Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:
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.
September 21, 1950
William James
"Bill" Murray is born.
The Academy Award nominated comedian and
actor gained
national exposure on Saturday Night
Live, and went on to star in
films including Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Lost in
Translation, and The
Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
September 21, 1970
NFL Monday Night Football made its debut on ABC-TV.
The game was between the Cleveland Browns and the New
York Jets. The Browns won 31-21.
September 21, 1985
George Clooney makes his first appearance as a
handyman on the popular TV sitcom The Facts of Life.
Clooney appeared in 17 episodes of the show, which
aired from 1979 to 1988 and chronicled the lives of a group of young women who
meet at a fictional boarding school. Years later, he moved on to Hollywood
superstardom in the hit TV medical drama ER and such films as The
Perfect Storm, Ocean’s Eleven and Michael Clayton.
Clooney, who was born on May 6, 1961, in Lexington, Kentucky,
is the son of the journalist and TV host Nick Clooney and the nephew of the
well-known singer Rosemary Clooney. His early acting credits, in addition to The
Facts of Life, included small roles on the popular sitcom Roseanne
and the drama Sisters. Clooney also appeared in single episodes of such
shows as The Golden Girls and Murder, She Wrote. Clooney first
shot to fame as Dr. Doug Ross on the medical drama ER, which debuted in
1994.
While appearing on ER, Clooney headlined such movies as Batman
& Robin (1997), in which he played the caped crusader himself; Out
of Sight (1998), which co-starred Jennifer Lopez and marked the first time
Clooney worked with the director Steven Soderbergh, his future frequent
collaborator; and Three Kings (1999). After leaving the long-running
medical drama, he went on to starring roles in The Perfect Storm (2000),
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven
(2001) and its two sequels, Ocean’s Twelve (2004) and Ocean’s
Thirteen (2007). Clooney made his directorial debut with 2002’s Confessions
of a Dangerous Mind, about the game show host Chuck Barris, who claimed in
his memoir that he also worked for the C.I.A.
Clooney won an Academy Award in the Best Supporting Actor category for his
role in Syriana (2005), a complex thriller about the oil industry. He
also received Best Director and Best Screenplay Oscar nominations for Good
Night, and Good Luck (2005), about the 1950s journalist Edward R. Murrow
and his conflict with the anti-Communist U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy. Clooney
earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance in the title
role of 2007’s legal thriller Michael Clayton.
Off-screen, the actor,
who was named People magazine’s “Sexiest Man of the Year” in 1997 and
2006, is known both for his confirmed bachelor status and his advocacy of
various political and social causes, including the environment and the troubled
Darfur region of Sudan.
September 22, 1985
NBC began airing the series Amazing Stories.
Amazing
Stories is a fantasy, horror,
and science fiction television anthology
series created by Steven
Spielberg. It originally ran on NBC in the United
States from 1985 to 1987.
The series was nominated for
12 Emmy
Awards and won five. The first season episode "The Amazing
Falsworth" earned writerMick Garris an Edgar
Award for Best Episode in a TV Series. It was not a ratings hit
(ranking 40th in Season 1 and 46th in Season 2), however, and the network did
not renew it after the two-year contract expired. The 1987 science fiction
movie, *batteries not included was
originally intended to be featured in Amazing Stories, but Steven Spielberg
liked the idea so much that he decided to make it a theatrical release.[4]
The series title licensed the
name of Amazing Stories, the first dedicated science fiction magazine.
September 22, 1985
The first Farm Aid concert is held in Champaign, Illinois.
It started with an offhand remark made by Bob Dylan
during his performance at Live Aid, the massive fundraising concert held at
Wembley Stadium, London, and JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, in the early summer of
1985. As television viewers around the world phoned in donations in support of
African famine relief, Dylan said from the stage, "I hope that some of the
money...maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe...one or two
million, maybe...and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms
and, the farmers here, owe to the banks." Dylan would come under harsh
criticism from Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof for his remarks ("It was a
crass, stupid and nationalistic thing to say," Geldof would later write),
but he planted a seed with several fellow musicians who shared his concern over
the state of the American family farm. Less than one month later, Willie
Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp announced plans for "Farm
Aid," a benefit concert for America's farmers held in Champaign, Illinois, on this day in
1985.
As one might have expected of a concert staged to
"raise awareness about the loss of family farms and to raise funds to keep
farm families on their land," Farm Aid featured a number of performers
from the worlds of country, folk and rootsy rock music. There were the three main
organizers and the instigator Bob Dylan, for instance, along with Hoyt Axton,
Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn, Joni
Mitchell and Charley Pride. But the first Farm Aid, more than any of the annual
Farm Aid concerts since, was a bit of a stylistic free-for-all, featuring
artists united only by their interest in supporting a good cause.
"As soon as I read in the paper that there was
gonna be such a thing," Sammy Hagar told MTV's cameras on the day of the
show, "I called my manager and said, 'I wanna do it.' And he said, 'It's
all country.' I said, 'I don't care. It's America. I wanna do it.' If there was
anything more surprising than hearing Hagar perform his hard-rock anthem
"I Can't Drive 55" on the same stage that had earlier featured the
quiet folk of Arlo Guthrie, it was hearing Lou Reed perform "Walk On The
Wild Side" on a stage that had featured John Denver.
Over the years since its first charity concert on this
day in 1985, the Farm Aid organization has raised upwards of $33 million to
support small farmers, promote sustainable farming practices and encourage
consumption of "good food from family farms."
September 24, 1955
Judy Garland made her TV
debut on the "Ford Star Jubilee" on CBS.
Ford Star Jubilee routinely featured major stars, such as Judy
Garland, Betty Grable, Orson
Welles, Julie Andrews (at the time that she was
preparing for her starring role in My Fair
Lady on Broadway), Louis
Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Lillian
Gish, Charles Laughton, Jack
Lemmon, Raymond Massey, Lauren
Bacall, Claudette Colbert, Noël
Coward, Nat 'King' Cole, Mary
Martin, Eddie Fisher, Ella
Fitzgerald, Red Skelton and Debbie
Reynolds.
Instead of the usual live performance staged
especially for Ford Star Jubilee, the final episode on November 3,
1956 was a special, two-hour presentation of the 1939 MGM theatrical
Technicolor film The Wizard of Oz, hosted by Bert Lahr,
10-year-old Liza Minnelli and young Oz expert Justin
Schiller. This marked the first time that the film had ever been shown on
television, and the only time that one of the film's actual actors (Lahr) as
well as one of the children of the film's star (Judy Garland) hosted it. The
broadcast was a critical and ratings smash, but the film was not shown on TV
again until 1959, when it was presented by CBS at 6:00 P.M., E.S.T. rather than
9:00 P.M., and this time as a Christmas season special in its
own right, not as part of an anthology series. The 1959 telecast was hosted by
comedian Red Skelton and his daughter Valentina. This
broadcast attracted an even wider audience, because children were able to
watch, and thus began the tradition of showing the film annually on television.
Another rare instance of Ford Star Jubilee presenting
a filmed, rather than live, program was their 1956 musical version of Maxwell
Anderson's High Tor, starring Bing Crosby and Julie
Andrews. Music was by Arthur
Schwartz, noted composer of such scores as those for The
Band Wagon and Revenge with Music. Crosby, according to
sources, had insisted the production be filmed rather than presented live,
because he did not feel comfortable acting in a live television musical play.[1] Although
it was filmed in color, the musical version of High Tor has
never been released on VHS or DVD.
September 24, 1970
The
Odd Couple is a television
situation comedy broadcast from September 24, 1970 to March 7, 1975 on ABC.
It stars Tony Randall as Felix Unger and Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison,
and was the first of several developed by Garry Marshall for Paramount
Television. The show is based upon
the play of the same name, which was written by Neil Simon.
September 24, 1985
The first episode of
"Growing Pains" aired on ABC.
The Seaver family resides
at 15 Robin Hood Lane in Huntington, Long Island, New York. Dr.
Jason Seaver, a psychiatrist, works from home because his wife, Maggie,
has gone back to work as a reporter. Jason has to take care of the kids: ladies man
Mike, bookish honors student Carol, and rambunctious Ben. A
fourth child, Chrissy Seaver, is born in 1988. In the beginning, she is played
in her infant stage by twins. In season six, Chrissy's age was advanced to six years
old.
September 25, 1965
The half hour Saturday
morning cartoon "The Beatles" premiered on ABC-TV.
The
Beatles is
an American animated television series featuring
the fanciful and musical misadventures of the popular English rock band
of the same name. It ran from 1965 to 1969 on ABC in the US (only 1965 to 1967
was first run; later transmissions were reruns). The series debuted on
September 25, 1965 and ended on September 7, 1969. A total of 39 episodes were
produced. The series was shown on Saturday mornings at 10:30 AM EST until the
1967 third season when it was moved to 12:00 PM EST. For the fourth season,
which consisted of reruns, the series was shown at 9:30 AM EST on Sunday
mornings. Each episode has a name of a Beatles song, so the story is based
on its lyrics and it is also played at some time in the episode. The original
series was rebroadcast in syndication by MTV in 1986 and
1987 and on the Disney Channel.[1] The
series was a historical milestone as the first weekly television series to
feature animated versions of real, living people.
September 25, 1970
The
Partridge Family premieres on ABC television.
Unwilling
to rest as a one-hit wonder when its first big hit, The Monkees, went
off the air in 1968, the television production company Screen Gems wasted no
time in trying to repeat its success. On this day in 1970, in the 8:30 p.m.
time slot immediately following The Brady Bunch, ABC premiered a program
that would give Screen Gems its second TV-to-pop-chart smash: The Partridge
Family.
If the Beatles served as the inspiration for The
Monkees, it was the real-life family act the Cowsills that inspired Screen
Gems to dream up The Partridge Family. Originally made up of four
teenage brothers (Bill, Bob, Barry and John), the Cowsills scored their first
top-40 hit with "The Rain, The Park & Other Things" (1967) after
adding their mother to the lineup. They earned three more hits in 1968 with
"We Can Fly," "Indian Lake" and "Hair" after
adding two additional younger siblings, and it was in this configuration that
they caught the eyes of the folks at Screen Gems. In fact, Screen Gems approached
the Cowsill family about having the children star in the show that would
eventually become The Partridge Family, but the family demurred when it
learned that actress Shirley Jones, and not Barbara Cowsill, would be playing
the role of Shirley Partridge. Undaunted, Screen Gems hired four non-singing
child actors for the roles of Laurie, Danny, Chris and Tracy Partridge and one
future teen idol, David Cassidy, for the role of Keith.
In the pilot episode of The Partridge Family,
the five children of a widowed single mother convince their mom to join them in
their garage recording sessions and then watch their first record, "I
Think I Love You" become a #1 pop hit. In a case not so much of life
imitating art as of a brilliant marketing machine replicating its earlier
success, the song "I Think I Love You" raced to the top of the
real-life pop charts less than two months after its television debut.
However, hits like "I Think I Love You" and
"I Woke Up in Love This Morning" were not actually recorded by a five
siblings and their mom in a garage. The Partridge Family's hits were recorded
by some of the best professional musicians working in Los Angeles at the time,
including drummer Hal Blaine and the other studio musicians known as the
Wrecking Crew. The Partridge Family did, however, launch David Cassidy
on a short-lived career as an actual pop singer, and it also, according to news
reports, inspired some misguided runaways to show up on Shirley Jones' Beverly
Hills lawn in the hopes that she might adopt them into her television family.
September
26th, 1960
The Beverly Hillbillies is an
American situation comedy originally broadcast for nine seasons on CBS from 1962 to 1971, starring Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, Donna
Douglas, and Max Baer,
Jr.
The series is about a poor
backwoods family transplanted to Beverly Hills,
California, after striking oil on
their land. A Filmways production created by writer Paul Henning,
it is the first in a genre of “fish out of
water” themed television shows, and
was followed by other Henning-inspired country-cousin series on CBS. In 1963,
Henning introduced Petticoat Junction, and in 1965 he reversed the rags to riches model
for Green Acres. The show paved the way for later culture-conflict
programs such as The Jeffersons, McCloud, The Nanny, The Fresh
Prince of Bel-Air, and Doc.
Panned by many entertainment critics of its time, it quickly became a huge
ratings success for most of its nine-year run on CBS.
September 26, 1960
First Kennedy-Nixon debate.
For the first time in U.S. history, a debate between major party presidential candidates is shown on television. The presidential hopefuls, John F. Kennedy, a Democratic senator of Massachusetts, and Richard M. Nixon, the vice president of the United States, met in a Chicago studio to discuss U.S. domestic matters.
Kennedy emerged the apparent winner from this first of four televised debates, partly owing to his greater ease before the camera than Nixon, who, unlike Kennedy, seemed nervous and declined to wear makeup. Nixon fared better in the second and third debates, and on October 21 the candidates met to discuss foreign affairs in their fourth and final debate. Less than three weeks later, on November 8, Kennedy won 49.7 percent of the popular vote in one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history, surpassing by a fraction the 49.6 percent received by his Republican opponent.
One year after leaving the vice presidency, Nixon returned to politics, winning the Republican nomination for governor of California. Although he lost the election, Nixon returned to the national stage in 1968 in a successful bid for the presidency. Like Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Nixon declined to debate his opponent in the 1968 presidential campaign. Televised presidential debates returned in 1976, and have been held in every presidential campaign since.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
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