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"
The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
presents its first industry award at the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los
Angeles. The Emmy for most popular
program went to Pantomime Quiz Time, and puppeteer Shirley Dinsdale and
her puppet Judy Splinters won an award for Outstanding TV Personality. Most of
the awards were for programs produced by TV station KTLA. The station also won
an award for Outstanding Overall Achievement.
The
two-man comedy series "Sam 'n' Henry" debuts on Chicago's WGN radio
station. Two years later, after changing its name to "Amos 'n' Andy,"
the show became one of the most popular radio programs in American history.
Though
the creators and the stars of the new radio program, Freeman Gosden and Charles
Carrell, were both white, the characters they played were two black men from
the Deep South who moved to Chicago to seek their fortunes. By that time, white
actors performing in dark stage makeup--or "blackface"--had been a
significant tradition in American theater for over 100 years. Gosden and
Carrell, both vaudeville performers, were doing a Chicago comedy act in
blackface when an employee at the Chicago Tribune suggested they create a radio
show.
When
"Sam 'n' Henry" debuted in January 1926, it became an immediate hit.
In 1928, Gosden and Carrell took their act to a rival station, the Chicago
Daily News' WMAQ. When they discovered WGN owned the rights to their
characters' names, they simply changed them. As their new contract gave Gosden
and Carrell the right to syndicate the program, the popularity of "Amos
'n' Andy" soon exploded. Over the next 22 years, the show would become the
highest-rated comedy in radio history, attracting more than 40 million
listeners.
By
1951, when "Amos 'n' Andy" came to television, changing attitudes
about race and concerns about racism had virtually wiped out the practice of
blackface. With Alvin Childress and Spencer Williams taking over for Gosden and
Carrell, the show was the first TV series to feature an all-black cast and the
only one of its kind for the next 20 years. This did not stop African-American
advocacy groups and eventually the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) from criticizing both the radio and TV versions of
"Amos 'n' Andy" for promoting racial stereotypes. These protests led
to the TV show's cancellation in 1953.
The
final radio broadcast of "Amos 'n' Andy" aired on November 25, 1960.
The following year, Gosden and Carrell created a short-lived TV sequel called
"Calvin and the Colonel." This time, they avoided controversy by
replacing the human characters with an animated fox and bear. The show was
canceled after one season.
In the early 1960s, Ed Graham Productions optioned the TV rights to the comic stripBatman, and planned a
straightforward juvenile adventure show, much like Adventures
of Superman and The Lone Ranger, for CBS
on Saturday mornings.Mike Henry was set to star as Batman. Reportedly, D.C.
Comics commissioned publicity photos of Henry in a Batman costume. Around this
same time, the Playboy Club
in Chicago was screening the Batman serials (1943's Batman and 1949's Batman and Robin on Saturday
nights. It became very popular, as the hip party goers would cheer and applaud
the Dynamic Duo, and boo and hiss at the villains. East coast ABC executive
Yale Udoff, a Batman fan in childhood, attended one of these parties at the
Playboy Club and was impressed with the reaction the serials were getting. He
contacted ABC executives Harve Bennett
and Edgar J. Scherick,
who were already considering developing a TV series based on a comic strip action hero, to suggest a prime time
Batman series in the hip and fun style of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
When negotiations between CBS and Graham stalled, DC quickly re-obtained rights
and made the deal with ABC, who farmed the rights out to 20th Century Fox to produce the series.
In turn, 20th Century Fox handed the project to William Dozier and his Greenway Productions.
ABC and Fox were expecting a hip and fun—yet still serious—adventure show.
However, Dozier, who loathed comic books, concluded the only way to make the
show work was to do it as a pop artcamp comedy. Originally, espionage novelist Eric Ambler was to write the motion picture that
would launch the TV series, but he dropped out after learning of Dozier's camp
comedy approach. By the time, ABC had pushed up the debut date to January 1966,
thus foregoing the movie
until the summer hiatus, Lorenzo Semple, Jr.
had signed on as head script writer. He wrote the pilot script, and generally kept his scripts more
on the side of pop art adventure. Stanley Ralph Ross,
Stanford Sherman, and Charles Hoffman
were script writers who generally leaned more toward camp comedy, and in Ross'
case, sometimes outright slapstick and satire. Instead of producing a one-hour
show, Dozier and Semple decided to have the show air twice a week in half-hour
installments with a cliffhanger connecting the two episodes, echoing the old
movie serials. Eventually, two sets of screen tests were filmed, one with Adam West and Burt Ward, the other with Lyle Waggoner and Peter
Deyell, with West and Ward winning the roles.
