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"
First hour: Ed and Frankie weigh in on Ryan Seacrest, American Idol, the new HBO series Treme and how Conan O'Brien's recent deal with TBS will affect the late night television landscape. Also: David Krell remembers The Larry Sanders Show, while Tony Figueroa looks back at the final episode of The Cosby Show, the famous "Puppy Episode" of Ellen, and the media coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
Second hour: Ed and Frankie welcome Emmy Award-winning director Paul Bogart, whose many credits such classic TV series as The Defenders, Get Smart, All in the Family and The Golden Girls, such feature motion pictures as Marlowe, Skin Game, Class of '44 and Torch Song Trilogy, and the acclaimed 1966 musical Evening Primrose starring Anthony Perkins and featuring original songs by Stephen Sondheim.
Legendary film, radio and television actress Ann Rutherford will be our special guest on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, premiering Monday, May 3 at 9pm ET, 6pm PT on Shokus Internet Radio, with rebroadcasts Friday, May 7 at 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org. The last surviving cast member of the classic film Gone with the Wind, as well as Mickey Rooney's longtime co-star in the popular Andy Hardy movies of the 1930s and '40s, Ann Rutherford has also worked with such legendary stars as Gene Autry, Danny Kaye, Red Skelton and John Wayne. After retiring from films in the 1950s, she returned to the silver screen in 1972 in They Only Kill Their Masters (with James Garner), then began a recurring role as Bob Hartley's mother-in-law on the long-running CBS-TV comedy The Bob Newhart Show. A longtime philanthropist, Ann Rutherford will be honored by the Young Musicians Foundation at a special luncheon in Beverly Hills on Saturday, May 22.
If you want to be part of our conversation, if you love Gone With the Wind or are a fan of old Hollywood, we invite you to join us for our live broadcast on Monday, May 3 beginning at 9pm ET, 6pm PT on ShokusRadio.com. Phone number is (888) SHOKUS-5, (888) 746-5875. You can also email questions in advance to talk@tvconfidential.net.
TV CONFIDENTIAL with Ed Robertson and Frankie Montiforte
Every night at 9pm ET, 6pm PT Shokus Internet Radio
Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL with Ed Robertson and Frankie Montiforte Broadcast LIVE every other Monday at 9pm ET, 6pm PT (immediately following STU'S SHOW) on Shokus Internet Radio. The program will then be repeated Tuesday thru Sunday at the same time (9pm ET, 6pm PT)on Shokus Radio for the next two weeks, and then will be posted on line at our archives page at TVConfidential.net. We are also on Share-a-Vision Radio (KSAV.org) Friday at 7pm PT and ET, either before or after the DUSTY RECORDS show, depending on where you live.
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
April 26, 1989 Lucille Ball dies. Comedian Lucille Ball dies at age 78. During her career, she and husband Desi Arnaz transformed TV, creating the first long running hit sitcom.
Ball starred as a ditzy wife in My Favorite Husband from 1948 to 1951. CBS decided to launch the popular series on the relatively new medium of TV. Lucy insisted Desi be cast as her husband in the TV version, though the network executives said no one would believe the couple were married. Desi and Lucy performed before live audiences and filmed a pilot, convincing network executives that audiences responded well to their act, and CBS cast Desi for the show. I Love Lucy became one of the most popular TV sitcoms in history, ranking in the top three shows for six years and turning the couple's production company, Desilu, into a multimillion-dollar business. Ball became president of the company in 1960, after she and Desi divorced. She also starred in several other "Lucy" shows, including The Lucy Show, which debuted in 1962 and ran for six seasons, and Here's Lucy, in which she starred with her two children until the show was cancelled in 1974. A later show, Life with Lucy, featuring Lucy as a grandmother, was cancelled after only eight episodes. Ball worked little in the last years of her life. She died of congestive heart failure following open-heart surgery earlier in the month.
April 29, 1944 Last Our Gang film Dancing Romeo released. The first film, featuring a band of mischievous youngsters, was produced in 1922 by Hal Roach. Roach produced the short films until 1938, when he sold the rights to MGM. In all, more than 100 Our Gang films were made. Later, they were shown as TV comedies under the name The Little Rascals.
April 29, 1992 The Los Angeles Riots were sparked on when a jury acquitted four Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the videotaped beating of African-American motorist Rodney King following a high-speed pursuit. Thousands of people in the Los Angeles area rioted over the six days following the verdict. First day (Wednesday, April 29) The acquittals of the four accused Los Angeles Police Department officers came at 3:15 p.m. local time. By 3:45, a crowd of more than 300 people had appeared at the Los Angeles County Courthouse, most protesting the verdicts passed down a half an hour earlier and many miles away. Between 5 and 6 p.m., a group of two dozen officers, commanded by LAPD Lt. Michael Moulin, confronted a growing African-American crowd at the intersection of Florence and Normandie in South Central Los Angeles. Outnumbered, these officers retreated. A new group of protesters appeared at Parker Center, the LAPD's headquarters, by about 6:30 p.m., and 15 minutes later, the crowd at Florence and Normandie had started looting, attacking vehicles and people, mainly whites. At approximately 6:45 p.m., Reginald Oliver Denny, a white truck driver who stopped at a traffic light at the intersection of Florence and South Normandie Avenues, was dragged from his vehicle and severely beaten by a mob of local black residents as news helicopters hovered above, recording every blow, including a concrete fragment connecting with Denny's temple and a cinder block thrown at his head as he lay unconscious in the street. The police never appeared, having been ordered to withdraw for their own safety, although several assailants (the so-called L.A. Four) were later arrested and one, Damian Williams, was sent to prison. Instead, Denny was rescued by an unarmed, African American civilian named Bobby Green Jr. who, seeing the assault live on television, rushed to the scene and drove Denny to the hospital using the victim's own truck, which carried twenty-seven tons of sand. Denny had to undergo years of rehabilitative therapy, and his speech and ability to walk were permanently damaged. Although several other motorists were brutally beaten by the same mob, Denny remains the best-known victim of the riots because of the live television coverage.
April 30, 1939 NBC began regular U.S. television broadcasts, with a telecast of President Franklin D. Roosevelt opening the New York World's Fair. Programs were transmitted from the NBC mobile camera trucks to the main transmitter, which was connected to an aerial atop the Empire State Building.
April 30, 1992 The final episode of the The Cosby Show aired.
The sitcom debuted in 1984 at a time when the sitcom was declared to be dead. Comedian Bill Cosby starred in the nation's top-rated program for four of its eight years and always ranked in the top 20 shows. The show focused on the Huxtable family, an upper-middle class African-American family living in a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, New York. The patriarch was Heathcliff "Cliff" Huxtable, an obstetrician. The matriarch was attorney Clair Huxtable. Despite its comedic tone, the show sometimes involved serious subjects, such as son Theo's experiences dealing with dyslexia, inspired by Cosby's child Ennis, who was also dyslexic. Although the cast and characters were predominantly African-American, the program was unusual in that issues of race were rarely mentioned when compared to other situation comedies of the time, such as The Jeffersons. However, The Cosby Show had African-American themes, such as civil rights marches, and it frequently promoted African-American and African culture represented by artists and musicians such as Jacob Lawrence, Miles Davis, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Miriam Makeba.
April 30th 1992 The second day of the Los Angeles Riots, KNBC (NBC's Los Angeles affiliate) was covering the historic event nonstop. But that evening the station decided to suspend it’s around the clock riot coverage to air the series finale of The Cosby Show giving viewers a brief Mental Sorbet. Following the broadcast Bill Cosby went on the air and asked Angelinos to pray for peace.
April 30, 1997 In The Puppy Episode of the ABC sitcom Ellen, the character of Ellen Morgan (played by Ellen DeGeneres) announces that she is gay. The widely publicized episode featured cameos by Oprah Winfrey, k.d. lang, Demi Moore, Billy Bob Thornton, and Dwight Yoakam. An estimated 42 million viewers watched the special hour-long program.
Ellen DeGeneres herself had come out earlier that year onThe Oprah Winfrey Show and in TIME. Ellen is often credited to be the first primetime sitcom to feature a gay leading character but there was a sitcom titled Love, Sidney (1981 until 1983) staring Tony Randall. The first openly gay regular character on a sitcom was Soap's (1977) Jodie Dallas, played by Billy Crystal. In the spring of 1994, Ellen DeGeneres was cast in a series called These Friends of Mine, but in the fall of 1994, she took center stage and the program was retiled Ellen. The program finished in the top 20 shows for the 1994-1995 season. The outing ignited a storm of controversy, prompting ABC to place a parental advisory at the beginning of each episode. Despite her success, and the enormous audience drawn by the coming-out episode, ABC cancelled the series at the end of the 1998 season. Although the network pointed to dwindling ratings, Ellen DeGeneres contended that the network buckled under pressure from conservative groups and stopped promoting the show after the controversial episode.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Five-time Emmy Award-winning director Paul Bogart will be our special guest on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, premiering Monday, April 26 at 9pm ET, 6pm PT on Shokus Internet Radio, with a rebroadcast Friday, April 30 at 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org. One of a handful of individuals who have directed live productions from the Golden Age of Television, as well as episodic television, made for TV movies, TV miniseries and theatrical motion pictures, Paul Bogart's many credits include such classic series as The Defenders, Get Smart, All in the Family and The Golden Girls, as well as such feature films as Marlowe, Skin Game, Class of '44 and Torch Song Trilogy. Paul Bogart has also helmed such special productions as Evening Primrose, the much heralded 1966 musical written especially for television, which starred Anthony Perkins and Charmian Carr (The Sound of Music) and featured original songs by Stephen Sondheim. We'll talk about Evening Primrose and a whole lot more when Paul Bogart joins us in our second hour.
TV CONFIDENTIAL with Ed Robertson and Frankie MontiforteEvery night at 9pm ET, 6pm PT Shokus Internet Radio Fridays 7pm ET and PT Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org www.tvconfidential.netblog.tvconfidential.net Also available as a podcast via iTunes and FeedBurner
Here is another "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.
Mar 19, 1983 — Season 5 Ep. 22 — Ah, the "Just Say No" Episode of Diff'rent Strokes. This is a must watch. First Lady Nancy Reagan comes to the rescue when she reads an article written by Arnold about drugs in the school.
First hour: Ed and Frankie welcome Stewart Stanyard, creator of The Twilight Zone Archives and author of Dimensions Behind The Twilight Zone, an oral history of Rod Serling's classic television series, The Twilight Zone. Also: Ed and Frankie remember Robert Culp, John Forsythe and Dixie Carter, while David Krell remembers great moments in baseball history that were captured on television.
Second hour: A look back at the media coverage of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on April 19, 1995, as well as that of the shootings at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado on April 20, 1999.
Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL with Ed Robertson and Frankie Montiforte Broadcast LIVE every other Monday at 9pm ET, 6pm PT (immediately following STU'S SHOW) on Shokus Internet Radio. The program will then be repeated Tuesday thru Sunday at the same time (9pm ET, 6pm PT)on Shokus Radio for the next two weeks, and then will be posted on line at our archives page at TVConfidential.net. We are also on Share-a-Vision Radio (KSAV.org) Friday at 7pm PT and ET, either before or after the DUSTY RECORDS show, depending on where you live.
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
April 19, 1938 The National Broadcasting Company launched experimental television broadcasts from the Empire State Building. These experiments aired only five hours a week to very few TV households.
April 22, 1976 Barbara Walters signs $5 million contract. Barbara Walters signs a record-breaking five-year, $5 million contract with ABC. The contract made her the first news anchorwoman in network history and the highest paid TV journalist to date.
April 24, 1936 A group of firemen responding to an alarm in Camden, New Jersey, is televised. It was the first time an unplanned event was broadcast on television, anticipating the development of live TV news coverage. Fortunately, the event would not inspire anyone to create reality programming.
April 24, 1962 First coast-to-coast satellite telecast. The first coast-to-coast telecast by satellite takes place on this day in 1962. Signals from California were bounced off the first experimental communications satellite, Echo I, and received in Massachusetts.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL with Ed Robertson and Frankie Montiforte Broadcast LIVE every other Monday at 9pm ET, 6pm PT (immediately following STU'S SHOW) on Shokus Internet Radio. The program will then be repeated Tuesday thru Sunday at the same time (9pm ET, 6pm PT)on Shokus Radio for the next two weeks, and then will be posted on line at our archives page at TVConfidential.net. We are also on Share-a-Vision Radio (KSAV.org) Friday at 7pm PT and ET, either before or after the DUSTY RECORDS show, depending on where you live.
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
April 14, 1956 First video camera for sound and pictures demostrated.
The first videotape recorder is demonstrated. The machine, invented by Ray Dolby, Charles Ginsberg, and Charles Anderson, recorded both images and sound. CBS purchased three of the video tape recorders for $75,000 each in 1956.
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.
April 16, 1949 Garroway at Large debuts.
Radio personality Dave Garroway moves to TV, as the host of one of television's earliest musical-variety shows. Garroway at Large was one of the two most important series to be made in Chicago, along with Kukla, Fran & Ollie, during the city's brief period in the late 1940s as an important production center for network programs. Garroway at Large ran until 1951. Dave Garroway started out as a page at NBC and worked his way up to the position of radio announcer for various NBC programs. From 1944 to 1948, he announced for the NBC radio series The World's Great Novels. The show featured dramatic readings of classic novels and later evolved into NBC University of the Air, which offered accredited radio-assisted degrees in literature. Garroway also hosted his own radio talk show with music, which aired under various names from 1946 to 1955. Starting in 1952, Garroway became the longtime host of NBC's Today show. He continued some prime-time work, though, and when Garroway at Large ended, he tried another show, called The Dave Garroway Show, in 1953. The second show, however, didn't take off, partly because of stiff competition from the other networks, which were airing popular programs Mama and Ozzie and Harriet.
April 17, 1937 Daffy Duck debuts.
Daffy Duck makes his debut in the Warner Bros. short Porky's Duck Hunt. In the 1920s, movie houses had started showing a short cartoon before feature presentations, but the form became more innovative and popular after sound was introduced in 1928.
April 18, 1929 First Our Gang film with sound Small Talk debuts .
Producer Hal Roach had started producing the Our Gang short comedies in 1922. The series' mischievous band of kids, later known as the Little Rascals, quickly caught on with the public, especially after characters Spanky, Alfalfa, and Darla were added in the early 1930s. In 1938, Roach sold the Our Gang rights to MGM, which produced the shorts until 1944. In total, more than 100 Our Gang films were made.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
First hour: Ed and Frankie weigh in on Ryan Seacrest, American Idol, the new HBO series Treme and how Conan O'Brien's recent deal with TBS will affect the late night television landscape. Also: David Krell remembers The Larry Sanders Show, while Tony Figueroa looks back at the final episode of The Cosby Show, the famous "Puppy Episode" of Ellen, and the media coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
