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"
Kathie Lee Gifford
made her final appearance as co-host of the ABC talk show Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.
August 3, 1940
Actor Martin Sheen is born Ramon Estevez
in Dayton, Ohio.
The son of a Spanish
immigrant, Sheen was the seventh of 10 children. He moved to New York after
high school and began pursuing an acting career while working as a janitor, car
washer, and messenger. After several successful Broadway roles, he appeared in
his first film, The Incident, in 1967. His film and TV career has
included numerous political roles, most recently as fictional U.S. president
Josiah Bartlett on the popular TV show The West Wing. Previously, he
played Robert Kennedy in the TV movie The Missiles of October (1974),
John F. Kennedy in the miniseries Kennedy (1983), and the White House
chief of staff in The American President (1995). Sheen is the father of
film stars Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen.
Theater is my favorite platform. Television is my favorite paycheck. The more television I can do, the more theater I can do.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner
Malcolm-Jamal Warner August 18, 1970 – July 20, 2025
Malcolm-Jamal Warner was born inJersey City, New Jersey, on August 18, 1970.He was named afterMalcolm Xand jazz pianistAhmad Jamal. He was raised in Los Angeles from age five.At the age of nine, he demonstrated an interest in show business that led to enrollment in acting schools. His career as a child performer later led him to graduate high school from The Professional Children's School in New York City, New York.
In 2009 he guest starred in an episode in the TNT series HawthoRNe. In 2011 and 2012, he guest starred in four episodes of the NBC series Community as Andre, the ex-husband of Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown). His character subtly referenced his Cosby Show past by wearing a "Cosby sweater" that he stated was from his dad.
Warner co-starred in BET's 2011 scripted comedic television series Reed Between the Lines. He played the role of Alex Reed, an English professor married to Carla Reed, a psychologist played by former Girlfriends star Tracee Ellis Ross. The couple had three children: Kaci and Kenan Reynolds, Carla's children from a previous relationship, and Alexis Reed, their child together.[19] The show highlighted the couple's ups and downs together as a blended family. In 2012, Warner was nominated for Outstanding Actor in a comedy series at the NAACP Image Awards for his role in Reed Between the Lines.
On the third season (2014–2015) of TNT police procedural Major Crimes, Warner portrayed Lt. Chuck Cooper, a member of the LAPD's Special Investigation's Section. Warner portrayed Al Cowlings in the 2016 crime series American Crime Story production The People v. O.J Simpson, based on the events of the O. J. Simpson trial. Warner played prison counselor Julius Rowe on the sixth season (2016–2017) of USA's Suits. He also played the role of parole officer James Bagwell on Amazon Prime's show Sneaky Pete. In 2018, he appeared as Dr. AJ "The Raptor" Austin on FOX's The Resident.
In June 2024, Warner and cohosts Weusi Baraka and Candace Kelley created the Not All Hood (NAH) podcast to discuss the lives and experiences of Black Americans.
Till
Death Us Do Part debuted on England’s BBC-TV.
Till Death Us Do Part is a British
television sitcom that
aired on BBC1 from
1965 to 1975. First airing as
a Comedy
Playhousepilot, the show aired in seven series until 1975. Six years later, ITV continued the sitcom, calling it Till Death.... From 1985 to 1992, the BBC produced a sequel In Sickness and
in Health.
Created by Johnny Speight, Till Death Us Do Part centred on the East End Garnett family, led by patriarchAlf Garnett (Warren Mitchell), a reactionarywhite working-class man who holds racist and
anti-socialist views. His long-suffering wife Else was played by Dandy Nichols, and his daughter Rita by Una Stubbs. Rita's husband Mike Rawlins (Anthony Booth) is a socialist layabout. The character Alf Garnett became a well known
character in British culture, and Mitchell
played him on stage and television up until 1998, when Speight died.
In addition to the spin-off In
Sickness and in Health, Till Death Us Do Part was re-made
in many countries including Brazil, Germany (Ein Herz und
eine Seele), the
Netherlands (In Voor- En Tegenspoed), and the United States (All in the Family).
Many episodes from the first three
series are thought to no longer exist, having been wiped in the
late 1960s and early '70s as was the policy at the time.
July 25, 1985
Rock Hudson announces he has AIDS.
Rock Hudson, a quintessential tall, dark and handsome
Hollywood leading man of the 1950s and 1960s who made more than 60 films during
his career, announces through a press release that he is suffering from
acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). With that announcement, Hudson
became the first major celebrity to go public with such a diagnosis. The first
cases of AIDS, a condition of the human immune system, were reported in
homosexual men in the United States in the early 1980s. At the time of Hudson’s
death, AIDS was not fully understood by the medical community and the disease
was stigmatized by the general public as a condition affecting only gay men,
intravenous drug users and people who received contaminated blood transfusions.
Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., on November 17, 1925, in Winnetka,
Illinois. He rose to fame in the 1950s, starring in such films as Giant (1956),
for which he received an Academy Award nomination,and A Farewell to
Arms (1957). Hudson’s good looks and charm were on display in 1959’s Pillow
Talk and several other romantic comedies he made with Doris Day in the
early 1960s. In the 1970s, Hudson co-starred in the popular TV series McMillan
and Wife. In the early 1980s, he began experiencing health problems and
underwent heart bypass surgery. His final TV role was a recurring part on Dynasty
from 1984 to 1985.
In July 1985 Hudson was hospitalized while in Paris. Some media reports
indicated he was suffering from liver cancer. However, on July 25, Hudson
issued a press release stating he had AIDS and was in France for treatment.
Hudson, who had a three-year marriage during the 1950s to a woman who had been
his agent’s secretary, was believed to be gay, although he never spoke publicly
about his sexuality.
Hudson died on October 2, 1985, at age 59 in Beverly Hills, California. His
death was credited with bringing attention to an epidemic that went on to kill
millions of men, women and children of all backgrounds from around the world.
Hudson’s friend and former Giant co-star Elizabeth Taylor became an AIDS
activist and rallied the Hollywood community to raise millions for research. In
1993, Tom Hanks received a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in director
Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia, the first major Hollywood movie to focus
on AIDS.
July 27, 1940
Bugs Bunny first
appears on the silver screen in A Wild
Hare.
The wisecracking rabbit had evolved through several earlier short
films. As in many future installments of Bugs Bunny cartoons, A Wild Hare featured Bugs as the
would-be dinner for frustrated hunter Elmer Fudd.
July 27, 2003
Bob Hope dies at age 100 in Toluca Lake, California.
Known for entertaining American servicemen and women for more than five
decades, Hope had a career that spanned the whole range of 20th century
entertainment, from vaudeville to Broadway musicals to radio, television and
movies.
He was born Leslie Townes
Hope, the fifth of seven sons, on May 29, 1903, in Eltham, England. In 1907,
Hope’s family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. As a young man, he began his
entertainment career as a dancer and vaudeville performer. During the 1930s, he
appeared in Broadway musicals, along with such performers as Fanny Brice and
Ethel Merman. In 1934, Hope wed the nightclub singer Dolores Reade; the
marriage would endure until his death. In 1938, Hope, who became known for his
snappy one-liners, rose to national fame with his own radio show on NBC and his
first feature film, The Big Broadcast of 1938.
In 1940, Hope co-starred in the box-office hit Road to Singapore with
Bing Crosby. The film, about a pair of singing, wisecracking con men, was the
first of seven “Road” movies the pair would make. Hope appeared in more than 50
feature films during his career. He hosted the Academy Awards 18 times,
although he never won an Oscar himself, an occurrence he turned into a
long-running joke. However, he did receive five special awards from the
Academy, including two honorary Oscars. Hope was also a top entertainer on TV
and from 1959 to 1996 he made 284 “Bob Hope specials” for NBC.
Starting with World War II, Hope began entertaining American troops at
military bases around the world. His USO tours traveled to military bases
during times of war (Vietnam, the Persian Gulf), as well as times of peace. He
was so beloved for his work with the military for more than half a century that
Congress passed a resolution in 1997 making Hope an honorary veteran. It was
one of the countless honors that Hope received throughout his career. In 1998,
he was granted honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth.
Rebecca
Shaeffer (age 21) is murdered at her Los Angeles home by
Robert John Bardo, a mentally unstable man who had been stalking her.
Schaeffer’s death helped lead to the passage in California of legislation
aimed at preventing stalking.
Schaeffer was born November 6, 1967, in Eugene, Oregon. She worked as a teenage
model and had a short stint on the daytime soap opera One Life to Live,
but was best known for co-starring with Pam Dawber in the television sitcom My
Sister Sam. Bardo, born in 1970, had written Schaeffer letters and
unsuccessfully tried to gain access to the set of My Sister Sam, before
showing up at her apartment on July 19, 1989. The obsessed fan had reportedly
obtained the actress’s home address through a detective agency, which located
it through records at the California Department of Motor Vehicles. On the day
of the murder, Schaeffer reportedly complied with Bardo’s request for an
autograph when he appeared at her home and then asked him to leave. He returned
a short time later and the actress, who reportedly was waiting for someone to
deliver a script, answered the door again. Bardo then shot and killed her.Arrested the next day in Tucson, Arizona, Bardo was later
prosecuted by the Los Angeles County district attorney Marcia Clark, who later
became famous as a prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial. In 1991, Bardo was
convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison without the
possibility of parole. In 1994, California passed the Driver’s Privacy
Protection Act, which prevented the Department of Motor Vehicles from releasing
private addresses.
The 2002 film Moonlight Mile, loosely inspired by Schaeffer’s story,
was written and directed by Brad Silberling, who had been dating the young
actress at the time of her death.
Hugh Grant appears on Tonight Show after Hollywood
arrest.
On this day in 1995, Hugh
Grant appears on late-night television’s The Tonight Show less than two
weeks after being arrested with a Hollywood prostitute. The show’s host, Jay
Leno, famously asked the English actor, “What the hell were you thinking?”
Grant, who shot to stardom with the 1994 hit British film Four Weddings
and a Funeral, was arrested on June 27, 1995, in a parked car near Sunset
Boulevard with a prostitute named Divine Brown and charged with lewd conduct in
a public place. At the time of his arrest, Grant, then age 34, was already
scheduled to appear on The Tonight Show to promote Nine Months,
his first major Hollywood movie. The actor kept his agreement and went on the
program, speaking publicly about the incident for the first time. “What the
hell were you thinking?” Leno asked him, to which Grant simply responded “I did
a bad thing.” The show garnered huge ratings (enabling Leno to beat his
late-night talk show rival David Letterman) and Grant was praised for
apologizing for his behavior, in contrast to other scandal-plagued celebrities
who went into seclusion or blamed their mistakes on others.
Grant pled no contest to the charges against him, paid a fine and received
probation. Although the arrest surprised many fans of the actor, who was known
for his charm and wit, his career did not seem to suffer in the end and he went
on to star in a number of films, most often romantic comedies, including Notting
Hill (1999), Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), About a Boy
(2002), Love Actually (2003) and Music and Lyrics (2007). Though
Grant’s long-term girlfriend, the English model and actress Elizabeth Hurley,
stuck by him during the scandal, the couple announced their separation in 2000
after 13 years together.
July 12, 1990
Northern Exposure airs
its first episode.
The offbeat show, about
a Manhattan doctor contractually forced to work in the fictional of town
Cicely, Alaska for four years to repay a student loan from the
state.Rob Morrow stared as Dr. Joel
Fleischman. Most of Northern Exposure'sstory arcs are character-driven, with the plots revolving around the
eccentricities of the Cicely citizens. The show consistently ranked in the Top
20 most-watched TV shows until it was canceled in 1995.
July 13, 1985
Live Aid, a massive concert for African famine relief, takes place
simultaneously in Philadelphia and London.
In addition to 162,000 fans that attended the all-day event were 1.5
billion viewers worldwide who watched the show on MTV or other television
stations. An estimated 75 percent of all radio stations around the world
broadcast at least part of the concert.
Irish musician Bob
Geldof, of the Boomtown Rats, organized the event. Among the participants were
Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, the Beach Boys, Carlos Santana, Madonna, Sting, and
Tina Turner. Several disbanded groups came together again for the day, including
Crosby, Stills and Nash; The Who; and surviving members of Led Zeppelin,
including Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones. All performers worked
for free, as did many other concert workers. The production, which ordinarily
would have cost $20 million to stage, cost only $4 million and raised more than
$70 million for famine relief.
Despite the number of
acts, the show ran surprisingly smoothly. Rotating stages allowed bands to set
up and dismantle their equipment while other bands were onstage. Acts from one
stadium were telecast across the Atlantic to the other. Such organization,
however, did not characterize the group's later charitable efforts: Live Aid
was later criticized for its disorganized and slow efforts to channel aid to
Africa.
The
long-running musical-variety program The Lawrence Welk Show debuts on
ABC.
Welk, a bandleader from North
Dakota known for light dance music, had launched his own show in 1951 on KTLA in Los Angeles. The show
remained a network hit for some 16 years, then became a syndicated series. Welk
retired in 1982 and died in 1992.
July 3, 1950
TV game show Pantomime Quiz Show debuts as a
network series on CBS. The program, a
variation of charades, ran for 13 years, although it changed networks several
times.
The show began as a local program in Los Angeles in 1947. In 1949, the
show was one of TV's first programs to win an Emmy, first awarded by the
National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences that year.
July 5, 1970
PBS began airing
concerts by the Boston Pops Orchestra.
Most shows featured a guest star, usually a well known singer or musician,
most commonly within popular music or sometimes rock, folk, jazz or other
musical genres. After one or two opening numbers by the Pops, the guest would
be brought onstage. Usually the guest would sing several their own hits or
songs associated with them, with accompaniment by the Pops. After concluding
their set, the guest artist would leave the stage, and the Pops would play one
or two closing numbers. The three men who served as Boston Pops Conductor
during the show's run – Arthur
Fiedler (1970-79), John
Williams (1979-95) and Keith
Lockhart (1996-2005) – appeared. Gene
Galusha provided narration and announced most of the pieces played.
Evening at Symphony, a companion series produced by WGBH and
featuring performances of the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted
by Seiji
Ozawa, aired on PBS from 1974 to 1979.
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