The typical story began with a villain (often one of a short list of
recurring villains) committing a crime, such as stealing a fabulous gem or
taking over Gotham City.
This was followed by a scene inside Commissioner Gordon's office where he and
Chief O'Hara would deduce exactly which villain they were dealing with.
Commissioner Gordon would press a button on the Batphone, a bright red
telephone located on a pedestal in his office. The scene then cut to stately
Wayne Manor where Alfred the butler would answer the Batphone, which sat like a
normal everyday telephone on the desk in Bruce Wayne's study. Frequently, Wayne
and his ward, Dick Grayson, would be found talking with Dick's Aunt Harriet,
who was completely unaware of Bruce and Dick's identities as Batman &
Robin, respectively. Alfred would discreetly interrupt so they could excuse
themselves and go to the Batphone. Upon learning which criminal he would face this
time, Bruce would push a button concealed within a bust of Shakespeare that stood on his desk causing a
bookcase to slide back and revealing two poles. "To the Batpoles!"
Wayne would exclaim, at which he and Grayson would slide down to the Batcave,
activating an unseen mechanism on the way that dressed them as their alter
egos. The title sequence
often began at this point.
Similar in style and content to the 1940s serials, they would arrive in the Batcave in full costume and jump into the Batmobile, Batman in the driver's seat. Robin
would say, "Atomicbatteries
to power...turbines to speed." Batman would
respond, "Roger, ready to move out." And the two would race
off out of the cave at high speed. As the Batmobile approached the mouth of the
cave, actually a tunnel entrance in Los Angeles's Bronson Canyon, a hinged barrier dropped down to
allow the car to exit onto the road. Scenes from the Dynamic Duo sliding down
the batpoles in the Batcave, to the arrival at Commissioner Gordon's building
via the Batmobile (while the episode credits are shown), are reused footage that is used in nearly all part 1
and single episodes.
After arriving at Commissioner Gordon's office, the initial discussion of
the crime usually led to the Dynamic Duo conducting their investigation alone.
During the investigation, a meeting with the villain would usually ensue, with
the heroes getting involved in a fight and the villain getting away, leaving a
series of unlikely clues for the Duo to investigate. Later, the Duo would face
the villain again, and he or she would capture one or both of the heroes and
place them in a deathtrap
with a cliffhanger ending which was usually resolved in
the first few minutes of the next episode.
The same pattern was repeated in the following episode until the villain was
defeated in a major brawl where the action was punctuated by superimposed onomatopoeic words, as in comic book fight scenes
("POW!", "BAM!", "ZONK!", etc.). Not counting
five of the Penguin's henchmen who disintegrate or get blown up in the
associated Batman theatrical movie, only three criminal characters die
during the series: the Riddler's moll Molly (played by Jill St. John in Episode 2) who accidentally falls
into the Batcave's atomic pile, and two out-of-town gunmen who shoot at the
Dynamic Duo toward the end of the "Zelda The Great/A Death Worse Than
Fate" episode, but end up killing each other instead. In "Instant
Freeze," Mr. Freeze freezes a butler solid and knocks him over, causing
him to smash to pieces, although this is implied rather than seen, and there is
a later reference suggesting the butler survived. In "Green Ice," Mr.
Freeze freezes a policeman solid; it is left unclear whether he survived or
not. In "The Penguin's Nest," a policeman suffers an electric shock
at the hands of the Penguin's accomplices, but he apparently survived as he
appeared in some later episodes. In "The Bookworm Turns,"
Commissioner Gordon appears to be shot and falls off a bridge to his death, but
Batman deduces that this was actually an expert high diver in disguise,
employed by The Bookworm as a ruse (implying that the diver survived the fall).
Robin, in particular, was especially well known for saying "Holy
(insert), Batman!" whenever he encountered something startling.
The series utilized a narrator (producer William Dozier, uncredited) who parodied both the
breathless narration style of the 1940s serials and Walter Winchell's narration of The
Untouchables. He would end many of the cliffhanger
episodes by intoning, "Tune in
tomorrow — same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!"
Only two of the series' guest villains ever discovered Batman's true
identity: Egghead by
deductive reasoning, and King Tut on
two occasions (once with a bug on the Batmobile and once by accidentally mining
into The Batcave). Egghead was tricked into disbelieving
his discovery, as was Tut in the episode when he bugged the Batmobile. In the
episode when Tut tunnelled into the Batcave, he was hit on the head by a rock
which made him forget his discovery and jarred him back into his identity as a
mild-mannered Professor of Egyptology at Yale University. (He didn't even recognize
Batgirl, asking her, "Why are you wearing that purple mask, lady?")
