Your HOLIDAY SOR-BAY: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend | California Christmastime

 

Here is a 

"HOLIDAY SOR-BAY"

a little spark of madness

that we could use to artificially maintain our Christmas spirit.

California Christmastime" full music video from Rachel Bloom and the cast of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Stay Tuned


Tony Figueroa

Teri Garr

Speed bumps, I was thinking, you know, you're driving along, everything's OK, and then there's a speed bump to go, 'Slow down.' Go over it real slowly, and you hit the pedal, and you keep going, and I just thought it was kind of a nice metaphor for life.

-Teri Garr

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.

Good Night Ms. Garr

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in TV History - Tony on the Picket Line Part I

Bob Barker

Networks decide who will have a chance to do shows, but it is the viewers who make the final decision of who stays and who goes.

I am very fortunate, in that the television viewers of our country have decided that Bob Barker can stay.

-Bob Barker

Robert William Barker

December 12, 1923 – August 26, 2023

Bob Barker was an American television game show host. He hosted CBS's The Price Is Right, the longest-running daytime game show in North American television history, from 1972 to 2007. He also hosted Truth or Consequences from 1956 to 1975.

Born in Darrington, Washington, in modest circumstances, Barker joined the United States Navy Reserve during World War II. He worked part-time in radio while attending college. In 1950, he moved to California to pursue a broadcasting career. He was given his own radio show, The Bob Barker Show, which ran for six years. He began his game show career in 1956, hosting Truth or Consequences. He subsequently hosted various game shows, and the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants from 1967 to 1987, giving him the distinction of being the longest-serving host of those pageants.

Barker began hosting The Price Is Right in 1972. He became an advocate for animal rights and of animal rights activism, supporting groups such as the United Activists for Animal Rights, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. In 2007, he retired from hosting The Price Is Right after celebrating his 50-year career on television. In the years after his retirement, Barker continued to make occasional public appearances from 2009 to 2017.

Barker was a vegetarian. In 1982, Barker began ending The Price Is Right episodes with the phrase: "This is Bob Barker reminding you to help control the pet population — have your pets spayed or neutered."

In 1987, Barker requested the removal of fur prizes for the Miss USA pageant and stepped down as host when the producers refused. In 1989, Barker and United Activists for Animal Rights publicly accused several media projects and the American Humane Association of animal mistreatment and condoning animal mistreatment, a tactic which resulted in a $10 million suit against him and the UAAR for libel, slander, and invasion of privacy.

Barker founded DJ&T Foundation in 1994, named after his late wife and mother, which has contributed millions of dollars to animal-neutering programs and funded animal rescue and park facilities all over the United States. In 2004, Barker donated $1 million (equivalent to $1.5 million in 2022) to Columbia Law School to support the study of animal rights.

Good Night Neighbor

In Solidarity

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: April 2023 PART II

 

April 12, 1998

The pilot episode of Junkyard Wars aired. 

April 15, 1948

Hollywood Screen Test debuts. TV talent show Hollywood Screen Test debuts on this day in 1948. Unlike other talent shows, the program featured aspiring professionals, not pure amateurs, performing in drama and comedy sketches with established stars. Grace Kelly, Jack Klugman, and Jack Lemmon all got their big break on the show, which ran until 1953.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: April 2022 PART I

April 4, 1967

Johnny Carson quit "The Tonight Show." 

Carson Quit the day after the NBC network had broadcast another rerun of one of his prior shows. Carson had not performed while the AFTRA strike continued against the American TV and radio networks. During the two weeks after the AFTRA strike failed, singer Jimmy Dean and comedian Bob Newhart took over hosting duties. Carson would receive a raise of $30,000 a week and return on April 24.

April 5, 1987

Married... with Children first aired. 

The show aired for 11 seasons and featured a dysfunctional family living in Chicago, Illinois. The show, notable for being the first prime time television series to air on Fox, ran from April 5, 1987, to June 9, 1997. The series was created by Michael G. Moye and Ron Leavitt. The show was known for handling non-standard topics for the time period, which garnered the then-fledgling Fox network a standing among the Big Three television networks.

