This Week in TV History - The Day I Spent with Rob Reiner

This Week in Television History: July 2024 PART III

   

July 15, 1964

The Universal Studio Tour opened.

The Tour is the signature attraction at the park, and goes into a working movie studio, with various film and Television sets on the lot. In recent years, guests have sat in multi-car trams for the duration of the ride. The Tour lasts about 45–50 minutes and is led by a live tour guide who can be seen throughout the tram on video screens. It travels through the Front Lot, Backlot and various attractions, passing sets and props from movies along the way.

From the beginning, Universal had offered tours of its studio. After Carl Laemmle opened Universal City on March 14, 1915, he would later invite the general public to see all the action for an admission fee of just $0.05, which also included a lunch box containing chicken inside. There was also a chance to buy fresh produce, since then-rural Universal City was still in part a working farm. This original tour was discontinued in around 1930, due to the advent of sound films coming to Universal.

Ironically, the modern Universal Studio Tour was initially reborn as a way to sell more lunches in the Studio Commissary.  The late 50’s and early 60’s were a difficult time for Hollywood studios. The arrival of television had weakened movie attendance and more and more productions were going on location to save costs. The grand old movie back lots were quickly becoming a thing of the past.  In the mid 1950’s, Universal began letting bus companies drive on to the property (the same bus companies that offered guided tours of the homes of Hollywood stars) as a way to increase revenues. The studio charged the bus companies a small fee and also benefited from the extra lunches they could sell to the tourists in the Studio Commissary. The bus drivers were given a hand-typed script to read that highlighted the studio facilities as well as hyped upcoming Universal releases like Bonzo Goes to College and Monster on the Campus.

When MCA purchased Universal in the late 1950’s, they began to look for a way to revive the old Studio Tour as part of a new image for Universal City Studios. In 1963 legendary movie mogul Lew Wasserman, then president of MCA/Universal, asked Vice President Al Dorskind to look into the feasibility of creating a permanent tour. 

The modern tour was established to include a series of dressing room walk-throughs, peeks at actual production, and later, staged events. This grew over the years into a full-blown theme park.

The Universal Studio Tour at that time consisted of two trams and a handful of eager young tour guides; including John Ford III (grandson of famous western director John Ford) and Dan Milland (son of Academy Award winning actor Ray Milland). The early tour was 90 minutes and included a stop off at the studio commissary for lunch and a make-up show (presented by Mike Westmore of the famous Westmore family of make-up artists) held in the commissary basement. 38,184 guests rode the Universal Studio Tour in its first year.

July 19, 1989

Rebecca Shaeffer (age 21) is murdered at her Los Angeles home by Robert John Bardo, a mentally unstable man who had been stalking her. Schaeffer’s death helped lead to the passage in California of legislation aimed at preventing stalking.

Schaeffer was born November 6, 1967, in Eugene, Oregon. She worked as a teenage model and had a short stint on the daytime soap opera One Life to Live, but was best known for co-starring with Pam Dawber in the television sitcom My Sister Sam. Bardo, born in 1970, had written Schaeffer letters and unsuccessfully tried to gain access to the set of My Sister Sam, before showing up at her apartment on July 19, 1989. The obsessed fan had reportedly obtained the actress’s home address through a detective agency, which located it through records at the California Department of Motor Vehicles. On the day of the murder, Schaeffer reportedly complied with Bardo’s request for an autograph when he appeared at her home and then asked him to leave. He returned a short time later and the actress, who reportedly was waiting for someone to deliver a script, answered the door again. Bardo then shot and killed her.

Arrested the next day in Tucson, Arizona, Bardo was later prosecuted by the Los Angeles County district attorney Marcia Clark, who later became famous as a prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial. In 1991, Bardo was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 1994, California passed the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, which prevented the Department of Motor Vehicles from releasing private addresses.

The 2002 film Moonlight Mile, loosely inspired by Schaeffer’s story, was written and directed by Brad Silberling, who had been dating the young actress at the time of her death.

July 20, 1969

Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. 

The first steps by humans on another planetary body were taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. The astronauts also returned to Earth the first samples from another planetary body. Apollo 11 achieved its primary mission - to perform a manned lunar landing and return the mission safely to Earth - and paved the way for the Apollo lunar landing missions to follow.

July 21, 1924

Jesse Donald "Don" Knotts is born. 

