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"
Playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon born in the
Bronx section of New York City.
In one of his earliest jobs, in the 1950s,
Simon wrote for Sid Caesar’s live comedy television program Your Show of
Shows, alongside other future greats such as Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. As Simon went on to write for the stage and big
screen, humor would continue to play a major role in his work. Simon’s first
Broadway play, Come Blow Your Horn, opened in 1961. He went on to write
over 30 plays, including Barefoot in the Park (1963), The Odd Couple
(1965), The Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1969), The Sunshine Boys
(1972), Chapter Two (1977), the autobiographical trilogy of Brighton
Beach Memoirs (1983), Biloxi Blues (1985) and Broadway Bound
(1986), Lost in Yonkers (1991) and The Goodbye Girl (1993).Simon wrote the screenplay for many of his stage productions that were
adapted for the big screen. In 1967, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda starred in a
cinematic version of Barefoot in the Park, about a young newlywed couple
in Manhattan. Redford had also appeared in the original Broadway cast. In 1968,
Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau starred in a film version of The Odd Couple,
about the mismatched roommates Felix Ungar, a neurotic neat freak, and Oscar
Madison, a slob. Matthau also played Oscar Madison in the original Broadway
production. The Odd Couple later became a popular TV sitcom that aired
from 1970 to 1975 and starred Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. In 1998, Lemmon
and Matthau reunited for The Odd Couple II. (The pair appeared in a
number of comedic films together, starting with 1966’s The Fortune Cookie
and including 1993’s Grumpy Old Men and its 1995 sequel.)
Simon has received four Academy Award nominations for Best Screenplay: for The
Odd Couple, The Sunshine Boys (1975), which starred Matthau and George
Burns, The Goodbye Girl (1977), which starred Richard Dreyfuss and
Marsha Mason (whom Simon was married to from 1973 to 1981) and California
Suite (1978), which featured Jane Fonda, Alan Alda, Michael Caine and
Richard Pryor.
that we could use to momentarily forget about those
things that leave a bad taste in our mouths
Today released a video of Audible Theater's reading of Murder in Studio One which was performed April 27 at Off-Broadway's Minetta Lane Theater. The reading starred NBC News personalities Hoda Kotb, Savannah Guthrie, Al Roker, Craig Melvin, and Jenna Bush Hager. Watch the full video above.
The whodunit play first premiered in 1941 and was written by Norman Corwin. It runs roughly 37 minutes in duration. The show takes place in a New York radio station and follows a female private investigator and her fast-talking sidekick as they take on a murder case.
The radio play has been adapted for this reading with permission from the Norman Administrative Trust. Proceeds from ticket sales were donated to Boys and Girls Clubs of America. The performance was also released as a podcast through Audible.
Folk group The Weavers are
banned by NBC after refusing to sign a loyalty oath.
The Weavers, one of the most significant popular-music
groups of the postwar era, saw their career nearly destroyed during the Red Scare of the early 1950s. Even with
anti-communist fervor in decline by the early 1960s, the Weavers'
leftist politics were used against them as late as January 2, 1962, when the
group's appearance on The Jack Paar Show was cancelled over their
refusal to sign an oath of political loyalty.
The importance of the Weavers to the folk revival of the late 1950s
cannot be overstated. Without the group that Pete Seeger founded with Lee Hays
in Greenwich Village in 1948, there would likely be no Bob Dylan, not to
mention no Kingston Trio or Peter, Paul and Mary. The Weavers helped spark a
tremendous resurgence in interest in American folk traditions and folk songs
when they burst onto the popular scene with "Goodnight Irene," a #1 record
for 13 weeks in the summer and fall of 1950. The Weavers sold millions of
copies of innocent, beautiful and utterly apolitical records like
"Midnight Special" and "On Top of Old Smoky" that year.
And then it came to light that members of the group had openly embraced
the pacifism, internationalism and pro-labor sympathies of the Communist Party
during the 1930s. When word of their political past spread, the backlash was swift. The
Weavers' planned television show was canceled, the group was placed under FBI
surveillance and Seeger and Hays were called to testify before Joseph
McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee. The Weavers lost their
recording contract with Decca in 1951, and by 1953, unable to book most concert
venues and banned from appearing on television and radio, they disbanded.