The series' 11-season, 259-episode run makes it the longest-lasting live-action sitcom on the Fox network. The show's famous theme song is "Love and Marriage" by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, performed by Frank Sinatra from the 1955 television production Our Town.

The first season of the series was videotaped at ABC Television Center in Hollywood. From season two to season eight, the show was taped at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood and the remaining three seasons were taped at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City. The series was produced by Embassy Communications on its first season and the remaining seasons by ELP Communications under the studio Columbia Pictures Television (and eventually Columbia TriStar Television).

In 2007, it was listed as one of Time Magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-Time." In 2008, The show placed #94 on Entertainment Weekly's "New TV Classics" list.

The show follows the lives of Al Bundy, a once-glorious high school football player (who scored four touchdowns in a single game for Polk High School) turned hard luck salesman of women's shoes; his tartish, obnoxious wife Peg; their attractive but dimwitted and promiscuous daughter Kelly; and Bud, their unpopular, girl crazy, oily but comparatively smart son (and the only Bundy who ever attended college). Their neighbors are the upwardly mobile Steve Rhoades and his wife Marcy, who later gets remarried to Jefferson D'Arcy, a white-collar criminal who becomes Marcy's "trophy husband" and Al's sidekick. Most storylines involve a scheming Al being foiled by his cartoonish dim wit and bad luck. His rivalry with and loathing for Marcy play a significant role in most episodes.

April 5, 1987

The Tracey Ullman Show first aired.

The Tracey Ullman Show is an American television variety show starring Tracey Ullman. It debuted on April 5, 1987, as the Fox network's second prime-time series after Married... with Children, and ran until May 26, 1990. The show is produced by Gracie Films and 20th Century Fox Television. The show blended sketch comedy shorts with many musical numbers, featuring choreography by Paula Abdul.

The Tracey Ullman Show is known for producing a series of shorts featuring the Simpson family, which was adapted into the TV series The Simpsons, which is also produced by Gracie Films and 20th Century Fox Television (now 20th Television).

April 7, 1927

The first simultaneous telecast of image and sound takes place. 

Then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover read a speech in Washington, D.C., that was transmitted to the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City. The New York audience saw and heard a tiny televised image of Hoover that was less than 3 square inches.

April 7, 2012

Longtime “60 Minutes” journalist Mike Wallace dies at age 93 in New Canaan, Connecticut. 

During his career, Wallace interviewed everyone from world leaders to Hollywood celebrities to scam artists, and was well-known for his hard-nosed style of questioning.

Myron Leon Wallace was born on May 9, 1918, in Brookline, Massachusetts. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants and his father worked as a wholesale grocer and insurance broker. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1939, Wallace was a radio news writer and announcer in Michigan and Chicago. He then enlisted in the Navy, serving as a communications officer during World War II.

In the 1950s, Wallace worked on TV talk shows and game shows in New York City, and also appeared in commercials and acted on Broadway. He developed his style as a tenacious interrogator on the TV interview show "Night Beat," which aired from 1956 to 1957. In 1962, the eldest of Wallace's two sons died at age 19 in a hiking accident in Greece, a tragedy that inspired Wallace to focus his career on serious journalism. In 1963, he became a correspondent for CBS News, and went on to report about theVietnam War, among other stories.

"60 Minutes" premiered on CBS on September 24, 1968, and was co-hosted by Wallace and Harry Reasoner.  The show, with its trademark opening sequence featuring a ticking stopwatch, became hugely popular and influential, spawning a slew of other newsmagazine programs, such as "20/20" and "Primetime Live," and ranking among the top 10 programs in the United States from 1977 to 2000. Wallace became known for investigative pieces in which he used ambush interviews and hidden cameras to uncover corruption and scams. He also conducted scores of memorable interviews with newsmakers ranging from Clint Hill, the former U.S. Secret Service agent who was in President John Kennedy's motorcade when he was assassinated, to Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1979 American hostage crisis.