In Season 1, the dynamic duo, Batman (Adam West) and Robin (Burt Ward), are super crime-fighting heroes,
contending with the villains of Gotham City. It begins with the two-parter,
"Hi Diddle Riddle" and "Smack in the Middle", featuring
Frank Gorshin as The Riddler.
In Season 2, the show suffered from repetition of its characters and
formula. In addition, critics noted that the series' delicate balance of drama
and humor that the first season maintained was lost as the stories became
increasingly farcical. This, combined with Lorenzo Semple Jr. contributing
fewer scripts and having less of an influence on the series, caused viewers to
tire of the show and for critics to complain, "If you've seen one episode
of Batman, you've seen them all."
By Season 3, ratings were
falling and the future of the series seemed uncertain. A promotional short
featuring Yvonne Craig
as Batgirl and Tim Herbert as Killer Moth was produced. The short was convincing
enough to pick up Batman for another season, and introduced Batgirl as a
regular on the show in an attempt to attract more female viewers. Batgirl's
alter ego was Barbara Gordon, a mild-mannered librarian at the Gotham Library
and Commissioner Gordon's daughter.[3] The show was reduced to once a week,
with mostly self-contained episodes, although the following week's villain
would be in a tag at the end of the episode, similar to a soap opera.
Accordingly, the narrator's cliffhanger phrases were eliminated, but most
episodes would end with him saying something to the effect of "Watch
the next episode!"
Aunt Harriet was reduced to just two cameo appearances during the third
season because of Madge Blake's
poor health. (Aunt Harriet was also mentioned in another episode, but was not
seen; her absence was explained by her being in shock upstairs.) The nature of
the scripts and acting started to enter into the realm of the surrealistic. For example, the set's backgrounds
became mere two-dimensional cut-outs against a stark black stage. In addition,
the third season was much more topical, with references to hippies, mods, and
distinctive 1960's slang, which the previous seasons avoided.
Near the end of the third season, ABC planned to cut the budget even further
by eliminating Robin and Chief O'Hara, and making Batgirl Batman's full-time partner. Both Dozier
and West vetoed this idea, and ABC cancelled the show. Weeks later, NBC
offered to pick the show up for a fourth season and even restore it to its
original twice-a-week format, if the sets were still available for use.
However, NBC's offer came too late: Fox had already demolished the sets a week
before. NBC had no interest in paying the $800,000 for the rebuild, so the
offer was withdrawn.
January 12, 1971
The controversial
situation comedy All in the Family debuts.
The show, which was one of TV's top hits for much of
its run, starred Carroll O'Connor as bigoted Archie Bunker; Jean Stapleton as
his wife, Edith; and Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner as the couple's liberal
daughter and son-in-law. The show changed the course of television by
portraying the harsh realities of bigotry and racism and dealing with
controversial subjects like birth control, rape, and politics. The show changed
its name to Archie Bunker's Place in 1979, when the action shifted from
the Bunkers' living room to the bar Archie owned.
January 12, 1981
Dynasty premieres on ABC.
The oil tycoon Blake Carrington (John Forsythe)
prepares to marry his former secretary, the beautiful and innocent Krystle
(Linda Evans), in the three-hour television movie that kicks off the prime-time
ABC soap opera Dynasty.
Over the next eight years, the Carringtons, a rich Denver oil clan, and
another wealthy family, the Colbys, would form the center of the campy,
glamorous universe that was Dynasty. Envisioned as bitter rivals, in the
style of the Montagues and Capulets of Romeo and Juliet, the two
families intermarried and plotted against each other with equal enthusiasm. At
the beginning of the second season, as buzz around the show began to grow, the
British actress Joan Collins entered the mix as Blake Carrington’s evil
ex-wife, Alexis; her clash with the good girl Krystle became one of the central
plotlines of the show. In one of the series’ more memorable moments, Alexis and
Krystle had a catfight in a lily pond.
Dynasty’s elaborately melodramatic plot lines resembled those of the
daytime soap operas (kidnappings, amnesia, characters returning from the dead,
etc.) and its style fit perfectly with the over-the-top excesses of the 1980s.
It was no wonder, as the show was produced partially by Aaron Spelling, the man
behind such hit shows as The Mod Squad, Charlie’s Angels, The
Love Boat, Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. By the end
of the 1982-83 season, Dynasty was fifth in the top-rated programs; it
climbed to third place in 1983-84 and grabbed the number one spot in 1984-85.
Its success spawned a short-lived spin-off, Dynasty II: The Colbys, and
an entire line of licensed products such as clothing, bedding and perfume.
The over-the-top cliffhanger ending to the fourth season in May 1985 marked
the beginning of the end, as the entire Carrington family gathered for a
wedding in the fictional country of Moldavia. The festivities were disrupted by
a terrorist attack, and while all of the main characters emerged unscathed, the
show’s ratings began to drop precipitously. During its final season, 1988-89, Dynasty
fell to a dismal 57th place and was unceremoniously dropped from the ABC
lineup. Various plot lines were left unresolved, but disappointed fans got
their long-awaited closure two years later, when ABC aired a two-part movie Dynasty:
The Reunion in October 1991.
January 13, 1966
Elizabeth Montgomery’s character,
Samantha, on Bewitched, had a baby. The baby's name was Tabitha.
January 14, 1976
Bionic Woman debuted on
ABC.
The Bionic Woman is an American television series starring Lindsay Wagner that
aired for three seasons between 1976 and 1978 as a spin-off from The Six
Million Dollar Man. Wagner stars
as tennis pro Jaime
Sommers who is nearly killed in
a skydivingaccident. Sommers' life is saved by Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) and Dr. Rudy Wells (Martin E. Brooks), by bionicsurgical implants similar to those of The Six Million
Dollar ManSteve
Austin. As the result of Jaime's
bionics, she has amplified hearing in her right ear, a greatly strengthened
right arm, and stronger and enhanced legs which enable her to run at speeds
exceeding 60 miles per hour.
The series proved highly
popular worldwide, gaining high ratings in the US and particularly so in the UK
(where it became the only Science fiction programme to achieve the No.1
position in the ratings during the 20th Century). The series ran for three seasons
from 1976 to 1978 and was first shown on the ABC network and then the NBC network for its final season. Years after its
cancelation, three spin-off TV movies were produced between 1987 and 1994.
Reruns of the show aired on Sci-Fi Channel from 1997
to 2001. A remake
of the series was produced in
2007.
January 15, 1981
Hill Street Blues begins run.
When the series first
appeared, the police show had largely been given up for dead. Critics savaged
stodgy and moralistic melodramas, and scoffed at lighter fare like Starsky and
Hutch. Created by Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll, Hill Street Blues invigorated
television, paving the way for more realistic and gritty fare.
Hill Street Blues was set in
an anonymous northern city (the exteriors were actually filmed in Chicago) and
was the first real attempt by television to portray police officers as fallible
human beings. Each episode began with the 7 a.m. roll call led by Sergeant
Esterhaus. He closed the roll call with his trademark refrain, "Let's be
careful out there."
The series not only changed
the way that Americans viewed police officers, it also revolutionized the
television drama itself. The show resisted formula and introduced the ensemble
cast. Whereas early cop shows like Dragnet and Adam-12 were centered around a
couple of officers who always got their man by the end of the hour, the full
squad house of regulars on Hill Street Blues rarely resolved cases in one
episode.
Hill Street Blues was
acclaimed through its entire run. When it ended in May 1987, it had set the
records for most Emmys won in a single season and most nominations in one year.
January 16, 1976
Donny and
Marie premieres.
Music variety show Donny and Marie
premieres, starring 18-year-old Donny Osmond and his 16-year-old sister, Marie. The show ran for only three years, but the brother
and sister were reunited in 1998 with a daytime talk show.
January 17, 1966
NBC Television greenlights The
Monkees.
The inspiration came from
the Beatles, the financing came from Screen Gems, the music came from Don
Kirshner and the stars came from an exhaustive audition process that began with
this ad in Daily Variety in
September 1965:
Madness!!
Auditions
Folk & Rock Musicians-Singers
For Acting Roles in New TV Series
Running Parts for 4 Insane Boys, Age 17-21
The ad drew more than 400 young men to the offices of
Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the young Hollywood producing team that would
later make Easy Rider,but who for now were trying to milk the
establishment rather than defy it. They spent the next four months shooting,
cutting, market-testing, re-cutting and re-market-testing a comedy pilot they
hoped would land them a network television deal. They got their green light on
January 17, 1966, when the National Broadcasting Corporation ordered 32
episodes of The Monkees for its upcoming fall schedule.
The next eight months were a bit of a whirlwind for
Rafelson and Schneider, for the team of songwriters and studio musicians
assembled by Don Kirschner and, not least, for the four "insane boys"
chosen to become the Monkees. Mickey Dolenz had never played a drum prior to
being cast as "Mickey," and Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith had no acting
experience prior to becoming "Peter" and "Mike." Davy Jones
was already a triple-threat in the areas of acting, singing and being cute, but
it had never been Rafelson and Schneider's intention to find such all-around
professionals. "We wanted guys who could play themselves," Schneider
explained to the pressahead of the NBC premiere of The Monkees in
September 1966. "We didn't even look at actors, and we didn't look for
experienced rock and roll groups."
The strategy, and indeed the entire grand scheme
behind The Monkees, succeeded beyond all expectations. Not only did the
television show find success against formidable competition in its time slot
from Gilligan's Island, but the group that was a
made-for-television knockoff of the Beatles soon had actual records that were
outselling the Beatles themselves. Vincent Canby of the New York Times foresaw
the commercial success of Rafelson and Schneider's creation the moment he
witnessed the reaction of a crowd of preteen girls during a promotional
appearance by the Monkees just three days before their network debut. "The
Monkees' appearance yesterday afternoon at the Broadway," Canby wrote,
"was just part of an elaborate campaign...to capture the teen-age
imagination. The thoroughness of the campaign, as shown yesterday, might prompt
renewed debate on the age-old question of free will. Do the teen-agers have a
chance these days?"
The
Zenith Radio Corporation of Chicago demonstrates the first pay television
system.
The company sent movies over
the airway via scrambled signals, and the 300 families who participated in the
test could send telephone signals to decode the movies for $1 each. Three
movies were shown in the demonstration: April Showers with Jack Carson, Welcome
Stranger with Bing Crosby, and Homecoming with Clark Gable and Lana
Turner. During the four-week test, test families ordered more than 2,600
movies.
Simple though it seems,
putting movies on TV at all, let alone sending them over the phone, was a
technically complex proposition taking years to come to fruition. A motion
picture presented 24 frames per second-a rate that created an annoying flicker
on TV. The earliest attempts to broadcast movies on TV took place in 1928 and
included an extremely blurry hockey game and an excerpt from the movie The
Taming of the Shrew. Improvements in technology eventually led to the
regular broadcasting of movies on TV.
Despite Zenith's
experiments with movies-by-phone, pay movies did not become popular until later
in the century, following the spread of cable TV in the 1960s and '70s.
Although cable TV had been created in the late 1940s to give rural households
better television reception, it was not until the 1960s, when cable became
widely available in urban areas, that cable companies began introducing their
own networks accessible only to subscribers.
In
1975, cable networks began using satellites to distribute their programming to
heavily regulated local cable operators. In the late 1980s and early '90s, the
size of the cable industry exploded, and many companies offered more than 100
channels to their clients. Now, more than 10,000 cable systems operate
throughout the United States. Their specialized programming features everything
from foreign news and shopping clubs to sports coverage and classic movies.
Cable companies still also offer an array of pay-per-view movies accessible
with a touch of the customer's remote control.
January 1, 1971
Tobacco ads representing $20 million dollars in
advertising were banned from TV and radio broadcast.
January 5, 1961
Mr. Ed debuted.
The show would run for six years.
Mister
Ed is
an American television situation comedy produced by Filmways that first aired
in syndication from January 5 to July 2, 1961, and then on CBS from October 1, 1961, to February 6,
1966. The show's title character is a talking horse, originally appearing
in short stories by Walter R. Brooks.
Mister
Ed is
one of the few series to debut in syndication and be picked up by a major
network for prime time.
The stars of the show are Mister Ed, a palominohorse
who could talk ("played" by geldingBamboo
Harvester and voiced by Allan
Lane), and his owner, an eccentric and enormously klutzy
yet friendly architect named Wilbur Post (portrayed by Alan
Young). Much of the program's humor stemmed from the fact
Mister Ed would speak only to Wilbur, as well as Ed's notoriety as a
troublemaker. According to the show's producer, Arthur
Lubin, Young was chosen as the lead character because he
"just seemed like the sort of guy a horse would talk to". Lubin, a
friend of Mae West, scored a coup by
persuading the screen icon to guest star in one episode.
In the United States, reruns aired on Nick
at Nite from March 3, 1986, to February 1, 1993. Sister
station TV
Land also reran the show from 1996-98 and again from
2003-06. The series is currently broadcast every morning on This TV,
along with sister series The Patty Duke Show.
As of January 1, 2011, the first two seasons of the show are available on Hulu.
The show was derived from a series of short
stories by Walter R. Brooks, which
began with The Talking Horse in the 18-Sep-1937 issue of Liberty.
Brooks is otherwise known for the Freddy
the Pig series of children's novels, which likewise
feature talking animals who interact with humans.
The concept of the show was similar to Francis the Talking Mule,
with the equine normally talking only to one person (Wilbur), and thus both
helping and frustrating its owner.
Ed was voice-trained for the show by Les Hilton.
Lane remained anonymous as the voice of Mister Ed, and the show's producers
referred to him only as "an actor who prefers to remain nameless,"
though once the show became a hit, Lane campaigned the producers for credit,
which he never received. The credits listed Mister Ed as playing
"himself"; however, his family tree name was Bamboo
Harvester. Ed's stablemate, a quarterhorse named Pumpkin,
who was later to appear in the television series Green
Acres, was also Ed's stunt double in the show.
It is often said the crew was able to get Mister
Ed to move his mouth by applying peanut butter to his gums in order for him to
try to remove it by moving his lips. However, Alan Young said in 2004 that he
had started the story himself. In another interview, Young said, "Al Simon
and Arthur Lubin, the producers, suggested we keep the method a secret because
they thought kids would be disappointed if they found out the technical details
of how it was done, so I made up the peanut butter story, and everyone bought
it. It was initially done by putting a piece of nylon thread in his mouth. But
Ed actually learned to move his lips on cue when the trainer touched his hoof.
In fact, he soon learned to do it when I stopped talking during a scene! Ed was
very smart."
Others argued that examination of Mister Ed
footage shows Ed's handler pulling strings to make him talk, and that this
method was at work at least some of the time. Young later said during an
interview for the Archive of American Television that a nylon string was tied
to the halter
and the loose end inserted under his lip to make Ed talk, saying that he had
used the peanut butter fable for years in radio interviews instead of telling
the truth. The loose thread can be seen tied to the halter, and it is clearly
not taut as it would be if it were being pulled. Young also states in the AAT
interview that after the first season, Ed didn't need the nylon – Alan and
trainer Les were out riding one day and Les started laughing, telling Alan to
look at Ed, who was moving his lips every time they stopped talking, as if
attempting to join in the conversation. This difference is visible when
comparing first season episodes to later ones, as it is clear that early on
he's working the irritating string out, sometimes working his tongue in the attempt
too, and later on he tends to only move his upper lip, and appears to watch
Alan Young closely, waiting for him to finish his lines before twitching his
lip.
Young added in the Archive interview that Ed saw
the trainer as the disciplinarian, or father figure, and when scolded for
missing a cue, would go to Alan for comfort, like a mother figure, which Les
said was a good thing.
There are conflicting stories involving of the
death of Bamboo Harvester, the horse that played Mr. Ed. By 1968, Bamboo
Harvester was suffering from a variety of health problems. In 1970 he was euthanized
with no publicity, and buried at Snodgrass Farm in Oklahoma.
However, a different version was given by Alan
Young. Young wrote that he'd frequently visit his former
"co-star" in retirement. He states that Mr. Ed died from an
inadvertent tranquilizer administered while he was "in retirement" in
a stable in Burbank, California where he lived with his trainer Lester Hilton.
Young says Hilton was out of town visiting relatives and a temporary care giver
might have seen Ed rolling on the ground, struggling to get up. Young said Ed
was a heavy horse and he wasn't always strong enough to get back on his feet
without struggling. The theory is the care giver thought the horse was in
distress and administered a tranquilizer and for unknown reason, the horse died
within hours. The remains were cremated and scattered by Hilton in the Los
Angeles area at a spot known only to him.
A different horse that died in Oklahoma in
February 1979 was widely thought to be Bamboo Harvester, but this horse was in
fact a horse that posed for the still pictures of "Mr. Ed" used by
the production company for the show's press kits. After Bamboo Harvester's
death in 1970, this horse was unofficially known as Mister Ed, which led to him
being reported as such (including sardonic comments on Saturday Night Live'sWeekend Update)
following his own death.
Young said that when the Oklahoma horse death
story came out in 1979, he knew it wasn't the real Mr. Ed, but didn't have the
heart to "shatter their illusions" that the horse being memorialized
wasn't the real Mr. Ed. He believes it was the horse used for early publicity
photos.
The other main character throughout the series
was Wilbur's tolerant (to a point) young wife, Carol (Connie
Hines). The Posts also had two sets of neighbors, whom Ed
delighted in making Wilbur appear as eccentric as possible. They included the
Addisons, Roger (Larry Keating) and
his wife Kay (Edna Skinner), who
both appeared from the pilot episode until Keating's untimely death from
leukemia in 1963; thereafter, Skinner continued appearing as Kay alone, without
mention of Roger's absence, until the neighbors were recast. In the
"official" pilot episode — two were filmed because the horse in the
first pilot was unruly and difficult to work with — Roger caught Wilbur and Ed
"conversing" and realized that Mr. Ed could talk, but since Ed only
spoke to Wilbur — Post diffused the potential calamity by sufficiently
convincing Addison that he was a ventriloquist and could "throw" Mr.
Ed's voice. Following the Addisons, the Posts' new neighbors were Col. Gordon
Kirkwood, USAF (Ret.), portrayed by (Leon
Ames), Wilbur's former commanding officer, and his wife
Winnie (Florence MacMichael). Winnie actually called her husband
"Colonel" and referred to him as "The Colonel" in the
presence of others; she never called him by his given name. Ames and MacMichael
appeared on the series from 1963-65. In 1963, child
actorDarby Hinton, cast
thereafter as Israel Boone on NBC's Daniel Boone,
guest-starred as 'Rocky' in the episode "Getting Ed's Goat." Jack
Albertson appeared occasionally from 1961-63 as Kay
Addison's older brother Paul Fenton. Mae
West and Clint
Eastwood also appeared in different episodes as
themselves.
For the final season, the show focused strictly
on the home life of the Posts, which was made more interesting when Carol's
grumpy and uptight father, Mr. Higgins (Barry
Kelley), who appeared occasionally throughout the entire
series, apparently moved in with Wilbur and Carol during the final episodes.
Mr. Higgins loathed Wilbur since Wilbur's quirky eccentricity always clashed
with his own emotionless and uptight personality. Carol's father never stopped
trying to persuade her to divorce Wilbur, whom he often referred to as a
"kook" because of Wilbur's clumsiness. Alan Young performed
double-duty during the final season of the series, also directing nearly all of
those episodes.
Although Connie Hines retired from acting a few
years after the show's cancellation in 1966, she and Alan Young made public
appearances together.
The theme song was written by the songwriting
team of Jay Livingston and Ray
Evans and sung by Livingston. After using only the music
to open the first eight episodes, a decision was made to replace the
instrumental-only version with one containing the lyrics. Livingston agreed to
sing it himself, at least until a professional singer could be found; however,
the producers liked the songwriter's vocals and kept them on the broadcast.
A joke/controversy concerning the theme song has
existed since at least the 1980s: that the tune contains "satanic
messages" if played in reverse. This YouTube
video suggests that some portions
reverse to "sing this song for Satan"
and "Satan is the singer". Over the years, many radio stations have
kept this rumor alive, mostly as a parody of the whole "backmasking"
controversy.
The series was sponsored from 1961-63 by Studebaker
Corporation, an American car manufacturer which stopped
manufacturing cars in the United States in 1964 and its Canadian unit stopped
producing cars in 1966, but that company survives today in a different field as
Studebaker-Worthington Leasing Company.
Studebakers
were featured prominently in the show during this period. The Posts are shown
owning a 1962 Lark convertible, and the
company used publicity shots featuring the Posts and Mister Ed with their
product (various cast members also appeared in "integrated
commercials" for Lark
at the end of the program). The Addisons are shown owning a 1963 Avanti.
Ford Motor Company provided the vehicles starting at the beginning of 1965. It
is also interesting to note that, in the first episode ever aired, the Posts
were driving a 1961 Studebaker Lark.
January 5, 1971
ABC's Alias Smith and Jones aired for the first time.
Alias
Smith and Jones began with a made-for-TV movie of the previous year called The
Young Country, about con artists in the Old West. It was produced, written and
directed by Roy Huggins, who served as executive producer of AS&J and,
under the pseudonym of John Thomas James, at least shared the writing credit on
most episodes.
Roger
Davis starred as Stephen Foster Moody, and Pete Duel had the secondary but
significant role of Honest John Smith. Joan Hackett played a character called
Clementine Hale; a character with the same name appeared in two AS&J
episodes, played by Sally Field. This pilot was rejected, but Huggins was given
a second chance and, with Glen A. Larson, developed Alias Smith and Jones. Both
The Young Country and the series pilot movie originally aired as ABC Movies of
the Week.
Alias
Smith and Jones was made in the same spirit as many other American TV series,
from Huggins' own The Fugitive to Renegade, about fugitives on the run across
America who get involved in the personal lives of the people they meet. The
major difference was that Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry were guilty of the
crimes that they were accused of committing, but were trying to begin a
non-criminal life.
The
series was modeled on the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford (Universal contract player Ben Murphy
was offered to the producers because he was considered a Paul Newman
lookalike.) There were a number of similarities between the film and the TV
series: One of the lead characters in the film was called Harvey Logan (played
by Ted Cassidy). In real life Harvey Logan was also known by the nickname of
"Kid Curry", Harvey Logan was an associate of the real Butch Cassidy
and unlike the TV version, the real Kid Curry was a cold-blooded killer.
The
TV series also featured a group of robbers called the Devil's Hole Gang,
loosely based on the Hole in the Wall Gang from which Cassidy recruited most of
his outlaws. In order to lend them an element of audience sympathy, Heyes and
Curry were presented as men who avoided bloodshed (though Curry did once kill
in self-defense) and were always attempting to reform and seek redemption for
their "prior ways".
The
names "Smith" and "Jones" originated from a comment in the
1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when, prior to one of their final
hold-ups, the characters are outside a bank in Bolivia and Sundance turns to
Butch and says: "I'm Smith and you're Jones."
January 8, 1966
The final episode of "Shindig!" was
broadcast on ABC-TV.
The show
featured the Kinks and the Who. Shindig! is
an American musical variety series which aired on ABC from September 16, 1964]-January 8,
1966. The show was hosted by Jimmy O'Neill, a disc jockey in
Los Angeles at the time who also created the show along with his
wife Sharon Sheeleyand production executive Art Stolnitz. The
original pilot was rejected by ABC and David Sontag, then Executive Producer of
ABC, redeveloped and completely redesigned the show. A new pilot with a new
cast of artists was shot starring Sam Cooke.
That pilot aired as the premiere episode.
Shindig! was conceived as a short-notice replacement
for Hootenanny, a
series that had specialized in folk revival music. The folk revival had fizzled in 1964 as
the result of the British Invasion, which damaged the ratings for Hootenanny and
prompted that show's cancellation.
Shindig! focused on a broader variety of popular music
than its predecessor and first aired for a half-hour every Wednesday evening,
but was expanded to an hour in January 1965. In the fall of 1965, the show
split into two half-hour telecasts, on Thursday and Saturday nights.
Shindig!'s premiere episode was actually the second pilot, and
featured Sam Cooke, The Everly Brothers and The Righteous
Brothers. Later shows were taped in
Britain with The Beatles as the guests. The series featured other "British invasion" bands and performers including The Who, The Rolling Stones and Cilla Black. Shindig continued
to broadcast episodes from London throughout its run.
Shindig!'s success prompted NBC to air the similar series Hullabaloo starting in January 1965 and other producers to
launch syndicated rock music shows like Shivaree and Hollywood A Go-Go.
In March 1965, Little Eva performed
her hit song "The Loco-Motion"
in a live but short version of the song. This is the only known video clip of
her singing the song.
Shindig! is one of the few rock music shows of the era to
still have all of the episodes available to watch.
January 9, 1996
The first episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun aired on NBC.
The premise of the show revolves around an
extraterrestrial research expedition attempting to live as a normal human
family in the fictional city of Rutherford, Ohio, said to be 52 miles
(84 km) outside of Cleveland, where they live in an attic apartment. Humor was
principally derived from the aliens' attempts to study human society and,
because of their living as humans themselves while on Earth, to understand the
human condition. This show reflects human life from the perspective of aliens
and many sources of humour are from the learning experiences the alien
characters have. Most of the episodes are named after the protagonist
"Dick". In later episodes, they became more accustomed to Earth and
often became more interested in their human lives than in their mission.
Dick Solomon (John Lithgow), the High Commander and leader of the expedition, is
the family provider, and takes a position as a physics professor at Pendelton
State University. Information officer Tommy (Joseph
Gordon-Levitt) has been given the
body of a teenager and is forced to enroll in high school (later college),
leaving security officer Sally (Kristen
Johnston) and communications officer Harry (French Stewart) to spend their lives as twenty somethings hanging
out at home and bouncing through short-term jobs. The show also revolves around
their relationships with humans, mostly their love interests.
January 10, 1971
Masterpiece
Theatre debuts.
Among
the show's many presentations are Upstairs Downstairs (1974-1977), I,
Claudius (1978), and A Tale of Two Cities (1989). Program hosts
included Alistair Cooke and Russell Baker.
