, at the age of 88.

Good Night Steve

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Monday, March 04, 2024

This Week in Television History: March 2024 PART I

      March 4, 1994

John Candy dies. 


The larger-than-life comedic star John Candy dies suddenly of a heart attack on this day in 1994, at the age of 43. At the time of his death, he was living near Durango, Mexico, while filming Wagons East, a Western comedy co-starring the comedian Richard Lewis.

Born in 1950, Candy's first professional acting work was in children's theater in his native Canada. In 1972, he was accepted into the prestigious Second City comedy troupe in Toronto, where he would become a regular writer and performer for the group's television program, SCTV, alongside other rising comics like Eugene Levy (later Candy's co-star in Splash) and Harold Ramis (Ghostbusters). When SCTV moved to network television in 1981, Candy moved with it; that year and the next, he won Emmy Awards for writing for the show. Candy's recurring (and most famous) SCTV persona was Yosh Shmenge, a clarinet player in a polka band. He would reprise the character in a mock documentary, The Last Polka, on HBO in 1985 and would also play a polka musician in the smash hit Home Alone (1990).

Candy made his big break into movies with Splash (1984), in which he stole most of his scenes as the idle, high-living brother of the main character, played by Tom Hanks. The film, directed by Ron Howard, was a smash hit, jump-starting the careers of Candy, Hanks, Darryl Hannah and Levy. In one particularly memorable scene, Candy throws himself with abandon around a racquetball court, using his hefty frame to full comedic effect. Six-foot-three and weighing as much as 275 pounds, he struggled with dieting over the years, but his heft undoubtedly contributed to his success as a comic performer.

After Splash, Candy was in high demand as a lovable oaf. He starred in a number of box-office hits over the next 10 years, including Spaceballs (1987), and collaborations with the writer, producer and director John Hughes in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), The Great Outdoors (1988) and Uncle Buck (1989). A devoted sports fan and co-owner of the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League, he was also part owner of House of Blues, with the actors Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi. In 1993, Candy won praise for his role as the sensitive coach of an unlikely Jamaican bobsled team in Cool Runnings (1993).

At the time of his death, Candy had just completed his directorial debut, the Fox Television movie comedy Hostage for a Day. He had performed two-thirds of his scenes in Wagons East, which was finished after the filmmakers' insurance company paid a reported $15 million settlement. Another recently wrapped movie, Canadian Bacon, was released in 1995. Candy was survived by his wife, Rosemary, and their two children, Jennifer and Christopher.

March 8th, 1974

The last episode The Brady Bunch aired

"The Hair-Brained Scheme"


Bobby is convinced he can get rich by selling Neat & Natural Hair Tonic. Bobby sells Greg a container which turns Greg's hair bright orange on the eve of his high school commencement. Greg is forced to go to the beauty parlor and dye his hair back before going to graduation.

Note: Robert Reed does not appear in this episode, due to dispute over the story involving the non-FDA approved bottle of hair tonic, which he thought was inane slapstick. After Reed wrote a large memo to the staff and Paramount, Sherwood Schwartz wrote him out of the episode.

March 9, 1954

Edward R. Murrow See it Now

"A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy"

Edward R. Murrow may not have scored the first blow against Joseph McCarthy, but he landed a decisive one. For that, he always will be linked inextricably with the Wisconsin senator, and remembered by Americans as a champion of liberty and democracy. As early as 1950, Murrow observed on the air that "the weight of the public testimony has tended to show that so far, Senator McCarthy's charges [againstsuspected communist subversives] are unproven." On March 9, 1954, Murrow, then the most respected journalist in America, engaged in a tough exposé of the senator and his tactics; the last paragraphs of his presentation are indelibly etched into our history as is the rhetoric of McCarthy himself. In the interest of the “fairness doctrine,” McCarthy was given an equal amount of time for a rebuttal, which he delivered in his classic acerbic style on April 6, 1954. This was the beginning of McCarthy’s downfall.

 

March 9, 1959

The International Toy Fair in New York premiered Barbie. 

That event was followed by 50 years of Barbie commercials during Saturday morning cartoons.