The comedic actor best known for his portrayal of Barney Fife on the 1960s television sitcom The Andy Griffith Show (a role which earned him five Emmy Awards), and as landlord Ralph Furley on the television sitcom Three’s Company in the 1980.

In Solidarity 

Tony Figueroa

Your Mental Sorbet: Live: Universal Studios Reopening + Rides - Live Stream - 4-17-21 - First Weekend Tour!

 

Your Mental Sorbet: Universal Tram - SNL

Here is another

"Mental Sorbet"

A little spark of madness

that we could use to momentarily forget about those

things that leave a bad taste in our mouths

A tour guide (Mikey Day) has a hard time controlling his jittery trainee (Dan Levy).

#SNL #DanLevy

Stay Tuned and Wash Your Hands 

Tony Figueroa

Your Mental Sorbet: Back to the Future Part II Behind the Scenes Special Presentation (1989)

Here is another "Mental Sorbet" 

A little spark of madness

that we could use to momentarily forget about those

things that leave a bad taste in our mouths

Leslie Nielsen hosts a night dedicated to Back To The Future including an airing of the first movie and a sneek peak of Back To The Future Part II. This show features director Robert Zemeckis saying that hoverboards were real.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: October 2019 PART I

September 30, 1954

Barry Williams is born Barry William Blenkhorn. 

Best known for his role as Greg Brady on theABC television series, The Brady Bunch. Williams continued to be cast in guest roles on other TV series including Adam-12, The Invaders, That Girl, Mission: Impossible, The Mod Squad, Here Come the Brides and Bartleby, the Scrivener before being cast in 1969 as Greg Brady on The Brady Bunch.

Following the cancellation of The Brady Bunch in 1974, Williams continued to appear in guest roles on television, and became involved in musical theater, touring with productions such as Grease, The Sound of Music, and West Side Story.

In 1988, Williams appeared on Broadway in the musical Romance/Romance with Tony Award-nominee Alison Fraser. Williams took over the lead male role of “Alfred/Sam” when Scott Bakula left the production. Years later, Williams was able to capitalize on being typecast as Greg Brady. Amid a procession of appearances in TV and movies that played up his famous teen role, he ended up landing a role that was a departure from the Brady image. He was tapped to play English con man Hannibal in 1984, who conspired with Holly Sutton Scorpio (Emma Samms) on the top-rated General Hospital. Williams has appeared in variousBrady Bunch TV movie reunions, including the 1988 Christmas movie, A Very Brady Christmas, in which his sole family problem is missing his wife, Nora. The issue with his wife is solved when Nora shows up at the Brady house on Christmas, poinsettia in hand.

In 1989, Williams was honored by the Young Artist Foundation with its Former Child Star “Lifetime Achievement” Award for his role as Greg Brady.

His 1992 autobiography, Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, co-written with Chris Kreski, stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for three months. The book was adapted into a 2000 TV movie titled Growing Up Brady starring Adam Brody as Williams.

September 30, 1984

The pilot episode of Murder, She Wrote aired on CBS. 

The mystery series starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. The series aired for twelve seasons from 1984 to 1996 on the CBS network. It was followed by four TV films and a spin-off series, The Law & Harry McGraw. It is one of the most successful and longest-running television shows ever for CBS, pulling in close to 23 million viewers in its prime, during its Sunday night slot. It is also hugely successful across the world.

Angela Lansbury has been nominated for a total of ten Golden Globes and twelve Emmies. She holds the record for the most Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress in a television drama series and the most Emmy nominations ever for outstanding lead actress in a drama series for Murder She wrote. It is now considered to be a TV cult classic around the world.

October 2, 1959

The first TheTwilight Zone episode Where Is Everybody? Aired.

Opening narration

“The place is here, the time is now, and the journey into the shadows that we're about to watch, could be our journey”.

This was the only Twilight Zone episode filmed at Universal Studios, the rest of the entire series was filmed at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The centerpiece of the episode is the Courthouse Square set, most well known for being used as the town square of "Hill Valley" in the Back to the Future series of films over 25 years later.
The haunting score composed by Bernard Herrmann (Psycho) for this episode would be reused for several episodes of the series, most notably "The After Hours" and "The Last Flight". 

October 3, 1954

Father Knows Best began airing on CBS-TV.

