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 reallylies.
April 18, 1971
The Jackson 5 and Bill Cosby were guests on Diana Ross' solo TV special Diana!
Diana! is American singer Diana Ross'
first solo TV special, which aired on ABC on April 18, 1971,
choreographed by David Winters of West
Side Story fame, who at that time choreographed all of Ross' stage
and TV shows. The special featured performances by The
Jackson 5, and also included Jackson 5 lead singerMichael
Jackson's solo debut. Michael Jackson performed Frank
Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year", which drew
laughter as its adult-themed lyrics were changed to fit his age. Other guests
included Danny Thomas andBill Cosby,
who would be featured on a similar TV special by the Jackson 5 (Goin' Back to Indiana) a few months
later.
Since this was right at the beginning of her solo
career, she took the opportunity to promote the two hits from her debut, the
gold audience participant "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's
Hand)" and the number 1 song "Ain't No Mountain High Enough".
She also performed a cover of The
Carpenters "(They Long to Be) Close to You"
and the top-20 gold single "Remember Me" released that
previous December 1970 included on her forthcoming album "Surrender" to be released later
that summer. (Though she performed "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's
Hand)" on the special, it was not included on the soundtrack).
The television special, and its subsequent
soundtrack, was a Neilsen's ratings winner, hitting the top 20 (number 17) of
shows that week and garnering Emmy nominations for Ross and Bob Mackie and in
technical categories.
April 20, 1981
The final episode of Soap aired on ABC.
Although Susan Harris had
planned for five seasons of Soap, the program was abruptly canceled
by ABC after its fourth season. Therefore the final one-hour episode, which
originally aired on April 20, 1981, did not serve as a series
finale and instead ended with several unresolved cliffhangers.
These involve a suicidal Chester preparing to kill Danny and Annie (his
son and wife) after catching them in bed together, an irreversibly hypnotized
Jodie believing himself to be a 90-year-old Jewish man, Burt preparing to walk
into an ambush orchestrated
by his political enemies, and Jessica about to be executed by a Communist firing
squad. Vlasic Foods pulled their sponsorship of the
program shortly after this episode aired and ABC announced that the program was
not picked up for its planned fifth season. The official reason given by the
network was its declining ratings. However, according to the Museum of
Broadcast Communications, Soap "ended under suspicion
that resistance from ad agencies may have caused ABC to cancel [it] at that
point" because its still controversial content was negatively affecting
its relationship with sponsors. A 1983 episode of Benson mentions Jessica's
disappearance, noting the Tate family is seeking to have her declared legally
dead. In the episode, Jessica appears as an apparition that only Benson can see
or hear and reveals to him that she is not dead, but in a coma somewhere in
South America. No other incidents from the final episode of Soap are
mentioned.
April 22, 1926
Charlotte Rae is born Charlotte Rae Lubotsky.
The of stage, comedienne, singer and dancer, who in her
six decades of television is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Edna Garrett in the sitcoms Diff'rent
Strokes and The Facts of Life (in
which she starred from 1979 to 1986). She received a Primetime
Emmy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy in 1982. She also appeared in two Facts of Life
television movies: The Facts of Life Goes to Paris in 1982 and The
Facts of Life Reunion in 2001.
She voiced the character of "Nanny" in 101
Dalmatians: The Series.
Her first significant success was on the sitcom Car
54, Where Are You? (1961–1963),
in which she played Sylvia Schnauzer, the wife of Officer Leo Schnauzer (played
by Al Lewis). She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her supporting role in the 1975 drama Queen of the Stardust Ballroom. In January 1975, Rae became a cast member on the ABC television comedy Hot L Baltimore, wherein she played Mrs. Bellotti, whose
dysfunctional adult son Moose, who was never actually seen, lived at the
"hot l" (the hotel was so bad the "E" on the sign never
worked). Mrs. Bellotti, who was a bit odd herself, would visit Moose and then
laugh about all the odd situations that Moose would get into with the others
living at the hotel. Rae also appeared in early seasons of Sesame Street as Molly the Mail Lady.
Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life
In 1978, NBC was losing to both CBS and ABC in sitcom
ratings, and Fred Silverman, future producer and former head of CBS, ABC, and NBC, insisted that Norman Lear produce Diff'rent
Strokes. Knowing that Rae was one
of Lear's favorite actresses, he hired her immediately for the role of
housekeeper Edna Garrett, and she
co-starred with Conrad Bain in all 24 episodes of the first season. Her character
proved to be so popular that producers decided to do an episode that could lead
to a spinoff. That episode (called "The Girls School") was about
girls attending a fictional school called Eastland. In July 1979, Rae proposed
the idea for the spinoff. NBC approved the show, to be called The Facts of Life,
which would portray a housemother in a prestigious private school and dealt
with such issues facing teenagers as weight issues, depression, drugs, alcohol,
and dating.
After working as a character actress/comedienne in
supporting roles or in guest shots on television series and specials, The Facts
Of Life gave Rae not only her best-known role but it finally made her a
television star. The role of Edna Garrett was the unifying center of attention
of the program as well as a warm, motherly figure for the girls. Rae's role was
very similar to that of Kate Bradley on the 1960's CBS-TV series Petticoat
Junction, which also gave radio
and television actress Bea Benaderet late stardom.
The Facts of Life had marginal ratings at first but
after a major restructuring and time change, the show became a ratings winner
between 1980 and 1986. Midway throughout both the 1984-85 and 1985-86 seasons,
she missed several episodes because she was planning on leaving the show, and
the story lines focused more on the other characters. At the beginning of the
eighth season, Rae left the show and Cloris Leachman was then brought in as Mrs. Garrett's sister, Beverly Ann Stickle, for
the show's last two years, until the show was canceled in 1988.
In 2001, Rae, Lisa Whelchel, Mindy Cohn, and Kim Fields were reunited in a TV movie, The
Facts of Life Reunion. In 2007,
the entire cast was invited to attend the TV Land Awards where several members of the cast, including Rae,
sang the show's theme song. On April 19, 2011, the entire cast was reunited again
to attend the TV Land Awards, where the show was nominated and won the award
for Pop Culture Icon. The same day, Nancy McKeon and Kim Fields (who played Jo & Tootie,
respectively) also gave a speech in honor of her 85th birthday. The cast did
likewise on ABC's Good
Morning America, where at the end
of the segment, reporter, Cynthia McFadden wished Rae a happy birthday, and the cast sang the
show's theme song.
April 22, 1976
Barbara
Walters signs $5 million contract.
Barbara Walters signs a record-breaking five-year, $5 million contract with
ABC. The contract made her the first news anchorwoman in network history and
the highest paid TV journalist to date.
April 24, 1936
A group of
firemen responding to an alarm in Camden, New Jersey, is televised.
It was the first time an unplanned event was
broadcast on television, anticipating the development of live TV news coverage.
Fortunately, the event would not inspire anyone to create reality programming.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
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