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"
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| Terry Ann Garr December 11, 1944 – October 29, 2024 |
Teri Garr died from complications of multiple sclerosis at her home in Los Angeles, on October 29, 2024, at the age of 79.
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| Good Night Ms. Garr |
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| Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
November
2, 1959
Charles
Van Doren, a game show contestant on the NBC-TV program Twenty-One
admitted that he had been given questions and answers in advance.
I was involved, deeply involved, in a deception.
The fact that I, too, was very much deceived cannot keep me from being the
principal victim of that deception, because I was its principal symbol. There
may be a kind of justice in that. I don’t know. I do know, and I can say it
proudly to this committee, that since Friday, October 16, when I finally came
to a full understanding of what I had done and of what I must do, I have taken
a number of steps toward trying to make up for it. I have a long way to go. I
have deceived my friends, and I had millions of them. Whatever their feeling
for me now, my affection for them is stronger today than ever before. I am
making this statement because of them. I hope my being here will serve them
well and lastingly.
I asked (co-producer Albert Freedman) to let me go on (Twenty One) honestly, without receiving help. He said that was impossible. He told me that I would not have a chance to defeat Stempel because he was too knowledgeable. He also told me that the show was merely entertainment and that giving help to quiz contests was a common practice and merely a part of show business. This of course was not true, but perhaps I wanted to believe him. He also stressed the fact that by appearing on a nationally televised program I would be doing a great service to the intellectual life, to teachers and to education in general, by increasing public respect for the work of the mind through my performances. In fact, I think I have done a disservice to all of them. I deeply regret this, since I believe nothing is of more vital importance to our civilization than education.
October 23, 1984
NBC Nightly News aired footage of the severe drought in Ethiopia.
October 25, 1924
Billy Barty was born William John Bertanzetti.
Barty was one of the most famous 20th century people with dwarfism. Barty, an Italian American, was born in Millsboro, Pennsylvania. He was a member of the gang in the Mickey McGuire serial of silent shorts (a children's comedy series of the 1920s, similar in tone to the "Our Gang"/"Little Rascals" comedies, starring a very young Mickey Rooney in the title role). In The Gold Diggers of 1933, a nine-year-old Barty appeared as a baby who escapes from his stroller. Because of his stature, much of his work consisted of bit parts and gag roles, although he was featured prominently in W.C. Fields and Me (1976), Foul Play and The Lord of the Rings (both 1978), Under the Rainbow (1981), Night Patrol (1984), Legend (1985), Masters of the Universe (1987), Willow (1988), UHF (1989), Life Stinks and Radioland Murders (1994). Barty was known for his boundless energy and enthusiasm for any productions in which he appeared. He also performed a remarkable impression of pianist Liberace. He performed with the Spike Jones musical comedy show on stage and television. He was also the evil side kick on the 1970s Saturday morning TV series Dr. Shrinker.Barty also starred in a local Southern California children's show,
"Billy Barty's Bigtop," in the mid-1960s, which regularly showed The Three Stooges shorts. In one program,
Stooge Moe Howard visited the set as a surprise
guest. The program gave many Los Angeles-area children their first opportunity
to become familiar with little people, who until then had been rarely glimpsed
on the screen except as two-dimensional curiousities.
Barty also starred as "Sigmund" in the popular children's t.v.
show "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters" produced by Sid and Marty Krofft
in 1974-1976. In 1983, Barty supplied the voice for Figment
in EPCOT Center's Journey Into
Imagination dark ride. He subsequently supplied a reprisal for the
second incarnation, though very brief.
Barty was a noted activist for the promotion of rights for others with
dwarfism. He was disappointed with contemporary Hervé Villechaize's
insistence that they were "midgets" instead of
actors with dwarfism. Barty founded the Little People
of America to help with his activism.
Barty was married to Shirley Bolingbroke of Malad City, Idaho, from 1962 until his
death at age 76. They had two children, Lori Neilson and TV/film producer and
director Braden Barty.
Until the time of his death, Barty was a beloved annual guest-star on
Canada's Telemiracle telethon, one of the most successful (per capita)
telethons in the world.
October 26, 1914
John Leslie "Jackie" Coogan born in Los Angeles, California.
Coogan began his movie career as a child actor in silent films. Many years later, he became known as Uncle Fester on The Addams Family (TV show, 1964-1966). In the interim, he shocked the United States by suing his mother and stepfather over his squandered film earnings and provoked California to enact the first known legal protection for the earnings of child performers.He began his acting career as an infant in both vaudeville and film, with an uncredited
role in the 1917 film Skinner's
Baby. Charlie Chaplin
discovered him in a Los Angeles
vaudeville house, doing the shimmy, a popular dance
at the time, on the stage. His father, Jack Coogan, Sr. was also an actor. The
boy was a natural mimic, and delighted Chaplin with his abilities in this area.
As a child actor, he is best remembered for his role as Charlie Chaplin's irascible sidekick in the
film classic The Kid
(1921) and for the title role in Oliver Twist,
directed by Frank Lloyd, the
following year. He was also the first star to get heavily merchandised, with
peanut butter, stationery, whistles, dolls, records, and figurines just being a
sample of the Coogan merchandise. He also travelled internationally to huge
crowds. Many of his early films are lost or unavailable, but Turner Classic
Movies recently presented The Rag Man with a new score.
Coogan was famous for his pageboy haircut and his The Kid outfit of
oversized overalls and cap, which was widely imitated, including by the young Scotty Beckett in the Our Gang films.
Jackie Coogan has his hand and foot prints in concrete out front of
Grauman's Chinese Theater (now Mann's Chinese Theater), Ceremony #19, on
December 12, 1931 (his former wife Betty Grable, Ceremony #68, on February 15,
1943 also). He also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of 1654
Vine Street, just south of Hollywood Blvd.
As a child star, Coogan earned an estimated $3 to 4 million, but the money
was taken by his mother, Lilian, and stepfather, Arthur Bernstein, for
extravagances such as fur coats, diamonds, and cars. He sued them in 1938 (at
age 23), but after legal expenses, he only received $126,000 of the approx.
$250,000 left. When Coogan fell on hard times, Charlie Chaplin gave him some
financial support.
The legal battle did, however, bring attention to child actors and resulted
in the state of California enacting
the California Child Actor's Bill,
sometimes known as the Coogan Bill
or the Coogan Act. This requires
that the child's employer set aside 15% of the child's earnings in a trust, and
codifies such issues as schooling, work hours and time-off. Jackie's mother and
stepfather attempted to soften the situation by pointing out that the child was
having fun and thought he was playing. However, virtually every child star from
Baby Peggy on has stated that they were
keenly aware that what they were doing was work.
October 27, 1954
Disneyland, Walt Disney's first television series, premieres on ABC.
The one-hour show, introduced by Tinkerbell, presented a rotating selection of cartoons, dramas, movies, and other entertainment. The show ran for 34 years under various names, including Walt Disney Presents and The Wonderful World of Disney. The program was the longest-running prime-time series on network TV.
September
29, 1969
Love
American Style debuts
Each
episode of the show featured multiple stories of romance, usually with a
comedic spin. Episodes were stand-alone, featuring various characters, stories
and locations. The show often featured the same actors playing different
characters in many episodes. In addition, a large, ornate brass bed was a
recurring prop in many episodes.
Charles Fox's music score, featuring flutes, harp and flugelhorn set
to a contemporary pop beat, provided the "love" ambiance, which tied
the stories together as a multifaceted romantic comedy each week. For the first
season, the theme song was performed by the Cowsills.
Beginning with the second season, the same theme song was sung by the Ron Hicklin Singers, also known as the voices
behind the Partridge Family (based on the
Cowsills), among others, featuring brothers John and Tom Bahler (billed
as the Charles Fox Singers). This second version
of the theme was kept for the remainder of the series, as well as on most
episodes prepared for syndication.
The
title is loosely derived from a 1961 Italian comedy film called Divorzio all'italiana (Divorce, Italian Style),
which received Academy Award nominations in 1962 for Best Director for Pietro Germi and
for Best Actor for star Marcello Mastroianni. The film was later
spoofed in 1967 by Divorce, American Style, starring Dick Van Dyke.
The snowclone "(xxx),
(nationality) Style" became a minor cultural catch-phrase as the 1960s
progressed.
The
original series was also known for its 10- to 20-second blackouts between
the featured segments. These were performed by a house troupe that featured
future Rockford Files cast member Stuart Margolin,
future Vega$ leading
lady Phyllis Davis and a young character actor, James Hampton, who was known to television
audiences of the era as Private Dobbs from the TV series F-Troop.
These clips allowed the show to be padded to the required length without adding
to the main segments. They generally consisted of risqué, burlesque-style comedy-of-manners visual
jokes.
During
its first four years on ABC, Love, American Style was popular
with viewers and received decent ratings, although it never ranked among the
top 30 shows in the Nielsens. For a few seasons, it was part of a
lineup of ABC Friday night programs that included The Brady Bunch, The
Partridge Family, Room 222, and The Odd Couple.