The Weavers enjoyed a significant comeback in the late 1950s, but the
group never shook its right-wing antagonists. On the afternoon of January 2,
1962, in advance of a scheduled appearance on The Jack Paar Show, the
Weavers were told by NBC officials that their appearance would be canceled if
they would not sign a statement disavowing the Communist party. Every member of
the Weavers refused to sign.
January 3, 1932
Dabney Wharton Coleman is born. He
is best known for his abrasive characters and his usually present mustache.
Coleman was so in demand as a TV guest star that he did
multiple episodes of popular series: The Fugitive
(four), That Girl (nine), The
Outer Limits (three), Barnaby Jones (five), Twilve
O'Clock High (two) and The F.B.I.
(nine), by way of example. Having played a detective in a 1973 episode of Columbo,
Coleman 18 years later returned to that series in a leading role as a murderer.
Many remember the actor for his starring roles in two TV
cult classics, Buffalo Bill
and The Slap
Maxwell Story. Each of these series asked audiences to embrace
Coleman's own charisma and comic timing as compensation for his character's
lack of character, whether he be a conceited television host or a self-obsessed
sportswriter.
In 1991, Coleman played public interest attorney William John Cox in the Turner Network
Television dramatization of the "Holocaust Denial Case, Never Forget.
More recent television characters have a well-timed, dry
wit, which seem to come to Coleman naturally. He played a more sympathetic one
than usual in The Guardian
and guest-starred on a 2009 episode of Law
& Order: Special Victims Unit, more than 40 years since the
actor's earliest work on TV.
In 1999, Coleman voice-acted in a number of episodes of
the Disney Channel series Recess,
playing a character named Principal Prickly.
January 3, 1952
Dragnetdebuts,
launching a long legacy of realistic police drama on TV.
Dragnet, which began as a popular radio program in 1949,
boosted the popularity of the series format on TV.
Until Dragnet's TV
debut, variety shows and comedy hours had dominated prime time programming.
Most television drama appeared on hour-long anthology shows like Kraft
Television Theater, featuring unrelated stories and different casts every
week. In fact, Dragnet itself first appeared on TV as a drama on an
anthology show called Chesterfield Sound-Off Time in December 1951.
The brainchild of actor-director
Jack Webb--who starred as Sgt. Joe Friday--Dragnet was one of the first
series to be filmed in Hollywood, not New York. Webb narrated the shows in a
deadpan, documentary style, turning "just the facts, ma'am" into a
national catchphrase. Barton Yarborough, a cast member in the radio series,
played Friday's sidekick Sgt. Ben Romero on TV but died of a heart attack
shortly after the first telecast. Over the years, Friday had three different
sidekick characters, played by Barney Phillips, Herb Ellis, Ben Alexander, and
Harry Morgan.
Episodes were based on real
cases from the Los Angeles Police Department, and each half-hour segment
concluded with the capture of the perpetrator, followed by a short update on
what happened at the suspect's trial. The show inspired two hit records in
1953, one based on the show's familar "dum-de-dum-dum" theme music.
The other was a novelty song called "St. George and the Dragonet,"
which spoofed the show's opening monologue.
During Dragnet's first
year, the show ran every other Thursday, then ran weekly until it ended in the
fall of 1959. The show was resurrected in 1967 under the name Dragnet '67
a nd ran for another two years, dropping its emphasis on high-intensity crime
to focus on citizens in distress and community service. In 1987, Dragnet
was revived again, as a spoof, in a feature film starring Dan Aykroyd and Tom
Hanks. The TV show reappeared two years later as a syndicated series, airing in
the 1989-90 season in New York and Los Angeles only, then nationally syndicated
the following season.
January 3, 1997
Bryant Gumbel co-hosted his final Today show on NBC-TV
January 4, 1982
Bryant
Gumbel moved from NBC Sports to the anchor desk where he joined Jane Pauley as
co-host of the "Today" show on NBC.
