September 30, 1954
Barry Williams is born Barry William Blenkhorn.
Best known for his role as Greg
Brady on theABC television series, The Brady Bunch. Williams continued to be cast in guest
roles on other TV series including Adam-12, The Invaders, That Girl, Mission:
Impossible, The Mod Squad, Here
Come the Brides and Bartleby,
the Scrivener before
being cast in 1969 as Greg Brady on The Brady Bunch.
Following the
cancellation of The Brady Bunch in 1974, Williams continued to appear in guest roles
on television, and became involved in musical theater, touring with productions such as Grease, The Sound
of Music, and West
Side Story.
In 1988, Williams
appeared on Broadway in the musical Romance/Romance with Tony Award-nominee Alison Fraser. Williams took over the lead male role of
“Alfred/Sam” when Scott Bakula left the production. Years later,
Williams was able to capitalize on being typecast as Greg Brady. Amid a
procession of appearances in TV and movies that played up his famous teen role,
he ended up landing a role that was a departure from the Brady image. He was
tapped to play English con man Hannibal in 1984, who conspired with Holly
Sutton Scorpio (Emma Samms) on the top-rated General Hospital. Williams has appeared in variousBrady
Bunch TV movie reunions, including the 1988 Christmas movie, A
Very Brady Christmas, in
which his sole family problem is missing his wife, Nora. The issue with his
wife is solved when Nora shows up at the Brady house on Christmas, poinsettia in hand.
In 1989, Williams
was honored by the Young Artist
Foundation with
its Former Child Star “Lifetime Achievement”
Award for his role as
Greg Brady.
His 1992 autobiography, Growing
Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, co-written with Chris Kreski, stayed on The New York Times bestseller
list for three months. The
book was adapted into a 2000 TV movie titled Growing
Up Brady starring Adam Brody as Williams.
September 30, 1984
The pilot episode
of Murder, She Wrote aired on
CBS.
The
mystery series starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur
detective Jessica Fletcher. The series aired for twelve
seasons from 1984 to 1996 on the CBS network. It was followed by four TV films
and a spin-off series, The Law & Harry McGraw. It is
one of the most successful and longest-running television shows ever for CBS,
pulling in close to 23 million viewers in its prime, during its Sunday night
slot. It is also hugely successful across the world.
Angela Lansbury has been nominated for a total
of ten Golden Globes and
twelve Emmies. She holds the record for the
most Golden Globe nominations
for Best Actress in a television drama series and the most Emmy nominations ever for
outstanding lead actress in a drama series for Murder She wrote. It is now
considered to be a TV cult classic around the world.
October 2, 1959
The first TheTwilight Zone episode Where Is Everybody? Aired.
“The place is
here, the time is now, and the journey into the shadows that we're about to
watch, could be our journey”.
This was the only Twilight Zone episode filmed at Universal
Studios, the rest of the entire series was filmed at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The
centerpiece of the episode is the Courthouse Square set, most well known for
being used as the town square of "Hill Valley" in the Back to
the Future series of films over 25 years later.
The haunting score composed by Bernard Herrmann (Psycho) for this
episode would be reused for several episodes of the series, most notably
"The After Hours" and "The Last Flight".
October 3, 1954
Father Knows Best
began airing on CBS-TV. The May 27, 1954 episode of The Ford Television Theatre show
was called "Keep It
in the Family".
This 26-minute episode stars Robert Young as Tim
Warren, head of the Warren Family. With him was wife Grace (Ellen Drew),
older daughter Peggy (Sally Fraser), younger daughter Patty (Tina Thompson)
and son Jeff (Gordon Gerbert). Developed by
Young and his partner Eugene Rodney, it was intended as a pilot for a Father
Knows Best television series. In the episode, Peggy dreams of
making it as an actress but a talent scout who has raised her hopes just wants
people for his acting school.Only Robert Young remained of the radio cast when the series moved to CBS
Television:
·
James "Jim" Anderson, Sr.–Robert Young
·
Margaret Anderson–Jane Wyatt
·
Betty "Princess" Anderson–Elinor
Donahue
·
James "Bud" Anderson, Jr.–Billy Gray
·
Kathy "Kitten" Anderson–Lauren
Chapin
The series began on CBS on October 3, 1954. Originally sponsored by Lorillard's Kent cigarettes
in its first season, Scott Paper Company became the primary
sponsor when the series moved to NBC in the fall of 1955, remaining as sponsor even after it
moved back to CBS in September 1958, with Lever
Brothers as an alternate sponsor from 1957 through 1960. A total of
203 episodes were produced, running until September 17, 1960, and appearing on
all three of the television networks of the time, including
prime-time repeats from September 1960 through April 1963.
October 3, 1964
Underdog debuted on NBC.
Underdog, Shoeshine Boy's heroic
alter-ego, appeared whenever love interest Sweet Polly Purebred was
being victimized by such villains as Simon Bar Sinister or Riff Raff. Underdog nearly always speaks in rhyme, as in,
"There's no need to fear, Underdog is here!" His voice was supplied
by Wally Cox.
October 3, 2004
The first season of Desperate Housewives began.
Created by Marc Cherry and
produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions. It aired Sundays at 9 P.M. Eastern/8 P.M. Central, on ABC from October 3, 2004, until May 13, 2012.Executive producer Cherry served as showrunner.
Other executive producers since the fourth season included Bob Daily, George
W. Perkins, John Pardee, Joey Murphy, David Grossman, and Larry Shaw.The main setting of the show
was Wisteria Lane, a street in the fictional American town of
'Fairview' in the fictional 'Eagle State'. The show followed the lives of a
group of women as seen through the eyes of a dead neighbor who committed
suicide in the very first episode. The storyline covers thirteen years of the
women's lives over eight seasons, set between the years 2004–2008, and later
2013–2017 (the story arc included a 5 year passage of time). They worked
through domestic struggles and family life, while facing the secrets, crimes
and mysteries hidden behind the doors of their — at the surface — beautiful and
seemingly perfect suburban neighborhood.
The show featured an ensemble cast,
headed by Teri Hatcher as Susan Mayer, Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo, Marcia Cross asBree Van de Kamp, and Eva Longoria as Gabrielle Solis. Brenda Strong narrated
the show as the deceased Mary Alice Young, appearing sporadically in flashbacks or dream sequences.
October 4, 1949
The television series Life of Riley debuts,
starring Jackie Gleason as bullheaded family man Chester Riley.
The show originated on the radio in the early 1940s
and starred William Bendix. In 1953, Bendix took over the TV role from Gleason
and stayed with the show until its cancellation in 1958.
October 4, 1954
December Bride debuted on CBS-TV.
The
series centered
around the adventures of Lily Ruskin, a spry widow played by Spring Byington, who was not, in fact, a
"December" (rather old) bride but very much desired to become one if
the right man would come along. Aiding Lily in her search for this prospective
suitor were her daughter Ruth Henshaw (Frances Rafferty) and son-in-law Matt
Henshaw (Dean Miller), and her close friend Hilda Crocker (character-actress Verna Felton). A next-door neighbor,
insurance agent Pete Porter (Harry Morgan), was frequently seen.
Married miserably himself, according to his constant complaints about his
unseen wife Gladys, he also envied Matt's positive relationship with Lily, as
he despised his own mother-in-law. The pilot episode premiered
on October 4, 1954 and involved Lily Ruskin moving in with her daughter and
son-in-law. December Bride was unusual in that all five stars appeared in all
111 episodes of the sitcom. Most of the scenes filmed for the series took place
in the Henshaws' living room.
First-run
episodes of December Bride aired for 5 seasons (1954-1959),
sponsored by General
Foods' Instant Maxwell House Coffee. During the first four
seasons, the program was not shown in the summer, supplanted by "summer
replacement" series (such as Ethel and Albert) but in its final
year, repeat episodes were run in
its timeslot during the summer months. On March 26, 1959, as the program wound
down, Rory
Calhoun,
star of CBS's western series, The Texan, appeared as himself in the episode "Rory Calhoun, The Texan".
December Bride was sufficiently
popular that even after its production had ceased, CBS used repeat episodes to
fill slots in its primetime programming. In July 1960, December Bride repeats
were used to fill in for the second half of the Friday 9 pm Eastern timeslot
vacated by Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, running until the
beginning of the fall 1960 schedule, and again as a temporary
replacement on Thursday nights in April 1961. Additionally, repeats were shown
on CBS as a daytime program from October 1959 until March 1961. The Pete Porter
character became so popular that he and Gladys were spun off into their own
series, Pete and Gladys, shortly after the last
broadcast of first-run episodes of December Bride.
October 5, 1924
Bill Dana is born.
Comedian, actor and screenwriter. He often appeared on television shows such as
The Ed Sullivan Show, frequently in the guise of a heavily accented Puerto
Rican character named José Jiménez. Dana often portrayed the Jiménez character
as an astronaut.
October 5, 1969
Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted on BBC television.
The British sketch comedy series commissioned
by David Attenborough, created by the comedy group Monty Python and broadcast by
the BBC from 1969 to 1974. The
shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden
humour, sight
gags and
observational sketches without punchlines. It also featured
animations by Terry
Gilliam,
often sequenced or merged with live action. The first episode was recorded on 7
September and broadcast on 5 October 1969 on BBC One, with 45 episodes airing
over four series from 1969 to 1974, plus two episodes for German TV.The
show often targets the idiosyncrasies of British life, especially that of professionals, and is at times politically charged.