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Tony Figueroa

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Richard Lewis

I was way more comfortable in front of strangers than I was in front of relatives. So when they would laugh at my dysfunctions or my anxiety, I felt less alone, and I still do it for the same reason.
-Richard Lewis

Richard Philip Lewis

June 29, 1947 – February 27, 2024


Richard Lewis first tried stand-up at an open-mic in Greenwich Village in 1971.He began writing and regularly performing stand-up comedy in 1972, while working as a copywriter for an advertising agency by day. He was discovered by comedian David Brenner while performing in Greenwich Village. Brenner helped Lewis's career by introducing him to the comedy clubs in Los Angeles and getting Lewis his first appearance on The Tonight Show. By the mid-1970s, Lewis had appeared on The  Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and publications, such as the New York Daily News and New York Magazine, were naming him one of the "new breed" or "class" of comedians; this list containing names such as Robert KleinLily TomlinRichard PryorGeorge CarlinAndy Kaufman,  Richard Belzer, and Elayne Boosler. His influences were Richard Pryor, Buster KeatonWoody Allen, and Lenny Bruce.

Lewis was known for dark comedy, self-deprecation, and for frank discussions regarding his many neuroses, as well as his struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction. He was noted for wearing all-black attire and for pacing and gesticulating wildly during his stand-up act. In his early days, he was also known for bringing taped-together sheets from a legal pad to his performances; he would lay them across the floor in front of him to remind him of joke premises and topics he wished to cover during his performance.

Lewis made his screen acting debut in Diary of a Young Comic, a 90-minute film that aired on NBC in 1979 in the timeslot normally reserved for episodes of Saturday Night Live. A satirical look at the Hollywood scene, Lewis stars in the film as Billy Gondola (born Gondolstein), a young Jewish comedian who leaves New York City to find fame in Los Angeles. The film's script was co-written by Lewis and Bennett Tramer, and was adapted from a story written by Gary Weis, who also served as the film's director. The film features Bill Macy as Billy's father, Michael Lerner as his agent, and Stacy Keach as a landlord. Performers George Jessel, Dom DeLuise, Nina van Pallandt, and Gary Mule Deer make appearances in the film as themselves.

Lewis gained much wider exposure in the 1980s and 1990s with numerous appearances on talk shows such as The Tonight Show, both Late Night and the Late Show with David Letterman, and The Howard Stern Show. He also produced the comedy special I'm in Pain, which aired on Showtime in 1985, followed by the specials I'm ExhaustedI'm Doomed, and Richard Lewis: The Magical Misery Tour, all of which aired on HBO in 1988, 1990, and 1997 respectively. From 1989 to 1992, he co-starred with Jamie Lee Curtis on the sitcom Anything but Love. He also starred on the short-lived sitcoms Daddy Dearest with Don Rickles in 1993, and Hiller and Diller with Kevin Nealon in 1998. He played Prince John in the 1993 film Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and starred as a struggling alcoholic and drug addict in the 1995 drama film Drunks. The latter film featured performances from Faye DunawayGeorge MartinParker PoseyHoward RollinsSpalding Gray, and Dianne Wiest, and was based on Gary Lennon's play Blackout. Lewis also appeared in the 1995 drama film Leaving Las Vegas, and the 1997 romantic comedy Hugo Pool.

Into the 2000s, Lewis had recurring roles as a B movie producer on the sitcom Rude Awakening, and as Rabbi Richard Glass on the family drama series 7th Heaven. He also had a recurring role on the sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm as a semi-autobiographical version of himself. Lewis first met the show's star and creator, Larry David, at summer camp in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, when they were 12 years old – the former claimed that at the time, they hated each other. The two comedians also happened to be born three days apart in the same hospital. The pair met again over a decade later while performing stand-up in New York and became friends.

GQ magazine included Lewis on their list of "The 20th Century's Most Influential Humorists", and Lewis was ranked No. 45 on Comedy Central's list of "100 Greatest Standups of All Time" released in 2004.

In 2006, The Yale Book of Quotations included an entry for the expression "the ______ from hell" (as in "the night from hell", "the date from hell". etc.,) that was attributed to Lewis. Lewis also petitioned the editors of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations to include the idiom, which was also worked into the plot of Curb Your Enthusiasm during the episode "The Nanny from Hell." His lawyer sent some video tapes to Bartlett's general editor Justin Kaplan showing Lewis using the phrase. Bartlett's declined, stating that the expression had predated Lewis's first taped broadcast. In response, Lewis told Entertainment Weekly that he traces popular usage of the line back to his early days on David Letterman's show.

Lewis met Joyce Lapinsky in 1998 at a Ringo Starr album release party, while Lapinsky was working in music publishing. The pair were engaged in 2004 and married the following year.

Discussions of Lewis's battles with anxiety and depression, and his multiple therapy sessions, were a fixture of his comedy. He also stated in interviews that he suffered from an eating disorder due to body dysmorphia.

Lewis was open about his recovery from alcohol and drug abuse, having been a user of both cocaine and crystal meth. His addictions worsened into the 1990s, prompting Lewis to stop performing stand-up from 1991 to 1994. In a 1995 interview with the Santa Maria Times, Lewis discussed how John Candy's death the year prior had caused him to reflect upon his own life and career. The two starred together in Candy's last film, the Western-themed comedy film Wagons East. In later interviews, Lewis stated that he got sober in 1994 after winding up in a hospital emergency room due to a cocaine overdose.

Lewis published his memoir in 2000, titled The Other Great Depression. The book was reissued in 2008 with an added afterword where Lewis reflected further on his continued struggles with addiction. In 2015, he released the book Reflections From Hell: Richard Lewis' Guide on How Not to Live; it contains his commentary and observations in the form of one-liners and other comedic premises, interspersed with images created by artist Carl Nicholas Titolo.

Good Night Richard.
Thank you for sharing your wisdom with me.
It helped. 

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa


Monday, February 26, 2024

This Week in Television History: February 2024 PART IV

     March 1, 1954

Ronald William "Ron" Howard is born. 

Film director, producer and actor.

He came to prominence playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years.[1] He appeared in the films The Music Man in 1962, American Graffiti in 1973, and The Shootist in 1976, the latter during his run on Happy Days.

Howard made his directorial debut with the 1977 comedy Grand Theft Auto, and left Happy Days in 1980 to focus on directing. His films include Cocoon, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Beautiful Mind, which earned Howard the Academy Award for Best Director. In 2002, Howard conceived the idea for the Fox/Netflix series Arrested Development, on which he also serves as producer and narrator, and plays a semi-fictionalized version of himself.

March 2, 1904

Dr. Seuss born. 

Theodor Geisel, better known to the world as Dr. Seuss, the author and illustrator of such beloved children's books as "The Cat in the Hat" and "Green Eggs and Ham," is born in Springfield, Massachusetts. Geisel, who used his middle name (which was also his mother's maiden name) as his pen name, wrote 48 books--including some for adults--that have sold well over 200 million copies and been translated into multiple languages. Dr. Seuss books are known for their whimsical rhymes and quirky characters, which have names like the Lorax and the Sneetches and live in places like Hooterville.


Geisel, who was born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts, graduated from Dartmouth College, where he was editor of the school's humor magazine, and studied at Oxford University. There he met Helen Palmer, his first wife and the person who encouraged him to become a professional illustrator. Back in America, Geisel worked as a cartoonist for a variety of magazines and in advertising.

The first children's book that Geisel wrote and illustrated, "And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street," was rejected by over two dozen publishers before making it into print in 1937. Geisel's first bestseller, "The Cat in the Hat," was published in 1957. The story of a mischievous cat in a tall striped hat came about after his publisher asked him to produce a book using 220 new-reader vocabulary words that could serve as an entertaining alternative to the school reading primers children found boring.

Other Dr. Seuss classics include "Yertle the Turtle," "If I Ran the Circus," "Fox in Socks" and "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish."

Some Dr. Seuss books tackled serious themes. "The Butter Battle Book" (1984) was about the arms buildup and nuclear war threat during Ronald Reagan's presidency. "Lorax" (1971) dealt with the environment.

Many Dr. Seuss books have been adapted for television and film, including "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" and "Horton Hears a Who!" In 1990, Geisel published a book for adults titled "Oh, the Places You'll Go" that became a hugely popular graduation gift for high school and college students.

Geisel, who lived and worked in an old observatory in La Jolla, California, known as "The Tower," died September 24, 1991, at age 87.



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Tony Figueroa