Using a
mixture of drama and music, it followed the lives of the students and faculty
at the New York City High School for the Performing Arts. Although fictional,
it was based heavily on the actual Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music
& Art and Performing Arts in New
York. Most interior scenes were filmed in Hollywood,
California. In all seasons except the
3rd, the show filmed several exterior scenes on location in New York City.
The popularity of the series, particularly in the UK, led to several
hit records and live concert tours by the cast. Despite its success, very few
of the actors maintained high-profile careers after the series was cancelled. A
number of the cast members were seen again briefly in Bring Back...Fame,
a reunion special made for UK television in 2008.
Puerto Rican actor, as well as a theater and film
director. He was the first Hispanic actor to win an Academy Award. Ferrer was
born in the Santurce district of San Juan, Puerto Rico, the son of Maria
Providencia Cintron and Rafael Ferrer, an attorney and writer. He studied in
the Swiss boarding school Institut Le Rosey. In 1933, he graduated from
Princeton University, where he wrote a senior thesis "French Naturalism
and Pardo Bazán"; he was also a member of the Princeton Triangle Club.
Ferrer
made his Broadway debut in 1935. In 1940, he played his first starring role on
Broadway, the title role in Charley's Aunt, partly in drag. He played Iago in
Margaret Webster's 1943 Broadway production of Othello, starring Paul Robeson
in the title role, Webster as Emilia, and Ferrer's wife at the time, Uta Hagen,
as Desdemona. It became the longest-running production of a Shakespeare play
staged in the U.S., a record it still holds. His Broadway directing credits
include The Shrike, Stalag 17, The Fourposter, Twentieth Century, Carmelina, My
Three Angels, and The Andersonville Trial.
Ferrer
may be best-remembered for his performance in the title role of Cyrano de
Bergerac, which he first played on Broadway in 1946. Ferrer feared that the
production would be a failure in rehearsals due to the open dislike for the
play by director Mel Ferrer (no relation), so he called in Joshua Logan (who
had directed his star-making performance in Charley's Aunt) to serve as
"play doctor" for the production. Logan wrote that he simply had to
eliminate pieces of business which director Ferrer had inserted in his staging;
they presumably were intended to sabotage the more sentimental elements of the
play that the director considered to be corny and in bad taste. The production
became one of the hits of the 1946/47 Broadway season, winning Ferrer the first
Best Actor Tony Award for his depiction of the long-nosed poet/swordsman (tied
with Fredric March for Ruth Gordon's play about her own early years as an
actress, Years Ago).
He
reprised the role of Cyrano onstage at the New York City Center under his own
direction in 1953, as well as in two films: the 1950 film of Edmond Rostand's
play directed by Michael Gordon and the 1964 French film Cyrano et d'Artagnan
directed by Abel Gance.
Ferrer
would go on to voice a highly truncated cartoon version of the play for an
episode of The ABC Afterschool Special in 1974, and made his farewell to the
part by performing a short passage from the play for the 1986 Tony Awards
telecast.
Ferrer
made his film debut in 1948 in the Technicolor epic Joan of Arc as the
weak-willed Dauphin opposite Ingrid Bergman. Leading roles in the films
Whirlpool (opposite Gene Tierney) (1949) and Crisis (opposite Cary Grant)
(1950) followed, and culminated in the 1950 film Cyrano de Bergerac. He next
played the role of Toulouse-Lautrec in John Huston's fictional 1952 biopic,
Moulin Rouge.