Some of Wallace's reporting proved controversial. In the 1980s, he and CBS were embroiled in a $120 million libel lawsuit brought against them by General William Westmoreland for the way he was portrayed in a 1982 documentary about the Vietnam War. The general dropped the lawsuit in 1985, but Wallace later revealed that the pressure of the situation caused him to suffer a deep depression and attempt suicide.  In another incident, Wallace's 1995 interview for "60 Minutes" with tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand and CBS's controversial handling of the story served as the basis of the 1999 movie "The Insider."

Wallace retired from "60 Minutes" in 2006 at age 88, but continued to contribute occasionally to the program. His final piece aired in 2008--an interview with baseball pitcher Roger Clemens, who was accused of using performance-enhancing drugs.

April 10, 1972

After a 20-year exile in Europe, Charlie Chaplin returned to Hollywood to receive an honorary Oscar. 

Chaplin, then 82, received probably the longest standing ovation in the history of the Oscar telecast as he walked slowly to the podium to pick up his Academy Award for his "incalculable effect in making motion pictures the art form of the century." Chaplin was quite literally speechless as he looked at the throng of stars whose cheers kept getting louder. He finally uttered "thank you so much," referring to the audience as "sweet people." And there wasn't a dry eye in the house when Jack Lemmon gave him his famous Little Tramp hat and cane.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: March 2022 PART I

 

February 28, 1942

Frank Bonner is born Frank Woodrow Boers, Jr. 

The actor and television director is best known for playing sales manager Herb Tarlek on the television sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati.

March 2, 1917

Desi Arnaz was a born. 

Born into the upper-class in Cuba, ending up having to flee to the United States when the Batista regime came into power.While he gained international renown for leading a Latin music band, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra, he is best known for his role as Ricky Ricardo on the American TV series I Love Lucy, starring with Lucille Ball, to whom he was married at the time. He and Ball are generally credited as the inventors of the rerun in connection with the show.

March 5, 1982

John Belushi was found dead in his room, by Bill Wallace at Bungalow number 3 of the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. 

The cause of death was a speedball; the combined injection of cocaine and heroin. On the night of his death, he was visited separately by friends Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, each of whom left the premises, leaving Belushi in the company of assorted others, including Catherine Evelyn Smith. His death was investigated by forensic pathologist Dr. Ryan Norris among others, and while the findings were disputed, it was officially ruled a drug-related accident.

Two months later, Smith admitted in an interview with the National Enquirer that she had been with Belushi the night of his death and had given him the fatal speedball shot. After the appearance of the article "I Killed Belushi" in the Enquirer edition of June 29, 1982, the case was reopened. Smith was extradited from Toronto, arrested and charged with first-degree murder. A plea bargain reduced the charge to involuntary manslaughter, and she served 15 months in prison.

Shortly before Belushi's death, he filmed a cameo for the comedy series Police Squad! At the suggestion of the show's producer, Robert K. Weiss, Belushi was filmed, face down in a swimming pool, dead. The footage was part of a running gag where the episode's "special guest star" would not survive past the opening credits without meeting some gruesome end. The scene was cut after his death and the footage is believed to have been lost.

Belushi and his friend Dan Aykroyd were slated to present the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 54th Academy Awards, an event held less than four weeks after his death.

Belushi was slated to appear on the well-known Canadian comedy show SCTV, which was by then being syndicated to the United States, but according to Dave Thomas, one of whose best-known characters on SCTV was Doug Mackenzie in the "Great White North" sketches, they were "planning him into their set, when suddenly, they received a phone call that Belushi had died in his hotel room. We stopped our work and just stared at each other, not being able to believe what had happened. John Candy began to cry, for Belushi as a friend, but also because it, to him, signaled the end of that era of comedy TV, now that one of their greats was dead." The segments he was to be in were scrapped, and the show continued without him. An earlier SCTV sketch had starred Tony Rosato as Belushi.

