October 28, 1950
Popular radio personality Jack Benny moves to
television with The Jack Benny Program. The TV version of the show ran for the next 15 years.
Jack Benny was born
Benjamin Kubelsky in 1894. His father, a Lithuanian immigrant, ran a saloon in
Waukegan, Illinois, near Chicago. Benny began playing violin at age six and
continued through high school. He began touring on the vaudeville circuit in 1917.
In 1918, he joined the navy and was assigned to entertain the troops with his
music but soon discovered a flair for comedy as well. After World War I, Benny
returned to vaudeville as a comedian and became a top act in the 1920s. In
1927, he married an actress named Sadye Marks; the couple stayed together until
Benny's death in 1974.Benny's success in
vaudeville soon won him attention from Hollywood, where he made his film debut
in Hollywood Revue of 1929. Over the years, he won larger roles, notably
in Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). Movies
were only a sideline for Benny, though, who found his natural medium in radio
in 1932.
In March 1932,
then-newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan, dabbling in radio, asked Benny to do an
on-air interview. Benny reluctantly agreed. His comedy, though, was so
successful that Benny was offered his own show almost immediately, which
debuted just a few months later. At first a mostly musical show with a few
minutes of Benny's comedy during interludes, the show evolved to become mostly
comedy, incorporating well-developed skits and regular characters. In many of
these skits, Benny portrayed himself as a vain egomaniac and notorious
pinchpenny who refused to replace his (very noisy) antique car and who kept his
money in a closely guarded vault. His regulars included his wife, whose
character, Mary Livingstone, deflated Benny's ego at every opportunity; Mel
Blanc, who used his famous voice to play Benny's noisy car, his exasperated
French violin teacher, and other characters; and Eddie Andersen, one of radio's
first African American stars, who played Benny's long-suffering valet,
Rochester Van Jones. The program ran until 1955.
In
the 1950s, Benny began experimenting with television, making specials in 1950,
1951, and 1952. Starting in 1952, The Jack Benny Show aired regularly,
at first once every four weeks, then every other week, then finally every week
from 1960 to 1965. Benny was as big a hit on TV as on the radio. Despite the
stingy skinflint image he cultivated on the air, Benny was known for his
generosity and modesty in real life. He died of cancer in Beverly Hills in
1974.
October 30, 1945
Henry Franklin Winkler is born.
Winkler is best known for his role as Fonzie on the 1970s American sitcom Happy Days.
"The Fonz", a leather-clad greaser
and auto mechanic, started out as a minor character
at the show's beginning, but had achieved top billing by the time the show
ended. Winkler started acting by appearing in a number of television
commercials. In October 1973, he was cast for the role of Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli,
nicknamed The Fonz or Fonzie, in the TV show Happy Days. The show was first aired in
January 1974. During his decade on Happy Days, Winkler also starred in a
number of movies, including The Lords of
Flatbush (1974), playing a troubled Vietnam veteran
in Heroes (1977), The One and Only (1978), and a morgue
attendant in Night Shift
(1982), which was directed by Happy Days co-star Ron
Howard.In 1979 Winkler appeared in the made-for-TV movie An American Christmas Carol, which was
a modern remake of the Charles Dickens
classic A Christmas Carol.
An American Christmas Carol was set in Concord,
New Hampshire during the Great Depression. Winkler played the role
of Benedict Slade, the Ebenezer Scrooge
equivalent of that film.
After Happy Days, Winkler put his acting career on the back burner,
as he began concentrating on producing and directing. He quickly worked on
developing his own production company and, within months, he had opened Winkler-Rich
Productions.
He produced several television shows including MacGyver, So Weird and Mr. Sunshine, Sightings, and the game shows Wintuition
and The Hollywood
Squares (the latter from 2002–2004 only). He also directed
several movies including the Billy Crystal movie Memories of Me
(1988) and Cop and a Half
(1993) with Burt Reynolds.
As the 1990s continued, Winkler began a return to acting. In 1994 he
returned to TV with the short-lived right-wing comedy Monty on Fox
which sank in mere weeks. Also in 1994, he co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in
the holiday TV movie "One Christmas", her last film. In 1998, Adam Sandler asked Winkler to play a
college football coach, a supporting role in The Waterboy (1998). He would later
appear in three other Sandler films, Little Nicky
(2000) where he plays himself and is covered in bees, Click (2006, as the main character's
father), and You
Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008). He has also played small roles
in movies such as Down to You
(2000), Holes (2003), and I Could
Never Be Your Woman (2007).
Winkler recently had a recurring role as incompetent lawyer Barry Zuckerkorn in the Fox Television comedy Arrested
Development. In one episode, his character hopped over a dead
shark lying on a pier, a reference to his role in the origin of the phrase
"jumping the shark".
After that episode, Winkler in interviews stated that he was the only person to
have "jumped the shark" twice.
When Winkler moved to CBS for one season to star in 2005–06's Out of Practice, his role as the Bluth
family lawyer on Arrested Development was taken over by Happy Days
co-star Scott Baio in the fall of 2005, shortly
before the acclaimed but Nielsen-challenged show ceased production.
In October 2008, Winkler appeared in a video on funnyordie.com with Ron Howard, reprising their roles as Fonzie
and Richie Cunningham, encouraging people to vote for Barack Obama. The video
entitled "Ron
Howard’s Call to Action" also features Andy Griffith.
October 30, 2010
The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.
The gathering that took place on October 30, 2010 at the National
Mall in Washington, DC. The rally was led by Jon Stewart,
host of the satirical news program The
Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert, in-character as a conservative political
pundit. About 215,000 people
attended the rally, according to aerial photography analysis by AirPhotosLive.com
for CBS
News.
The rally was a combination of what initially were
announced as separate events: Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" and
Colbert's counterpart, the "March to Keep Fear Alive." Its stated
purpose was to provide a venue for attendees to be heard above what Stewart
described as the more vocal and extreme 15–20% of Americans who "control
the conversation" of American
politics, the argument being that
these extremes demonize each other and engage in counterproductive actions,
with a return to sanity intended to promote reasoned discussion. Despite
Stewart's insistence to the contrary, news reports cast the rally as a spoof of
Glenn Beck's
Restoring Honor
rally and Al Sharpton's
Reclaim
the Dream rally.
Miami Vice soundtrack begins an 11-week run at
#1
Almost from its beginnings, television showed a
remarkable ability to influence the pop charts, and not only by giving exposure
to popular musical artists on programs like American Bandstand and The
Ed Sullivan Show. Many television programs also launched legitimate pop
hits in the form of their theme songs—songs like "The Peter Gunn Theme,"
"Welcome Back" and "Theme from S.W.A.T." But prior
to 1985, no television program had ever launched a smash-hit, movie-style
soundtrack album. The first one to do so was NBC's Miami Vice, a show
that not only altered the landscapes of television and fashion, but also sent
the soundtrack album of the same name to the top of the Billboard 200 on
this day in 1985—a spot it would hold for the next 11 weeks
The genesis of Miami Vice is the stuff of
television legend. It came about in the form of a memo from NBC head of
programming Brandon Tartikoff in which he documented one of his brainstorms
simply as "MTV Cops." Inspired by MTV's growing influence on the
music industry, Tartikoff reasoned that a slickly produced, visually arresting
cop show could become to television essentially what Duran Duran was to music.
Under the creative guidance of producer Michael Mann, Tartikoff's vision took
shape in 1984, when it debuted on NBC's fall schedule.
Scheduled opposite the ratings juggernaut Falcon
Crest on Friday nights at 10 pm, Miami Vice struggled in its first
season but catapulted into the Nielson Top 10 in the autumn of 1985.
Simultaneous with the television show's rise to popularity, its instrumental
theme song, by Czech composer Jan Hammer, was climbing the Billboard pop
singles chart. The popularity of that single, in turn, drove sales of the
soundtrack album Miami Vice, which featured not only Jan Hammer's theme
song and other examples of his incidental soundtrack music, but also several
original songs written expressly for the show's fall season, including
"Smuggler's Blues" and "You Belong To The City" by Glenn
Frey. The album also featured previously released songs that had been featured
prominently in the program's signature musical montages—songs such as Phil
Collins' "In The Air Tonight" and Tina Turner's "Better Be Good
To Me."
In demonstrating how five scenes' worth of difficult
expository dialogue could easily be replaced with a 90-second visual montage
set to mood-appropriate pop music, Miami Vice made a significant
creative impact on the future of American television. In demonstrating how much
additional revenue a television show could generate by releasing soundtrack
albums of pre-existing popular music, it had a significant business impact as well.
October 28, 1950
Popular radio personality Jack Benny moves to
television with The Jack Benny Program. The TV version of the show ran for the next 15 years.
Benny's success in
vaudeville soon won him attention from Hollywood, where he made his film debut
in Hollywood Revue of 1929. Over the years, he won larger roles, notably
in Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). Movies
were only a sideline for Benny, though, who found his natural medium in radio
in 1932.
In March 1932,
then-newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan, dabbling in radio, asked Benny to do an
on-air interview. Benny reluctantly agreed. His comedy, though, was so
successful that Benny was offered his own show almost immediately, which
debuted just a few months later. At first a mostly musical show with a few
minutes of Benny's comedy during interludes, the show evolved to become mostly
comedy, incorporating well-developed skits and regular characters. In many of
these skits, Benny portrayed himself as a vain egomaniac and notorious
pinchpenny who refused to replace his (very noisy) antique car and who kept his
money in a closely guarded vault. His regulars included his wife, whose
character, Mary Livingstone, deflated Benny's ego at every opportunity; Mel
Blanc, who used his famous voice to play Benny's noisy car, his exasperated
French violin teacher, and other characters; and Eddie Andersen, one of radio's
first African American stars, who played Benny's long-suffering valet,
Rochester Van Jones. The program ran until 1955.
In
the 1950s, Benny began experimenting with television, making specials in 1950,
1951, and 1952. Starting in 1952, The Jack Benny Show aired regularly,
at first once every four weeks, then every other week, then finally every week
from 1960 to 1965. Benny was as big a hit on TV as on the radio. Despite the
stingy skinflint image he cultivated on the air, Benny was known for his
generosity and modesty in real life. He died of cancer in Beverly Hills in
1974.
October 30, 1945
Henry Franklin Winkler is born.
Winkler is best known for his role as Fonzie on the 1970s American sitcom Happy Days. "The Fonz", a leather-clad greaser and auto mechanic, started out as a minor character at the show's beginning, but had achieved top billing by the time the show ended. Winkler started acting by appearing in a number of television commercials. In October 1973, he was cast for the role of Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, nicknamed The Fonz or Fonzie, in the TV show Happy Days. The show was first aired in January 1974. During his decade on Happy Days, Winkler also starred in a number of movies, including The Lords of Flatbush (1974), playing a troubled Vietnam veteran in Heroes (1977), The One and Only (1978), and a morgue attendant in Night Shift (1982), which was directed by Happy Days co-star Ron Howard.In 1979 Winkler appeared in the made-for-TV movie An American Christmas Carol, which was
a modern remake of the Charles Dickens
classic A Christmas Carol.
An American Christmas Carol was set in Concord,
New Hampshire during the Great Depression. Winkler played the role
of Benedict Slade, the Ebenezer Scrooge
equivalent of that film.
After Happy Days, Winkler put his acting career on the back burner,
as he began concentrating on producing and directing. He quickly worked on
developing his own production company and, within months, he had opened Winkler-Rich
Productions.
He produced several television shows including MacGyver, So Weird and Mr. Sunshine, Sightings, and the game shows Wintuition
and The Hollywood
Squares (the latter from 2002–2004 only). He also directed
several movies including the Billy Crystal movie Memories of Me
(1988) and Cop and a Half
(1993) with Burt Reynolds.
As the 1990s continued, Winkler began a return to acting. In 1994 he
returned to TV with the short-lived right-wing comedy Monty on Fox
which sank in mere weeks. Also in 1994, he co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in
the holiday TV movie "One Christmas", her last film. In 1998, Adam Sandler asked Winkler to play a
college football coach, a supporting role in The Waterboy (1998). He would later
appear in three other Sandler films, Little Nicky
(2000) where he plays himself and is covered in bees, Click (2006, as the main character's
father), and You
Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008). He has also played small roles
in movies such as Down to You
(2000), Holes (2003), and I Could
Never Be Your Woman (2007).
Winkler recently had a recurring role as incompetent lawyer Barry Zuckerkorn in the Fox Television comedy Arrested
Development. In one episode, his character hopped over a dead
shark lying on a pier, a reference to his role in the origin of the phrase
"jumping the shark".
After that episode, Winkler in interviews stated that he was the only person to
have "jumped the shark" twice.
When Winkler moved to CBS for one season to star in 2005–06's Out of Practice, his role as the Bluth
family lawyer on Arrested Development was taken over by Happy Days
co-star Scott Baio in the fall of 2005, shortly
before the acclaimed but Nielsen-challenged show ceased production.
In October 2008, Winkler appeared in a video on funnyordie.com with Ron Howard, reprising their roles as Fonzie
and Richie Cunningham, encouraging people to vote for Barack Obama. The video
entitled "Ron
Howard’s Call to Action" also features Andy Griffith.
October 30, 2010
The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.
The gathering that took place on October 30, 2010 at the National Mall in Washington, DC. The rally was led by Jon Stewart, host of the satirical news program The Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert, in-character as a conservative political pundit. About 215,000 people attended the rally, according to aerial photography analysis by AirPhotosLive.com for CBS News.
The rally was a combination of what initially were announced as separate events: Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" and Colbert's counterpart, the "March to Keep Fear Alive." Its stated purpose was to provide a venue for attendees to be heard above what Stewart described as the more vocal and extreme 15–20% of Americans who "control the conversation" of American politics, the argument being that these extremes demonize each other and engage in counterproductive actions, with a return to sanity intended to promote reasoned discussion. Despite Stewart's insistence to the contrary, news reports cast the rally as a spoof of Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally and Al Sharpton's Reclaim the Dream rally.
Miami Vice soundtrack begins an 11-week run at
#1
The genesis of Miami Vice is the stuff of
television legend. It came about in the form of a memo from NBC head of
programming Brandon Tartikoff in which he documented one of his brainstorms
simply as "MTV Cops." Inspired by MTV's growing influence on the
music industry, Tartikoff reasoned that a slickly produced, visually arresting
cop show could become to television essentially what Duran Duran was to music.
Under the creative guidance of producer Michael Mann, Tartikoff's vision took
shape in 1984, when it debuted on NBC's fall schedule.
Scheduled opposite the ratings juggernaut Falcon
Crest on Friday nights at 10 pm, Miami Vice struggled in its first
season but catapulted into the Nielson Top 10 in the autumn of 1985.
Simultaneous with the television show's rise to popularity, its instrumental
theme song, by Czech composer Jan Hammer, was climbing the Billboard pop
singles chart. The popularity of that single, in turn, drove sales of the
soundtrack album Miami Vice, which featured not only Jan Hammer's theme
song and other examples of his incidental soundtrack music, but also several
original songs written expressly for the show's fall season, including
"Smuggler's Blues" and "You Belong To The City" by Glenn
Frey. The album also featured previously released songs that had been featured
prominently in the program's signature musical montages—songs such as Phil
Collins' "In The Air Tonight" and Tina Turner's "Better Be Good
To Me."
In demonstrating how five scenes' worth of difficult expository dialogue could easily be replaced with a 90-second visual montage set to mood-appropriate pop music, Miami Vice made a significant creative impact on the future of American television. In demonstrating how much additional revenue a television show could generate by releasing soundtrack albums of pre-existing popular music, it had a significant business impact as well.
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