Beginning
circa 1950, Ferrer concentrated on film work, but would return to the stage
occasionally. In 1959 Ferrer directed the original stage production of Saul
Levitt's The Andersonville Trial, about the trial following the revelation of
conditions at the infamous Civil War prison. It was a hit and featured George
C. Scott. He took over the direction of the troubled musical Juno from Vincent
J. Donehue, who had himself taken over from Tony Richardson. The show folded
after 16 performances and mixed-to extremely negative critical reaction. The
show's commercial failure (along with his earlier flop, Oh, Captain!), was a
considerable setback to Ferrer's directing career. Nor did the short-lived The
Girl Who Came to Supper do much for his acting career. A notable performance of
his later stage career was as Miguel de Cervantes and his fictional creation
Don Quixote in the hit musical Man of La Mancha. Ferrer took over the role from
Richard Kiley in 1967 and subsequently went on tour with it in the first
national company of the show. Tony Martinez continued in the role of Sancho
Panza under Ferrer, as he had with Kiley.
He
portrayed the Rev. Davidson in 1953's Miss Sadie Thompson (a remake of Rain)
opposite Rita Hayworth; Barney Greenwald, the embittered defense attorney, in
1954's The Caine Mutiny; and operetta composer Sigmund Romberg in the MGM
musical biopic Deep in My Heart. In 1955 Ferrer directed himself in the film
version of The Shrike, with June Allyson. The Cockleshell Heroes followed a
year later, along with The Great Man, both of which he also directed. In 1958
Ferrer directed and appeared in I Accuse! (as Alfred Dreyfus) and The High Cost
of Loving. Ferrer also directed, but did not appear in, Return to Peyton Place
in 1961 and also the remake of State Fair in 1962.
Ferrer's
other notable film roles include the Turkish Bey in Lawrence of Arabia (1962),
Herod Antipas in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), a budding Nazi in Ship of
Fools, a pompous professor in Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
(1982), the treacherous Professor Siletski in the 1983 remake of To Be or Not
to Be, and Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV in Dune in 1984. However, in an
interview given in the 1980s, he bemoaned the lack of good character parts for
aging stars, and readily admitted that he now took on roles mostly for the
money.
In
1980, he had a memorable role as future Justice Abe Fortas, to whom he bore a
strong resemblance, in the made-for-television film version of Anthony Lewis'
Gideon's Trumpet, opposite Henry Fonda in an Emmy-nominated performance as
Clarence Earl Gideon.
Among
other radio roles, Ferrer starred as detective Philo Vance in a 1945 series of
the same name.
On
May 8, 1958, Ferrer guest starred on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee
Ernie Ford.
Ferrer,
not usually known for regular roles in TV series, had a recurring role as Julia
Duffy's WASPy father on the long-running television series Newhart in the
1980s. He also had a recurring role as elegant and flamboyant attorney Reuben
Marino on the soap opera Another World in the early 1980s. He narrated the very
first episode of the popular 1964 sitcom Bewitched, in mock documentary style.
He also provided the voice of the evil Ben Haramed on the 1968 Rankin/Bass
Christmas TV special The Little Drummer Boy. Ferrer would don the nose and
costume of Cyrano for a last time in a TV commercial in the 1970s. In the third
season of Columbo Ferrer appears in the episode "Mind over Mayhem",
in the main role of a ruthless military computer professor.
Ferrer
had a decade-long first marriage to famed actress and acting teacher Uta Hagen
(1938–1948), with whom he had a daughter, Leticia ("Lettie") Ferrer.
His second wife was dancer/actress Phyllis Hill (1948–1953). His third marriage
was to the singer Rosemary Clooney, actor George Clooney's aunt. The couple had
five children: Miguel Jose (born February 7, 1955); Maria P (born August 9,
1956); Gabriel V (born August 1, 1957), Monsita T (born October 13, 1958) and
Rafael F (born March 23, 1960). Ferrer and Clooney married in 1953, divorced in
1961 and remarried in 1964, only to divorce again three years later. Their son,
Gabriel Ferrer, is married to singer Debby Boone, daughter of Pat and Shirley
Boone.
At
the time of his death, he was married to Stella Magee, whom he had met in the
late sixties. Ferrer died following a brief battle with colon cancer in Coral
Gables, Florida in 1992 and was interred in Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis
Cemetery in Old San Juan in his native Puerto Rico.
January 9, 1972
ZOOM first aired.
Zoom (stylized as ZOOM)
is a half-hour educational televisionprogram,
created almost entirely by children, which aired on PBS originally from January 9,
1972, to February 10, 1978, with reruns being shown until September 12, 1980.