The members of Monty Python were highly educated. Terry Jones and Michael Palin are Oxford University graduates; Eric Idle, John Cleese, and Graham Chapman attended Cambridge University; and American-born member Terry Gilliam is an Occidental Collegegraduate. Their comedy is often pointedly intellectual, with numerous erudite
references to philosophers and literary figures. The series followed and
elaborated upon the style used by Spike Milligan in his ground breaking
series Q5, rather
than the traditional sketch show format. The team intended their humour to be
impossible to categorise, and succeeded so completely that the adjective "Pythonesque" was invented to
define it and, later, similar material.
The
Pythons play the majority of the series characters themselves, including the
majority of the female characters, but occasionally they cast an extra actor.
Regular supporting cast members include Carol Cleveland (referred to by the
team as the unofficial "Seventh Python"), Connie Booth (Cleese's first wife),
series Producer Ian MacNaughton, Ian Davidson, Neil
Innes (in
the fourth series), and the Fred Tomlinson Singers (for musical numbers).
The series' theme song is
the first segment of John Philip Sousa's The Liberty Bell, chosen because it was in the public
domain and thus could
be used without charge.
October 5, 1989
Jim Bakker was convicted of
using his television show to defraud his viewers.
After deliberating for a day
and a half, a jury in Charlotte, North Carolina, convicts Jim Bakker of using
his television show to defraud his viewers. Bakker's trial started on August 28
and was interrupted briefly while he was sent to a psychiatric hospital for
evaluation after suffering a breakdown.The government has argued that Bakker solicited donations in exchange for
free vacation lodging at his Heritage USA theme park, lodging which he knew he
would never be able to provide.
Jim Bakker sold 153,000 of these partnerships between 1984 and 1987. In
exchange for $1,000, people were promised three free nights lodging every year
for life. Bakker claimed to have accommodations for 214,000 partners, but the
government provided evidence that only 258 rooms were actually available.
October 6, 1949
The Ed Wynn Show
became the first regularly scheduled network show to be broadcasted from the
West Coast of the United States. In
the 1949-50 season, Ed Wynn hosted one of the first comedy-variety television shows,
on CBS, and won both a Peabody Award and an Emmy Award in
1949. Buster Keaton,Lucille
Ball, and The Three Stooges all made guest appearances
with Wynn. This was the first CBS variety television show to originate in Los
Angeles, with programs filmed via kinescope for
distribution in the Midwest and East. Wynn was also a rotating host of NBC's Four Star Revue from
1950 through 1952.
October 7, 1949
Anthology series Ford Theatre debuts.
The program featured a different one-hour dramatic
play each week in its early seasons, later shortened to a half-hour. Plays
ranged from comedy to serious drama and featured many stars of the era,
including Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy Davis. The show ran until 1957.
September 30, 1954
Barry Williams is born Barry William Blenkhorn.
Following the
cancellation of The Brady Bunch in 1974, Williams continued to appear in guest roles
on television, and became involved in musical theater, touring with productions such as Grease, The Sound
of Music, and West
Side Story.
In 1988, Williams
appeared on Broadway in the musical Romance/Romance with Tony Award-nominee Alison Fraser. Williams took over the lead male role of
“Alfred/Sam” when Scott Bakula left the production. Years later,
Williams was able to capitalize on being typecast as Greg Brady. Amid a
procession of appearances in TV and movies that played up his famous teen role,
he ended up landing a role that was a departure from the Brady image. He was
tapped to play English con man Hannibal in 1984, who conspired with Holly
Sutton Scorpio (Emma Samms) on the top-rated General Hospital. Williams has appeared in variousBrady
Bunch TV movie reunions, including the 1988 Christmas movie, A
Very Brady Christmas, in
which his sole family problem is missing his wife, Nora. The issue with his
wife is solved when Nora shows up at the Brady house on Christmas, poinsettia in hand.
In 1989, Williams
was honored by the Young Artist
Foundation with
its Former Child Star “Lifetime Achievement”
Award for his role as
Greg Brady.
His 1992 autobiography, Growing
Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, co-written with Chris Kreski, stayed on The New York Times bestseller
list for three months. The
book was adapted into a 2000 TV movie titled Growing
Up Brady starring Adam Brody as Williams.
September 30, 1984
The pilot episode of Murder, She Wrote aired on CBS.
Angela Lansbury has been nominated for a total
of ten Golden Globes and
twelve Emmies. She holds the record for the
most Golden Globe nominations
for Best Actress in a television drama series and the most Emmy nominations ever for
outstanding lead actress in a drama series for Murder She wrote. It is now
considered to be a TV cult classic around the world.
October 2, 1959
The first TheTwilight Zone episode Where Is Everybody? Aired.
“The place is
here, the time is now, and the journey into the shadows that we're about to
watch, could be our journey”.
The haunting score composed by Bernard Herrmann (Psycho) for this
episode would be reused for several episodes of the series, most notably
"The After Hours" and "The Last Flight".
October 3, 1954
Father Knows Best began airing on CBS-TV. The May 27, 1954 episode of The Ford Television Theatre show was called "Keep It in the Family".
Only Robert Young remained of the radio cast when the series moved to CBS
Television:
·
James "Jim" Anderson, Sr.–Robert Young
·
Margaret Anderson–Jane Wyatt
·
Betty "Princess" Anderson–Elinor
Donahue
·
James "Bud" Anderson, Jr.–Billy Gray
·
Kathy "Kitten" Anderson–Lauren
Chapin
The series began on CBS on October 3, 1954. Originally sponsored by Lorillard's Kent cigarettes
in its first season, Scott Paper Company became the primary
sponsor when the series moved to NBC in the fall of 1955, remaining as sponsor even after it
moved back to CBS in September 1958, with Lever
Brothers as an alternate sponsor from 1957 through 1960. A total of
203 episodes were produced, running until September 17, 1960, and appearing on
all three of the television networks of the time, including
prime-time repeats from September 1960 through April 1963.
October 3, 1964
Underdog debuted on NBC.
October 3, 2004
The first season of Desperate Housewives began.
The main setting of the show
was Wisteria Lane, a street in the fictional American town of
'Fairview' in the fictional 'Eagle State'. The show followed the lives of a
group of women as seen through the eyes of a dead neighbor who committed
suicide in the very first episode. The storyline covers thirteen years of the
women's lives over eight seasons, set between the years 2004–2008, and later
2013–2017 (the story arc included a 5 year passage of time). They worked
through domestic struggles and family life, while facing the secrets, crimes
and mysteries hidden behind the doors of their — at the surface — beautiful and
seemingly perfect suburban neighborhood.
The show featured an ensemble cast, headed by Teri Hatcher as Susan Mayer, Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo, Marcia Cross asBree Van de Kamp, and Eva Longoria as Gabrielle Solis. Brenda Strong narrated the show as the deceased Mary Alice Young, appearing sporadically in flashbacks or dream sequences.
October 4, 1949
The television series Life of Riley debuts, starring Jackie Gleason as bullheaded family man Chester Riley.
October 4, 1954
December Bride debuted on CBS-TV.
First-run
episodes of December Bride aired for 5 seasons (1954-1959),
sponsored by General
Foods' Instant Maxwell House Coffee. During the first four
seasons, the program was not shown in the summer, supplanted by "summer
replacement" series (such as Ethel and Albert) but in its final
year, repeat episodes were run in
its timeslot during the summer months. On March 26, 1959, as the program wound
down, Rory
Calhoun,
star of CBS's western series, The Texan, appeared as himself in the episode "Rory Calhoun, The Texan".
October 5, 1924
Bill Dana is born.
Comedian, actor and screenwriter. He often appeared on television shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show, frequently in the guise of a heavily accented Puerto Rican character named José Jiménez. Dana often portrayed the Jiménez character as an astronaut.
October 5, 1969
Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted on BBC television.
The
show often targets the idiosyncrasies of British life, especially that of professionals, and is at times politically charged.
The members of Monty Python were highly educated. Terry Jones and Michael Palin are Oxford University graduates; Eric Idle, John Cleese, and Graham Chapman attended Cambridge University; and American-born member Terry Gilliam is an Occidental Collegegraduate. Their comedy is often pointedly intellectual, with numerous erudite
references to philosophers and literary figures. The series followed and
elaborated upon the style used by Spike Milligan in his ground breaking
series Q5, rather
than the traditional sketch show format. The team intended their humour to be
impossible to categorise, and succeeded so completely that the adjective "Pythonesque" was invented to
define it and, later, similar material.
The
Pythons play the majority of the series characters themselves, including the
majority of the female characters, but occasionally they cast an extra actor.
Regular supporting cast members include Carol Cleveland (referred to by the
team as the unofficial "Seventh Python"), Connie Booth (Cleese's first wife),
series Producer Ian MacNaughton, Ian Davidson, Neil
Innes (in
the fourth series), and the Fred Tomlinson Singers (for musical numbers).
October 5, 1989
Jim Bakker was convicted of using his television show to defraud his viewers.
The government has argued that Bakker solicited donations in exchange for
free vacation lodging at his Heritage USA theme park, lodging which he knew he
would never be able to provide.
Jim Bakker sold 153,000 of these partnerships between 1984 and 1987. In
exchange for $1,000, people were promised three free nights lodging every year
for life. Bakker claimed to have accommodations for 214,000 partners, but the
government provided evidence that only 258 rooms were actually available.
October 6, 1949
October 7, 1949
Anthology series Ford Theatre debuts.
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