The May 27, 1954 episode of The Ford Television Theatre show was called "Keep It in the Family". This 26-minute episode stars Robert Young as Tim Warren, head of the Warren Family. With him was wife Grace (Ellen Drew), older daughter Peggy (Sally Fraser), younger daughter Patty (Tina Thompson) and son Jeff (Gordon Gerbert). Developed by Young and his partner Eugene Rodney, it was intended as a pilot for a Father Knows Best television series. In the episode, Peggy dreams of making it as an actress but a talent scout who has raised her hopes just wants people for his acting school.

Only Robert Young remained of the radio cast when the series moved to CBS Television:

·        James "Jim" Anderson, Sr.–Robert Young

·        Margaret Anderson–Jane Wyatt

·        Betty "Princess" Anderson–Elinor Donahue

·        James "Bud" Anderson, Jr.–Billy Gray

·        Kathy "Kitten" Anderson–Lauren Chapin

The series began on CBS on October 3, 1954. Originally sponsored by Lorillard's Kent cigarettes in its first season, Scott Paper Company became the primary sponsor when the series moved to NBC in the fall of 1955, remaining as sponsor even after it moved back to CBS in September 1958, with Lever Brothers as an alternate sponsor from 1957 through 1960. A total of 203 episodes were produced, running until September 17, 1960, and appearing on all three of the television networks of the time, including prime-time repeats from September 1960 through April 1963.

October 3, 1964

Underdog debuted on NBC. 

Underdog, Shoeshine Boy's heroic alter-ego, appeared whenever love interest Sweet Polly Purebred was being victimized by such villains as Simon Bar Sinister or Riff Raff. Underdog nearly always speaks in rhyme, as in, "There's no need to fear, Underdog is here!" His voice was supplied by Wally Cox.

To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".

October 3, 2004

The first season of Desperate Housewives began. 

Created by Marc Cherry and produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions. It aired Sundays at 9 P.M. Eastern/8 P.M. Central, on ABC from October 3, 2004, until May 13, 2012.Executive producer Cherry served as showrunner. Other executive producers since the fourth season included Bob Daily, George W. Perkins, John Pardee, Joey Murphy, David Grossman, and Larry Shaw.

The main setting of the show was Wisteria Lane, a street in the fictional American town of 'Fairview' in the fictional 'Eagle State'. The show followed the lives of a group of women as seen through the eyes of a dead neighbor who committed suicide in the very first episode. The storyline covers thirteen years of the women's lives over eight seasons, set between the years 2004–2008, and later 2013–2017 (the story arc included a 5 year passage of time). They worked through domestic struggles and family life, while facing the secrets, crimes and mysteries hidden behind the doors of their — at the surface — beautiful and seemingly perfect suburban neighborhood.

The show featured an ensemble cast, headed by Teri Hatcher as Susan Mayer, Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo, Marcia Cross asBree Van de Kamp, and Eva Longoria as Gabrielle Solis. Brenda Strong narrated the show as the deceased Mary Alice Young, appearing sporadically in flashbacks or dream sequences.

October 4, 1949

The television series Life of Riley debuts, starring Jackie Gleason as bullheaded family man Chester Riley.

The show originated on the radio in the early 1940s and starred William Bendix. In 1953, Bendix took over the TV role from Gleason and stayed with the show until its cancellation in 1958.

October 4, 1954

December Bride debuted on CBS-TV. 

The series centered around the adventures of Lily Ruskin, a spry widow played by Spring Byington, who was not, in fact, a "December" (rather old) bride but very much desired to become one if the right man would come along. Aiding Lily in her search for this prospective suitor were her daughter Ruth Henshaw (Frances Rafferty) and son-in-law Matt Henshaw (Dean Miller), and her close friend Hilda Crocker (character-actress Verna Felton). A next-door neighbor, insurance agent Pete Porter (Harry Morgan), was frequently seen. Married miserably himself, according to his constant complaints about his unseen wife Gladys, he also envied Matt's positive relationship with Lily, as he despised his own mother-in-law. The pilot episode premiered on October 4, 1954 and involved Lily Ruskin moving in with her daughter and son-in-law. December Bride was unusual in that all five stars appeared in all 111 episodes of the sitcom. Most of the scenes filmed for the series took place in the Henshaws' living room.