It was originated and produced by WGBH-TV in Boston. Inspired
by educational shows like Sesame
Street and The Electric Company, but designed to give
the kids who watched it a voice without adults on screen, it was, for the most
part, unscripted. Far from seeking to make stars of the child performers, their
contracts prohibited them from making any television appearances or doing
commercials for three years after they left the show.
America: A Tribute to Heroes was shown
on 35 separate broadcast and cable networks simultaneously.
The telethon raised $150 million in pledges to
benefit families of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks that occurred
on September 11, 2001. The pledges were made from September 21 through
September 24, 2001.
September 22, 1986
The TV show ALF
debuted on NBC.
ALF is
an American science fiction sitcom that
aired on NBC from
September 22, 1986 to March 24, 1990. It was the first television series to be
presented in Dolby Surround.
The title character is Gordon
Shumway, a friendly extraterrestrial nicknamed ALF (an acronym for Alien Life Form),
who crash lands in the garage of the suburban middle-class Tanner
family. The series stars Max Wrightas
father Willie Tanner, Anne Schedeen as
mother Kate Tanner, and Andrea Elson and Benji Gregory as
their children, Lynn and Brian Tanner. ALF was performed by
puppeteer/creator Paul Fusco.
Produced by Alien Productions, ALF originally
ran for four seasons and produced 99 episodes, including three one-hour
episodes that were divided into two parts for syndication totaling 102
episodes.
September 23, 1956
Mickey Dolenz began his
television career in NBC's Circus Boy
series.
He
later became a member of the Monkees.
September 23, 1961
Weekly TV movie program Saturday Night at the
Movies debuts on NBC, starting with the 1953 film How to Marry a
Millionaire.
The program was the
first major network initiative to broadcast recent movies on the air. Although
movies from the 1930s and '40s had appeared on TV, the networks had resisted
showing more recent films. Until the 1960s, a fierce rivalry existed between
the television and movie industries, and neither wanted to promote the other.
However, with the success of Saturday Night at the Movies, relatively
recent films became a staple of TV programming.
September 23, 1976
The first season of Black Sheep Squadron began on NBC under
the name Baa Baa Black Sheep.
Baa Baa Black Sheep (later syndicated
as Black Sheep Squadron) is a period military television series that aired
on NBC from 1976 until 1978.
Its premise was based on the experiences of United States Marine Corpsaviator Greg Boyington and his World War II "Black Sheep Squadron". The series was
created and produced byStephen J. Cannell. The opening credits read: "In World War II, Marine Corps Major
Greg 'Pappy' Boyington commanded a squadron of fighter pilots. They were a
collection of misfits and screwballs who became the terrors of the South
Pacific. They were known as the Black Sheep."
The
show's format is similar to that of CBS's Perry Mason (with both Matlock and the later Perry
Mason TV movies in the 1980s created by Dean Hargrove), with Matlock identifying
the perpetrators and then confronting them in dramatic courtroom scenes. One
difference, however, was that whereas Mason usually exculpated his clients at a
pretrial hearing, Matlock usually secured an acquittal at trial, from the jury.
September 24, 1936
Muppet creator Jim Henson is born in Greenville,
Mississippi.
Henson joined a puppet
club in high school and used his skills to land a job at a local TV station
between high school and college. His homemade puppets delighted audiences, and
during his freshman year at the University of Maryland the TV station gave him
his own five minute show, called Sam and Friends. The show ran twice a
day, just before popular news show the Huntley-Brinkley Report and again
before the Tonight Show with Steve Allen. Henson's program ran for eight
years and won a local Emmy in 1958.
In 1955, Henson took an
old green coat of his mother's, attached two halves of a ping-pong ball for
eyes, and created a lizard-like character named Kermit, who later evolved into
Kermit the Frog. Other familiar characters took shape on Sam and Friends,
as Henson's Muppets multiplied. In 1957, Henson made the first of more than 300
TV commercials for Wilkins Coffee. In 1963 Rowlf the Dog became a regular on
variety program The Jimmy Dean Show, which ran until 1966.
Henson showed an
interest in filmmaking in the mid 1960s, making a short film called Timepiece
in 1965, which was nominated for an Oscar. A few years later, he met Joan Ganz
Cooney, a TV producer heading up a study of children and television at a
seminar for educators in Boston. Ganz was formulating an idea for a kids' TV
program she called The Preschool Educational Television Show, and she
quickly persuaded Henson and his Muppets to join her. The show, with its new,
snappier title, Sesame Street, was launched in 1969, and generations of
children fell in love with Big Bird, Kermit the Frog, Ernie and Bert, Oscar the
Grouch, Grover, Cookie Monster, and many other Henson creations.
After seven years of
children's television, Henson wanted to explore more sophisticated possibilities
for his Muppets. He shopped around an idea for a variety show starring Kermit,
but none of the networks were interested. Undeterred, Henson created The
Muppet Show as a syndicated series, which became the world's most watched
TV show, with 235 million viewers in more than 100 countries. The program ran
from 1976 to 1981 and won three Emmys. Meanwhile, the Muppets launched a movie
career in 1979 with The Muppet Movie, followed by The Great Muppet
Caper (1981) and The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984).
Other,
less familiar Henson creatures appeared in The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth
(1986) with David Bowie, as well as in two cable TV series, Fraggle Rock
and The Ghost of Faffner Hall. His Saturday morning cartoon, Jim
Henson's Muppet Babies, was launched in 1984 and won four Emmys. Henson
died of pneumonia in 1990.
September 24, 1961
The Bullwinkle Show premiered in
prime time on NBC-TV.
The show was originally on ABC in the afternoon as Rocky and His
Friends.
September 24, 1966
"Last
Train to Clarksville" gives the made-for-TV Monkees a real-life pop hit.
When
producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson conceived a situation comedy called The
Monkees in 1965, they hoped to create a ratings success by blurring the
line between pop music and television. Instead, they succeeded in obliterating
that line entirely when the pop group that began as a wholly fictional creation
went on to rival, however briefly, the success of its real-life inspiration,
the Beatles. On this day in 1966, the made-for-television Monkees knocked down
the fourth wall decisively when their first single, "Last Train To
Clarksville" entered the Billboard Top 40.
"Last
Train To Clarksville" was written by the team that was also responsible
for the theme song of The Monkees, songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby
Hart. Though Boyce and Hart had been working together in Los Angeles for
several years before being asked to write and record the soundtrack for
Schneider and Rafelson's A Hard Day's Night-inspired pilot, their
biggest success to date had been in writing minor hits for Chubby Checker and Paul
Revere and the Raiders and in being
commissioned to write the theme song for Days Of Our Lives. Their
association with The Monkees would end up launching Boyce and Hart on a
moderately successful career as performers in the late 1960s and early 1970s. By far their best-known hits, however, were the ones
they wrote for the Monkees, including "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone"
and "Last Train To Clarksville."
Just
as producers Schneider and Rafelson had reached out to a pair of industry
professionals to create the music for the pilot episode of The Monkees,
they engaged numerous others to create the other memorable songs in the
Monkees' catalog. Under the musical direction of Don Kirshner, The Monkees featured
hits by some of the era's greatest songwriters, including Neil Diamond, who
wrote "I'm A Believer" and "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit
You" (both 1967) and the great husband-and-wife team of Gerry Goffin and
Carole King, who wrote "Daydream Believer" (1967). Numerous other
Monkees songs were written by such songwriting luminaries as Cynthia Mann and
Barry Weill, Harry Nilsson and Carole Bayer Sager and Neil Sedaka.
By
the time their third album was released, the real-life Monkees—Davy Jones,
Michael Nesmith, Mickey Dolenz and Peter Tork—had taken over creative control
of their musical output, including taking on much of the songwriting. Although
they would release seven more studio albums, none would contain hits as
successful or memorable as the one that gave the group its breakthrough on
September 24, 1966.
