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.
Donna Allen-Figueroa
 |
September 24, 1958
The Donna Reed Show
first aired.
A sitcom starring Donna Reed as
the middle-class housewife Donna Stone. Carl Betz co-stars
as her pediatrician husband Dr. Alex Stone, and Shelley
Fabares and Paul Petersen as their teenage children, Mary
and Jeff. The show originally aired on ABC from September 24, 1958 to
March 19, 1966. When Fabares left the show in 1963, Petersen's younger
sister, Patty Petersen, joined the cast as adopted daughter
Trisha. Patty Petersen had first appeared in the episode "A Way of Her
Own", on January 31, 1963. Janet
Landgard was a series regular from 1963-1965 as Karen Holmby.
September 24, 1963
Petticoat Junction first
aired.
Set just outside the rural town of Hooterville,
the show followed the goings-on at The Shady Rest Hotel, of which Kate Bradley
(Benaderet) was the proprietor. Her lazy Uncle Joe Carson
(Edgar Buchanan), who was the great
uncle to Kate's three daughters, helped her in the day-to-day running of the
business while she served as a mediator in the various minor crises that befell
her daughters Betty Jo (redhead), Bobbie Jo (brunette), and Billie Jo
(blonde). The actresses
portraying Billie Jo and Bobbie Jo changed over the years, whereas Betty Jo was
portrayed by Linda Kaye, the daughter of Paul
Henning, for the entire run.
September 24, 1968
60 Minutes premiered on
CBS-TV.
An American newsmagazine television program broadcast on
the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program
was created by Don Hewitt,
who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique style of
reporter-centered investigation. In 2002, 60 Minutes was
ranked #6 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV
Shows of All Time and in 2013, it was ranked #24 on TV Guide's
60 Best Series of All Time. The New York Times has called it
"one of the most esteemed news magazines on American television"
September 24th, 1968
The
Mod Squad first aired.
It starred Michael Cole as Pete Cochren, Peggy Lipton as Julie Barnes, Clarence Williams III as Linc Hayes, and Tige Andrews as Captain Adam Greer. Theexecutive producers of the series were Aaron Spelling and Danny Thomas.
The
iconic counter-culture police series earned six Emmy nominations, four Golden
Globe nominations plus one win for Peggy Lipton, one Directors Guild of America
award, and four Logies. In
1997 the episode “Mother of Sorrow” was ranked #95 on TV Guide’s 100 Greatest
Episodes of All Time.
September 24, 1993
ABC debuted the series
"Boy Meets World."
An American television sitcom created
and produced by Michael Jacobs and April
Kelly. The show aired on the ABC network from September 24,
1993, to May 5, 2000, lasting seven seasons.
The show chronicles the everyday events and life-lessons of Cory
Matthews (Ben Savage). It also stars Cory's teacher George Feeny (William
Daniels), best friend Shawn Hunter (Rider
Strong), brother Eric (Will Friedle), and love interest Topanga (Danielle
Fishel). The show also features Cory's father Alan (William
Russ), mother Amy (Betsy Randle), and sister Morgan (Lily
Nicksay), while introducing the characters Angela Moore (Trina
McGee-Davis), Rachel McGuire (Maitland
Ward), and Jonathan Turner (Anthony Tyler Quinn) in its later seasons.
September 29, 1948
Bryant Charles Gumbel is
born.
The television journalist, sportscaster, newscaster, television personality and sports anchor is best known for his 15 years as co-host of NBC's The Today Show. He is the younger brother of sportscaster Greg Gumbel. He began his television career in October 1972, when he was made a sportscaster for KNBC-TV Los Angeles.
September 29, 1953
"Make Room for Daddy"
premiered on ABC-TV.
The Danny Thomas Show (titled Make
Room for Daddy for its first three seasons) is an American sitcom that
ran from 1953 to 1957 on ABC and from 1957 to 1964 on CBS. Episodes regularly
featured music by Danny Thomas, guest stars and occasionally other cast members
as part of the plot.
In March 1953, Danny Thomas first signed the contract for the
show with ABC and chose Desilu Studios to film it using its three-camera method. Two
proposed titles during preproduction were The Children's Hour and Here
Comes Daddy.
September 29, 1963
"The Judy Garland
Show" premiered on CBS-TV.
The
Judy Garland Show is an American musical
variety television series that aired on CBS on Sunday
nights during the 1963–1964 television season. Despite a sometimes stormy
relationship with Judy Garland, CBS had found success with several
television specials featuring the star. Garland, who for years had been
reluctant to commit to a weekly series, saw the show as her best chance to pull
herself out of severe financial difficulties.
Production
difficulties beset the series almost from the beginning. The series had three
different producers in the course of its 26 episodes and went through a number
of other key personnel changes. With the change in producers also came changes
to the show's format, which started as comedy and variety but
switched to an almost purely concert format.
While
Garland herself was popular with critics, the initial variety format and her
co-star, Jerry Van Dyke, were not. The show competed
with NBC's Bonanza,
then the fourth most popular program on television, and consistently
performed poorly in the ratings.
Although fans rallied in an attempt to save the show, CBS cancelled it after a
single season.
TV Guide included the series in
their 2013 list of 60 shows that were "Cancelled Too Soon".
September 29, 1963
My Favorite Martian first aired.
The show starred Ray Walston as
Uncle Martin (the Martian) and Bill Bixby as
Tim O’Hara. A human-looking extraterrestrial in
a one-man spaceship crash-lands near Los Angeles. The ship’s pilot is, in
fact, an anthropologist from Mars and
is now stranded on Earth. Tim
O’Hara, a young newspaper reporter for The
Los Angeles Sun, is on his way home from Edwards Air Force Base (where he
had gone to report on the flight of the X-15) back to
Los Angeles when he spots the spaceship coming down. The X-15 nearly hit the
martian’s spaceship and caused it to crash.
September 30, 1958
Naked City first aired
Naked City is a police
drama series from Screen Gems which was broadcast from 1958 to 1959 and from 1960 to 1963 on the ABC television network. It was
inspired by the 1948 motion picture The
Naked City and mimics its dramatic "semi-documentary"
format. As in the film, each episode concluded with a narrator intoning the
iconic line: "There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has
been one of them."
September 30, 1958
The first episode of The Rifleman
aired on ABC-TV.
The Rifleman is
an American Western television program starring Chuck
Connors as rancher Lucas
McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son Mark
McCain. It was set in the 1870s and 1880s in the fictional town of North
Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show was filmed in
black and white, in half-hour episodes. The Rifleman aired
on ABCfrom September 30, 1958, to April
8, 1963, as a production of Four Star Television. It was one of the first prime time series
on US television to show a single parent raising a child.The program was titled to reflect McCain's use of a Winchester Model 1892 rifle, customized to allow repeated firing by cycling its lever action. He demonstrated this technique in the opening credits of every episode, as well as a second modification that allowed him to cycle the action with one hand.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
 Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
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"
Monday, September 24, 2018
This Week in Television History: September 2018 PART IV
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