Some
of the show's segments also served as pilots for
proposed television series. Many never made it beyond the pilot stage, but two
resulted in a series:
·
On
February 11, 1972, the show presented the animated segment "Love and the
Old-Fashioned Father." This would become the pilot to a first-run syndicated animated series
by Hanna-Barbera, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, which
debuted that fall.
·
Two
weeks later, on February 25, 1972, the show aired a segment titled "Love
and the Television Set", a story about Richie Cunningham,
his family and friends. The premise and characters were later used for the 1974
television series Happy Days, and the episode would later be recognized as
a de facto pilot for the series. (It had originally been
produced as a pilot for New Family in Town, which was not picked
up). For syndication, the segment was retitled "Love and the Happy
Days."[1] Happy Days, in turn,
launched an extensive franchise of spinoffs into the 1980s.
The
series was also flexible enough to include repurposed pilots that had already
failed or been retooled. One first-season example was "Love and the Good
Deal," which was actually the original, unaired pilot for the sitcom adaptation of the Neil Simon play
and movie Barefoot in the Park, with a different cast
than the series.[2]
At
the start of the 1973–1974 fall season, the ratings for Love, American
Style and Room 222 had plummeted. As a result, both
shows were canceled mid-season. The series received several Emmy nominations,
including two for Best Comedy Series for 1969–70 and 1970–71. The show
subsequently became a daytime standard on ABC from June 1971 to May 1974, and
later in syndication, since it was readily edited down to a half-hour by the
proper interweaving of the clips with a main segment. It effectively made nine
seasons out of five. This allowed for heavy stripping.
October 17, 1989
The Loma Prieta earthquake, also known as the Quake of '89 and the World Series Earthquake, was a major earthquake that struck the San Francisco Bay Area of California at 5:04 pm local time.
Caused by a slip along the San Andreas Fault, the quake lasted 10–15 seconds and measured 6.9 on
both the moment
magnitude scale (surface-wave
magnitude 7.1) and on the open-ended
Richter Scale. The quake killed 63
people throughout Northern California, injured 3,757 and left some 3,000–12,000
people homeless.
The earthquake occurred during the warm-up practice
for the third game of the 1989 World Series, featuring both of the Bay Area's Major
League Baseball teams, the Oakland
Athletics and the San Francisco Giants.
Because of game-related sports coverage, this was the first major earthquake in
the United States to have its initial jolt broadcast live on television.
October 7, 1964
The made-for-television movie See How They Run premiered.
October 9, 1954
Scott Stewart Bakula is born.
His most prominent roles have been as Sam Beckett in the science fiction television series Quantum Leap,
and as Captain Jonathan
Archer in Star Trek:
Enterprise. He also co-starred with Maria Bello in the short-lived CBS
television series Mr.
& Mrs. Smith and had a recurring role
in the sitcom Murphy Brown.
October
10, 1964
NBC-TV aired the opening ceremonies of the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
October 13, 1959
Olive Marie Osmond is born.
Actress, singer, doll designer, and a member of the show business family, The Osmonds. Although she was never part of her family's singing group, she gained success as a solo country music artist in the 1970s and 1980s. Her best known song is a cover of the country pop ballad "Paper Roses." In 1976, she and her singer brother Donny Osmond began hosting the TV variety show Donny & Marie. Marie Osmond had a recurring role on Ripley's Believe It or Not for two seasons (1985-86), replacing Holly Palance. Where she introduced segments based on the travels and discoveries of oddity-hunter Robert Leroy Ripley.In 1978, Marie and Donny released their film Goin' Coconuts,, which
was not a financial success. The following year, Marie starred in a sitcom
pilot titled "Marie." which did not make the new season schedule and
in 1980 she had her own variety show on NBC, also titled Marie, which
only ran for half a season.
The singer played her mother, Olive, in the TV movie Side By Side: The True Story Of
The Osmond Family. She also starred in the TV movie I Married Wyatt Earp.
She returned to television first in the short-lived 1995 ABC
sitcom Maybe This Time
and then with brother Donny in 1998 to co-host Donny And Marie, a
talk/entertainment show that lasted two seasons.
She appeared as herself in the 2001 TV movie Inside The Osmonds,
which showed how the brothers' egos, their father's fiscal mismanagement, and
the family's quest to build a multimedia empire led to their downfall. The film
was produced by her younger brother, Jimmy Osmond.
October 13, 1974
Television talk show legend Ed Sullivan dies.
Born in New York, Sullivan became a newspaper reporter and later a gossip columnist. He hosted his own radio show starting in 1942 and gained national fame as host of Toast of the Town, later named simply The Ed Sullivan Show, which ran for more than two decades. |
| John Allen Amos Jr. December 27, 1939 – August 21, 2024 |
Amos became well known in his first major TV role, playing Gordy Howard, the weatherman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, from 1970 until 1973. Upon the death of Betty White, Amos and Joyce Bulifant (who played Marie Slaughter) became the last surviving semi-regular cast members of that show (not counting child actors). In 1971, he appeared with Anson Williams in a commercial for McDonald's, and performed in a small role as a radio engineer in the cult film, Vanishing Point, with Cleavon Little.
Amos is best known for his portrayal of James Evans Sr., the husband of Florida Evans, first appearing three times on the sitcom Maude before continuing the role in 61 episodes of Good Times from 1974 to 1976.
Although cast as a hard-working middle-aged father of three, Amos was 34 when the show began production in 1973, only eight years older than the actor who played his oldest son (Jimmie Walker) and 19 years younger than his screen wife (Esther Rolle). Much like Rolle, Amos wanted to portray a positive image of an African-American family, struggling against the odds in a poor neighborhood, but saw the premise slighted by lower comedy, and he expressed dissatisfaction.
During his tenure on Good Times, Amos openly clashed with the writers of the show, due to the scripts' lack of authenticity in portraying the African-American experience. He notably criticized what he felt was too much of an emphasis on Jimmie Walker's character J.J. and greater disregard for the other two Evans children, as well as the way J.J was portrayed as comical relief. This led to his dismissal by executive producer Norman Lear at the end of season 3 in 1976. In a 2017 interview, Amos said he had told the writers, who, according to Amos, did not understand African-Americans, "That just doesn't happen in the community. We don't think that way. We don't act that way. We don't let our children do that."
His character was killed off by the writers, leading to a famous scene which his screen wife screams, “Damn! Damn! Damn!”
In 1977, Amos starred in the ABC-TV Miniseries Roots, as the adult Kunta Kinte, based on the book by author Alex Haley.
In 1980, he starred in the television film Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story. Amos played an Archie Bunker-style character in the 1994 sitcom 704 Hauser, a modern spin-off of All in the Family, but it was canceled after only five episodes (in the series he played a different character than he did in the All in the Family spin-off Maude). He also portrayed Captain Dolan on the TV show Hunter from 1984 to 1985. He co-starred in the CBS police drama The District. Amos was a frequent guest on The West Wing, portraying Admiral Percy Fitzwallace, who serves as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for most of the show. He played Buzz Washington in the ABC series Men in Trees. Amos co-starred with Anthony Anderson in the short-lived TV series All About the Andersons in 2003.
In 2010, Amos also appeared as recurring character Ed on Two and a Half Men, and in 2016 as another recurring character, also (coincidentally) named Ed, on the Netflix sitcom The Ranch. He has guest-starred in a number of other television shows, including Police Story, The A-Team, The Cosby Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, In the House, Martin as Sgt. Hamilton Strawn (Tommy's father), Touched by an Angel, Psych, Sanford and Son, My Name Is Earl, Lie to Me, and Murder, She Wrote. He has also appeared as a spokesman for the Cochran Firm (a national personal injury law firm).
Amos wrote and produced Halley's Comet, a critically acclaimed one-man play that he has performed around the world. Amos performed in August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean on Broadway and later at the McCarther Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey.
Amos was featured in Disney's The World's Greatest Athlete (1973) with Tim Conway and Jan-Michael Vincent in his first starring film role, and also starred as Kansas City Mack in Let's Do It Again (1975) with Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier. His other film appearances include Vanishing Point (1971), The President's Plane Is Missing (1973), Touched by Love (1980), The Beastmaster (1982), Dance of the Dwarfs (1983), American Flyers (1985), Coming to America (1988), Lock Up (1989), Two Evil Eyes (1989), Die Hard 2 (1990), and Ricochet (1991).
He appeared in the 1995 film For Better or Worse and played a police officer in The Players Club (1998). He played Uncle Virgil in My Baby's Daddy (2004), and starred as Jud in Dr. Dolittle 3 (2006). In 2012, Amos had a role in the movie Madea's Witness Protection, as Jake's father. He appeared in Ice Cube and Dr. Dre's 1994 video for "Natural Born Killaz."
In 2009, he released We Were Hippies, an album of original country songs by Gene and Eric Cash.
In 2021, Amos starred in Because of Charley, as the patriarch of an estranged step-family riding out the hurricane that tore through Florida in 2004.
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| Good Night Mr. Amos |
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| Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