Belushi's wife arranged for a traditional Orthodox Christian funeral which was conducted by an Albanian Orthodox priest and he is interred in Abel's Hill Cemetery on Martha's Vineyard Chilmark, Massachusetts. His tombstone, a New England classic slate design, complete with skull and crossbones, reads, "I may be gone but Rock and Roll lives on." Rumor has it that his gravestone is not above his body because it was moved after operators of the cemetery had found many signs of vandalism and rowdiness where his body lies. He also is remembered on the Belushi family stone marking his mother's grave.

John Belushi's life is detailed in the 1985 biography Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi by Bob Woodward. Many friends and relatives of Belushi, including his wife Judy, Dan Aykroyd and James Belushi, agreed to be interviewed at length for the book, but later felt the final product was exploitative and not representative of the John Belushi they knew. The book was later adapted into a feature film in which Belushi was played by Michael Chiklis. Belushi's friends and family boycotted the film, the publicity from which helped cause the movie to be a box-office flop.

The Grateful Dead performed the song "West L.A. Fadeaway" beginning in late 1982. The song, penned by long time lyricist Robert Hunter and sung by Jerry Garcia, contains fairly explicit references to Belushi's death, especially the line "Looking for a chateau, 21 rooms but one will do.

Belushi was portrayed by actors Eric Siegel in Gilda Radner: It's Always Something, Tyler Labine in Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Mork & Mindy (which also features his friendship with Robin Williams), and Michael Chiklis in Wired.

His widow later remarried and is now Judith Belushi Pisano. Her biography (with co-biographer Tanner Colby) of John, Belushi: A Biography is a collection of first-person interviews and photographs, and was published in 2005.

On April 1, 2004, 22 years after his death, Belushi was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, after a ten-year lobbying effort by James Belushi and Judith Belushi Pisano. Among those present at the ceremony were Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, and Tom Arnold.

In 2006, Biography Channel aired the "John Belushi" episode of Final 24, a documentary following Belushi in the last 24 hours leading to his death. In 2010, Biography aired a full biography documentation of the life of "John Belushi".

The 1987 song "Efilnikufesin (N.F.L)", by the American thrash metal band Anthrax was dedicated to John Belushi.

Several characters in Neil Gaiman's short story "The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories" reference Belushi's death with varying (and incorrect) details.

Belushi's alma mater, the College of DuPage, has established an annual performing arts scholarship in his honor.

March 6, 1942 (1942-03-06)

Ben Murphy is born in Jonesboro, Arkansas

He is known for his role in the ABC television series Alias Smith and Jones, co-starring as Kid Curry, first with Pete Duel and later with Roger Davis.

Though born in Arkansas, Murphy grew up in Hinsdale, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. An alumnus of Benet Academy in Lisle, Illinois, he attended eight different colleges before deciding to pursue an acting career.

Murphy appeared in a supporting role in The Name of the Game, a series featuring a rotating leading cast including Tony Franciosa, Gene Barry, and Robert Stack. From 1971 to 1973, he starred in Alias Smith and Jones with Pete Duel (1971–1972) and Roger Davis (1972–1973). After Alias Smith and Jones, Murphy joined Lorne Greene in the 1973 ABC crime drama Griff. He played detective S. Michael "Mike" Murdock, assistant to Greene's character, Wade "Griff" Griffin, a Los Angeles retired police officer turned private eye. The series had some notable guest stars but folded after thirteen weeks.

In 1985, he co-starred as Department store heir, Paul Berrenger, on the short-lived drama, Berrenger's. His character was at odds with his former wife, Gloria (Andrea Marcovicci) and his own father, Simon (Sam Wanamaker) due to his romance with executive, Shane Bradley (Yvette Mimieux).

Murphy starred in in his own series Gemini Man, in which he played a character who could become invisible through the use of a watch. However, the show did not run beyond a single season. Murphy has since appeared in guest-starring parts, including having been a murder suspect in CBS's Cold Case.43

March 6, 1947

Hour Glass, the first regularly scheduled network variety hour, airs its last episode. The most ambitious television program to date, Hour Glass helped prove that television could provide high-quality entertainment as well as novelty programming.

Although commercial television had existed since 1941, World War II temporarily halted the growth of the medium. When Hour Glass premiered in 1946 on NBC, the network consisted of only three stations, in New York, Philadelphia, and Schenectady, and only a few thousand people owned television sets.

Hour Glass was the first hour-long entertainment series produced for network television, and it was hailed as the most ambitious production of its time. The series, well funded by sponsor Standard Brands, featured elaborate sets and respected performers like Peggy Lee and ventriloquist Edgar Bergen--previous television efforts had usually featured second-rate vaudeville performers. At first, the sponsor's live commercials ran between two and four minutes but were later shortened. The show was the first to feature a regular weekly host--Helen Parrish, who was succeeded by Eddie Mayehoff.

Hour Glass raised interest in regularly scheduled entertainment programming, and several other network series began to follow suit in 1946. However, it was more than a year after Hour Glass went off the air before another company agreed to sponsor a big-budget variety show. That show was Texaco Star Theater, featuring host Milton Berle. The show launched the "vaudeo" era in television history, where variety shows featuring successful vaudeville acts made TV stars out of performers like Eddie Cantor, Ed Sullivan, Bob Hope, and Abbott and Costello.

 March 6, 1947

Rob Reiner born in New York City.

Reiner was the son of Carl Reiner, then a regular on Sid Caesar’s famous television comedy program Your Show of Shows and its follow-up, Caesar’s Hour, where he had worked with such talented comedy writers as Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and Woody Allen. When Rob was 12, his family moved to Los Angeles, and he began his own acting career as a teenager, appearing in community theater productions and episodes of the TV program Alfred Hitchcock Presents… before co-founding The Session, an improvisational comedy troupe. On the big screen, Reiner debuted in Enter Laughing (1967), directed by his father from a script based on his autobiographical novel.

The younger Reiner’s big career break came in 1971, when he began appearing on the hit TV sitcom All in the Family. Reiner won two Emmy Awards (1974 and 1978) for his portrayal of Michael “Meathead” Stivic, the liberal, hippieish son-in-law of Carroll O’Connor’s stubbornly bigoted Archie Bunker. Also in 1971, Reiner married the comedic actress Penny Marshall; the couple appeared together in recurring guest spots on The Odd Couple, produced by Penny’s brother Garry Marshall, and in a TV movie, More Than Friends (1978), which they co-wrote. Marshall and Reiner divorced in 1979.

In 1984, Reiner launched his career as a film director with the cult hit This is Spinal Tap, a satirical “mockumentary” about a fictitious rock band. Though his follow-up effort, The Sure Thing (1985), made little noise at the box office, Reiner scored massive hits with his next two pictures: 1986’s Stand By Me, a coming-of-age tale based on a Stephen King story, and 1987’s The Princess Bride, a hilarious take on the romantic fairy tale-fantasy genre. With his reputation in Hollywood now well established, Reiner co-founded his own production company, Castle Rock Entertainment, in 1987. (It was named for a town in one of King’s novel.) Castle Rock’s first feature was Reiner’s most successful film to date, the romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally… (1989).

With Castle Rock, Reiner also directed the acclaimed hits Misery (1990) and A Few Good Men (1992), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. His next few films varied between hits (1995’s The American President) and misses (1994’s North, 1996’s Ghosts of Mississippi and 1999’s The Story of Us). After several years without releasing a film--during which he increasingly immersed himself in political activism in California, on behalf of such causes as early childhood development and environmental efforts--Reiner came back with two relative disappointments, Alex and Emma (2003) and Rumor Has It (2005). In 2007, he directed Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in The Bucket List.

In addition to directing and producing, Reiner maintained an acting career over the years, appearing in supporting roles in such films as Postcards from the Edge (1990), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), Primary Colors (1998) and The Majestic (2001). He also appeared in some of his own movies, including The Story of Us and Alex and Emma.

Reiner and his second wife, Michele, married in 1989; they have three children. 

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa