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"
Here is another "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.
While Jon Stewart is in the Middle East to direct the film "Rosewater," he visited his Egyptian counterpart Bassem Youssef on Al Bernameg (The Program)
The 20-minute clip of his appearance
above is in both Arabic and English, with the bulk of Stewart's
interview in English. Youssef has previously been a guest on The Daily Show twice, most recently in April of this year to discuss his arrest for allegedly insulting Islam and Egypt's President Morsi on his program.
Second hour: Ed welcomes stage and film actress Channing Chase, aka Dorothy “Dot” Campbell on AMC’s Mad Men.
Also in this hour: Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen with an expanded
edition of This Week of TV History that includes a look at the life and
career of comedian George Carlin.
Comedy writer Bob Mills and pop culture journalist Jennifer Armstrong will join us on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing June 26-July 2 at the following times and venues:
WROM Radio Detroit, MI Wednesday 6/26 8pm ET, 5pm PT 2am ET, 11pm PT Sunday 6/30 8pm ET, 5pm PT 2am ET, 11pm PT Click on the Listen Live button at WROMRadio.net
Indiana Talks Marion, IN Wednesday 6/26 11pm ET, 8pm PT with replays at various times throughout the week Click on the player at IndianaTalks.com or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in Indiana Talks
Share-a-Vision Radio San Francisco Bay Area Friday 6/28 7pm ET, 4pm PT 10pm ET, 7pm PT Click on the Listen Live button at KSAV.org or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in KSAV
Talktainment Radio Columbus, OH Thursday 6/27 2am ET, 11pm PT Friday 6/28 3am ET, Midnight PT Noon ET, 9am PT Click on the Listen Live button at TalktainmentRadio.com
KKYT 93.7 FM The Coyote Ridgecrest, CA Sunday 6/30 9pm PT Monday 7/1 Midnight ET Click on the Listen Live button at Coyote395.com or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in KKYT
KHMB Radio 1710 AM Half Moon Bay, CA Sunday 6/30 9pm PT Monday 7/1 Midnight ET Click on the Listen Live button at KHMBRadio.com or use the Live365 app on your smartphone and type in KHMB
The Radio Slot Network San Francisco, CA Monday 7/1 9pm ET, 6pm PT with replays at various times throughout the week Click on the Talk Slot button at RadioSlot.com
Passionate World Radio Ann Arbor, MI Tuesday 7/2 9:30pm ET, 6:30pm PT with replays at various times throughout the week at PWRTalkonDemand.com Click on the Listen Now button at PWRTalk.com
Bob Mills spent more than two decades as a comedy writer in network television, first as a staff writer with the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts in 1976, before beginning a 15-year stint as a staff writer for Bob Hope throughout the ’80s and early 1990s. Bob’s book, The Laugh Makers, not only provides great insight into Bob Hope, the comic and the person, but also takes you behind the series of the final decade of the network TV variety show, while also paying tribute to the “gag men” and “gag women” who made it happen.
Bob Hope was age 75 when Bob started writing for him — and yet, in many respects, the legendary comedian was just beginning to hit his stride as a performer. We’ll talk about that, and more, when Bob Mills joins us in our second hour. Former Entertainment Weekly staff writer Jennifer Armstrong will join Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen in our first hour for a roundtable discussion on the career of Emmy Award-winning actor James Gandolfini and the impact of The Sopranos on network and cable television. We’ll also continue our look at The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its influence on TV today. Jennifer’s books include Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted and All the Brilliant Minds Who Made....
For our listeners in Southern California, Jennifer Armstrong will be appearing at Book Soup, along with Mary Tyler Moore Show writer Treva Silverman, on Tuesday, July 9, beginning at 7pm. Jennifer will also appear at the Pop Hop Bookshop in Los Angeles on Thursday, July 11, also beginning at 7pm.
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
June 25, 1993
Last night
of Late Night with David Letterman. On this day in 1993, Late Night with David Letterman airs its
last episode. Offbeat comic Letterman, passed over by NBC for the host seat on The
Tonight Show after Johnny Carson's retirement, left the network to launch a
rival show on CBS.
David Letterman was born
in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1947. From an early age, he aspired to host his
own talk show. He became a stand-up comic and a wacky weatherman on a local TV
station. After years on the stand-up comedy circuit, he made his first
appearance on The Tonight Show in 1978 and served as the program's guest
host 50 times. In 1980, Letterman had a short-lived morning variety show, The
David Letterman Show, which won two Emmys.
He launched his popular
late-night TV show in 1982. His offbeat humor and goofy stunts spoofed
traditional talk shows. Antics like wearing a Velcro suit and throwing himself
at a wall or tossing eggs into a giant electric fan, Letterman gained a large
following, especially among college students. Regular features included his
"Top Ten List," "Stupid Pet Tricks," and tours of the
neighborhood. He also frequently wandered with his camera into other NBC shows
in progress. Over more than 11 years, the show won five Emmys and 35
nominations.
When
Carson announced his retirement in 1992, Letterman and rival comic Jay Leno
engaged in a heated battle for the coveted host slot. When Letterman was passed
over, he left NBC for CBS, where his new program, Late Show,
outperformed Leno's show almost every week in its first year. However, Leno
pulled ahead the following year and maintained a strong lead. Letterman
underwent emergency heart surgery in 2000 and was off the show for five weeks.
In recent years, Leno's lead over Letterman in viewership has slimmed.
June 27, 1968
Elvis Presley tapes his famous TV "comeback special"
There was quite a bit more than just 12 years and a
few extra pounds separating the Elvis Presley of 1968 from the Elvis
that set the world on fire in 1956. With a nearly decade-long string of
forgettable movies and inconsistent recordings behind him, Elvis had
drifted so far from his glorious, youthful incarnation that he'd turned
himself into a historical artifact without any help from the Beatles,
Bob Dylan or the Stones. And then something amazing happened: A
television special for NBC that Elvis' manager Colonel Tom Parker
envisioned as an Andy Williams-like sequence of Christmas
carol performances instead became a thrilling turning point in Elvis's
legendary career. Elvis began taping his legendary "Comeback Special" on
this day in 1968.
Much of the credit for the Comeback Special
goes to the young director NBC turned to on the project. Only 26 years
old but with a strong background in televised music, Steve Binder had
the skills and creativity to put together a more interesting program
than the one originally planned, but he'd also had the youthful
confidence to tell Elvis that a successful show was an absolute
necessity if he wanted to regain his relevance. "Basically, I told him I
thought his career was in the toilet," Binder recalled in an interview
almost four decades later. From the beginning, Elvis embraced almost
every suggestion Binder made, including what would turn out to be the
best one, which came after Binder watched Elvis jamming with his friends
and fellow musicians in his dressing room one night after rehearsals.
"Wait a minute, this is history," Binder recalls thinking. "I want to
film this." Binder sold Elvis on the idea that would become the most
memorable segment of the show: an informal, "unplugged" session before a
live audience.
Elvis went to Hawaii
with his wife, Priscilla, and their infant daughter, Lisa Marie, in the
weeks leading up to the taping, and when he returned, he was tanned,
rested and thinner than he'd been at any time since leaving the Army.
"He was totally keyed up now, on edge in a way he had rarely been since
abandoning live performing a decade before," writes Peter Guralnick in Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley,
the second volume of his Elvis biography. "His professionalism
continued to be noted by the entire crew...but there was something else
now, too. For the first time in a long time he didn't bother to hide the
fact that he really cared."
When Elvis took to the stage on
this night in 1968 to record the "jam session" portion of the Comeback
Special, he did so only after Binder talked him out of a last-minute
case of stage fright. After a nervous start, Elvis Presley gave the
legendary performance that would reinvigorate his flagging career.
June 29, 1978
Bob Crane was found bludgeoned to death.
On the afternoon of June 29
Crane's co-star Victoria Ann Berry found his body in his apartment after he
failed to show up for a lunch meeting. Crane had been bludgeoned to death with
a weapon that was never found, though investigators believed it to be a camera
tripod. An electrical cord had been tied around his neck.
Crane's funeral was held on July 5 at St. Paul the
Apostle Catholic Church in Westwood. An estimated 200 family members and friends
attended, including Patty Duke, John Astin, and Carroll O'Connor. Pallbearers included Hogan's Heroes producer
Edward Feldman, co-stars Larry Hovis and Robert Clary, and Crane's eldest son, Robert. Crane was interred
in Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth,
California.
More than 20 years after his death, Crane's widow,
Sigrid Valdis, had his remains exhumed and transported approximately 25 miles
southeast to Westwood Village Memorial Park in Westwood. After her death from lung cancer in 2007, Valdis was buried next to him.
According to an episode of A&E's Cold Case
Files, police officers who
arrived at the scene of the crime noted that Carpenter called the apartment
several times and did not seem surprised that the police were there, which
raised suspicions. The car Carpenter had rented the previous day was impounded.
In it, several blood smears were found that matched Crane's blood type. DNA testing was not available at that time. Due to insufficient
evidence, Maricopa County Attorney Charles F. Hyder declined to file charges.
In 1990 the Maricopa County Attorney re-opened Crane's
murder case; investigators reexamined and retested the evidence found in June
1978. Although DNA testing of the blood found in Carpenter's rental car was
inconclusive, Detective Jim Raines discovered an evidence photograph of the
car's interior that appeared to show a piece of brain tissue. The blood and
tissue samples themselves, which had been found in Carpenter's car the day
after Crane's murder, had been lost; but an Arizona judge ruled that the new
evidence was admissible.In June 1992
Carpenter was arrested and charged with Crane's murder.
At Carpenter's 1994 trial Crane's son Robert testified
that in the weeks before his father's death, Crane had repeatedly expressed a
desire to sever his friendship with Carpenter. Carpenter had become, "a
hanger-on," he said, and "a nuisance to the point of being
obnoxious". The night before his death, Crane reportedly called Carpenter
and ended their friendship.
Defense attorneys attacked the prosecution's case as
circumstantial and inconclusive. They denied the claim that Carpenter and Crane
were on bad terms just before the slaying, and they labeled the determination
that a camera tripod was the murder weapon as sheer speculation, based on
Carpenter's occupation. They also disputed the claim that the rediscovered
photo showed brain tissue, noting that authorities did not have the tissue
itself. The defense pointed out that Crane had been videotaped and photographed
in compromising sexual positions with numerous women, implying that a jealous
person or someone fearing blackmail might have been the killer.
Carpenter was found not guilty. He maintained his
innocence until his death on September 4, 1998. Crane's murder remains
officially unsolved.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Show No. 189 with guests Channing Chase and Peggy King
