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"
Show No. 205 with guest Mark Cohen Original Airdate: Week of Oct. 23-29, 2013 First hour:
Tony and Donna with an expanded edition of This Week in TV History that
includes discussions of the upcoming miniseries on the life of Johnny Carson, the network history of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and the impact of Miami Vice on television. Second hour: Ed welcomes Mark Cohen, author of Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman,
a comprehensive biography of the groundbreaking comedian and song
parodist that not only provides the back story of such songs as “Hello
Muddah, Hello Faddah,” but discusses Sherman’s fractured upbringing, his
often fractious relationship with network television, and how his
impact on popular culture extends beyond his work as a satirist.
Here is a Halloween "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to get the taste of Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog out of our mouths.
The Groovie Goolies decide to enroll at Riverdale High.
Singer/actress Kat Kramer and author Joel Eisner will join us on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing Oct. 30-Nov. 5 at the following times and venues:
WROM Radio Detroit, MI Wednesday 10/30 8pm ET, 5pm PT 2am ET, 11pm PT Sunday 11/3 8pm ET, 5pm PT 2am ET, 11pm PT Click on the Listen Live button at WROMRadio.net
Indiana Talks Marion, IN Wednesday 10/30 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
Talktainment Radio Columbus, OH Thursday 10/31 2am ET, 11pm PT Friday 11/1 3am ET, Midnight PT Noon ET, 9am PT Click on the Listen Live button at TalktainmentRadio.com
Share-a-Vision Radio San Francisco Bay Area Friday 11/1 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
KHMB Radio 1710 AM Half Moon Bay, CA Sunday 11/3 9pm PT Monday 11/4 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 11/4 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 11/5 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
The undisputed King of Horror Movies from the late 1950s through the early 1970s, Vincent Price was also a fixture on television throughout his career, including hundreds of appearances on Hollywood Squares, plus memorable guest roles on such classic series as Get Smart, The Brady Bunch, F Troop, Columbo and Batman.
Best known for playing heinous characters on-screen, off camera Vincent Price was a gentile, cultured man known for his passion for art, gourmet food, the theatre, and a sardonic sense of humor. These attributes, and more, come alive throughout the pages of The Price of Fear: The Film Career of Vincent Price, In His Words, a wonderful new biography by Joel Eisner.
The only authorized biography of Price, Joel’s book features a foreword by Peter Cushing, remembrances by the likes of Roger Corman, Richard Matheson and Jack Nicholson, and a wealth of stories on just about every stage, film and television production in which Vincent appeared — all told in the actor’s own words. Joel Eisner will join us in our second hour.
Kat Kramer will join us in our first hour as we continue our coverage of the centennial celebration of the career of Stanley Kramer. Kat is founder of Kat Kramer’s Films That Change the World, a series of motion picture screenings that raise awareness about important social issues. The fifth anniversary screening of Kat’s series will be a showing of the documentary Fallout at the Sunset Gower Studios in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Nov. 13. Fallout is about the making of On the Beach, the 1959 film directed by Stanley Kramer, which was based on the novel by Nevil Shute. The Nov. 13 screening will mark the U.S. premiere of the documentary.
We’ll talk to Kat about Fallout, but we’ll also ask about the first annual Stanley Kramer Film Festival, which will take place Nov. 15-17 at the Camelot Theatres in Palm Springs, California. The lineup will include screenings of The Defiant Ones, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Wild One, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Caine Mutiny and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, plus panel discussions, live performances and more. For tickets and more information, call (888) 718-4253 or go to camelottickets.com.
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.
October 28, 1950
Popular radio personality Jack Benny moves to
television with The Jack Benny Program. The TV version of the show ran for the next 15 years.
Jack Benny was born
Benjamin Kubelsky in 1894. His father, a Lithuanian immigrant, ran a saloon in
Waukegan, Illinois, near Chicago. Benny began playing violin at age six and
continued through high school. He began touring on the vaudeville circuit in
1917. In 1918, he joined the navy and was assigned to entertain the troops with
his music but soon discovered a flair for comedy as well. After World War I,
Benny returned to vaudeville as a comedian and became a top act in the 1920s.
In 1927, he married an actress named Sadye Marks; the couple stayed together
until Benny's death in 1974.
Benny's success in
vaudeville soon won him attention from Hollywood, where he made his film debut
in Hollywood Revue of 1929. Over the years, he won larger roles, notably
in Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). Movies
were only a sideline for Benny, though, who found his natural medium in radio
in 1932.
In March 1932,
then-newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan, dabbling in radio, asked Benny to do an
on-air interview. Benny reluctantly agreed. His comedy, though, was so
successful that Benny was offered his own show almost immediately, which
debuted just a few months later. At first a mostly musical show with a few
minutes of Benny's comedy during interludes, the show evolved to become mostly
comedy, incorporating well-developed skits and regular characters. In many of
these skits, Benny portrayed himself as a vain egomaniac and notorious
pinchpenny who refused to replace his (very noisy) antique car and who kept his
money in a closely guarded vault. His regulars included his wife, whose
character, Mary Livingstone, deflated Benny's ego at every opportunity; Mel
Blanc, who used his famous voice to play Benny's noisy car, his exasperated
French violin teacher, and other characters; and Eddie Andersen, one of radio's
first African American stars, who played Benny's long-suffering valet,
Rochester Van Jones. The program ran until 1955.
In
the 1950s, Benny began experimenting with television, making specials in 1950, 1951,
and 1952. Starting in 1952, The Jack Benny Show aired regularly, at
first once every four weeks, then every other week, then finally every week
from 1960 to 1965. Benny was as big a hit on TV as on the radio. Despite the
stingy skinflint image he cultivated on the air, Benny was known for his
generosity and modesty in real life. He died of cancer in Beverly Hills in
1974.
October 29, 1948
Kate
Jackson was born.
Perhaps
best known for her role as Sabrina Duncan in
the popular 1970s television series Charlie's Angels. Jackson is a three-time Emmy Award nominee in the Best Actress category,
has been nominated for several Golden Globe Awards,
and has won the titles of Favorite Television Actress in the UK, and Favorite
Television Star in Germany—several times—for her work in the television series Scarecrow and Mrs.
King. She co-produced that series through her production
company, Shoot the Moon Enterprises Ltd., with Warner Brothers Television. Jackson has starred
in a number of theatrical and TV films, and played the lead role on the
short-lived television adaptation of the film Baby Boom.
The series made stars out of child actors Gary Coleman, Todd Bridges, and Dana Plato, and became known for the "very special episodes"
in which serious issues such as racism, illegal drug use, and child
sexual abuse were dramatically explored. The lives of these stars were
later plagued by legal troubles and drug addiction, as the stardom and
success they achieved while on the show eluded them after the series was
cancelled, with both Plato and Coleman having early deaths.
November 3, 1993 - The first episode of The Nanny was aired by CBS.
Fran Drescher starred as Fran Fine, a Jewish Queens native who becomes the nanny of three children from the New York/British high society.
Created and executive produced by Drescher and her then-husband Peter Marc Jacobson, The Nanny
took much of its inspiration from Drescher's personal life growing up
in Queens, involving names and characteristics based on her relatives
and friends. The show earned a Rose d'Or and one Emmy Award, out of a total of thirteen nominations, and Drescher was twice nominated for a Golden Globe and an Emmy. The sitcom has also spawned several foreign adaptations, loosely inspired by the original scripts.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Show No. 205 with guest Mark Cohen