First-run episodes of December Bride aired for 5 seasons (1954-1959), sponsored by General Foods' Instant Maxwell House Coffee. During the first four seasons, the program was not shown in the summer, supplanted by "summer replacement" series (such as Ethel and Albert) but in its final year, repeat episodes were run in its timeslot during the summer months. On March 26, 1959, as the program wound down, Rory Calhoun, star of CBS's western series, The Texan, appeared as himself in the episode "Rory Calhoun, The Texan".

December Bride was sufficiently popular that even after its production had ceased, CBS used repeat episodes to fill slots in its primetime programming. In July 1960, December Bride repeats were used to fill in for the second half of the Friday 9 pm Eastern timeslot vacated by Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, running until the beginning of the fall 1960 schedule, and again as a temporary replacement on Thursday nights in April 1961. Additionally, repeats were shown on CBS as a daytime program from October 1959 until March 1961. The Pete Porter character became so popular that he and Gladys were spun off into their own series, Pete and Gladys, shortly after the last broadcast of first-run episodes of December Bride.

October 5, 1924

Bill Dana is born. 

Comedian, actor and screenwriter. He often appeared on television shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show, frequently in the guise of a heavily accented Puerto Rican character named José Jiménez. Dana often portrayed the Jiménez character as an astronaut.

October 5, 1969

Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted on BBC television. 

The British sketch comedy series commissioned by David Attenborough, created by the comedy group Monty Python and broadcast by the BBC from 1969 to 1974. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines. It also featured animations by Terry Gilliam, often sequenced or merged with live action. The first episode was recorded on 7 September and broadcast on 5 October 1969 on BBC One, with 45 episodes airing over four series from 1969 to 1974, plus two episodes for German TV.

The show often targets the idiosyncrasies of British life, especially that of professionals, and is at times politically charged. The members of Monty Python were highly educated. Terry Jones and Michael Palin are Oxford University graduates; Eric Idle, John Cleese, and Graham Chapman attended Cambridge University; and American-born member Terry Gilliam is an Occidental Collegegraduate. Their comedy is often pointedly intellectual, with numerous erudite references to philosophers and literary figures. The series followed and elaborated upon the style used by Spike Milligan in his ground breaking series Q5, rather than the traditional sketch show format. The team intended their humour to be impossible to categorise, and succeeded so completely that the adjective "Pythonesque" was invented to define it and, later, similar material.

The Pythons play the majority of the series characters themselves, including the majority of the female characters, but occasionally they cast an extra actor. Regular supporting cast members include Carol Cleveland (referred to by the team as the unofficial "Seventh Python"), Connie Booth (Cleese's first wife), series Producer Ian MacNaughton, Ian Davidson, Neil Innes (in the fourth series), and the Fred Tomlinson Singers (for musical numbers).

The series' theme song is the first segment of John Philip Sousa's The Liberty Bell, chosen because it was in the public domain and thus could be used without charge.

October 5, 1989

Jim Bakker was convicted of using his television show to defraud his viewers. 

After deliberating for a day and a half, a jury in Charlotte, North Carolina, convicts Jim Bakker of using his television show to defraud his viewers. Bakker's trial started on August 28 and was interrupted briefly while he was sent to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation after suffering a breakdown.

The government has argued that Bakker solicited donations in exchange for free vacation lodging at his Heritage USA theme park, lodging which he knew he would never be able to provide.

Jim Bakker sold 153,000 of these partnerships between 1984 and 1987. In exchange for $1,000, people were promised three free nights lodging every year for life. Bakker claimed to have accommodations for 214,000 partners, but the government provided evidence that only 258 rooms were actually available.

To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Your Mental Sorbet: My Dinosaur Is a Service Animal (with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard!)

Here is another "Mental Sorbet" 

A little spark of madness

that we could use to momentarily forget about those

things that leave a bad taste in our mouths

Just because it’s a Velociraptor with knives for teeth doesn’t mean it’s not my best friend.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Your Mental Sorbet: Studio Tram Tour with King Kong Encounter

Here is another "Mental Sorbet" 

A little spark of madness

that we could use to momentarily forget about those

things that leave a bad taste in our mouths

Virtual Recreation of a Hollywood Studio Tram Tour featuring famous attractions inspired by Universal Theme Parks like:

- The Parting of the Red Sea

- The Collapsing Bridge

- King Kong Encounter

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa