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"
Here is another "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.
A compilation of McDonald's TV commercials from December 1988. The "Double Cheeseburger Reunion" ad campaign brings back classic TV icons to promote the fast-food chain's new Double Cheeseburger special.Characters include The Beverly Hillbillies' Jed Clampett (Buddy Ebsen), The Munsters' Grandpa (Al Lewis), Get Smart's Agent 86 (Don Adams), Gilligan's Island's Gilligan (Bob Denver) and, Leave It to Beaver's June Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley) and Eddie Haskell (Ken Osmond).
First hour: Actor, comedian and impressionist Kevin Pollak joins Ed for a conversation about his gift for impersonations, his early influences as a comedian (including Bill Cosby, George Carlin and Woody Allen), and which comics make him laugh today. Kevin also hosts Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show, a weekly Webcast interview program that he describes as "The Charlie Rose Show, but with a sense of humor." Also in this hour: Ed, Frankie, Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen look back at the career of Tom Bosley and the legacy of Happy Days.
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.
November 2, 1992 Hal Roach dies.
Producer, director, and screenwriter Hal Roach dies at the age of 100. Roach is best remembered for his silent comedies featuring Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd, and the gaggle of mischievous kids who starred in the Our Gang comedies (who later became known as the Little Rascals). The silent-film maker, born in Elmira, New York, had worked as a mule skinner, stunt man, truck driver, and Alaska gold prospector when he came to Hollywood in the early 1900s. He started out as a stunt man and bit-part actor, then formed his own production company with D. Whiting, called The Rolin Company, after he inherited $3,000 in 1915 (he later bought Whiting out and changed the studio's name to Hal Roach Studios). Roach hired Harold Lloyd to play Willie Work in a series of comic shorts he hoped to produce. The series fell through until Roach changed Willie Work's name to Lonesome Luke, who became a much-beloved movie character known as "the man with the glasses." Regulars in the comic series, called Phun-Philms, included Will Rogers, Edgar Kennedy, and Laurel and Hardy. In the 1920s, Roach started making feature films and dramas along with the comedies and westerns that had occupied the bulk of his energy earlier in his career. He weeded out the least-popular shows and concentrated on his gems, including the Laurel and Hardy and Our Gang series. Actors who worked under Hal Roach contracts early in their careers included Jean Harlow, Mickey Rooney, and Zasu Pitts, along with directors Norman Z. McLeod, Leo McCarey, and George Stevens. Roach won Oscars for two shorts, The Music Box in 1932 and Bored of Education in 1936. When he shifted his focus to feature-length movies (in partnership with his son, Hal Roach Jr.), he sold the Our Gang rights to MGM and produced the acclaimed film Of Mice and Men, an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about a sweet, developmentally disabled man named Lennie and his protector, George. In the 1940s, he turned his attention from the big screen to television production. A military colonel, Roach produced propaganda and training films for the armed forces during World War II, and when he returned to Hollywood after the war, he began working in television. His company collapsed in the 1950s, but in the 1960s he produced The Crazy World of Laurel and Hardy. He received an honorary Academy Award in 1983 for his contributions to making movies. He died in 1992 at age 100.
Nov 2, 1966 David Schwimmer born in Astoria, Queens, New York.
Schwimmer was raised in Southern California and attended Beverly Hills High School. He graduated from Northwestern University and went on to co-found the Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago. In addition to stage work, Schwimmer’s early acting credits include guest roles on TV shows such as The Wonder Years, L.A. Law and NYPD Blue. The dark-haired actor’s big break came when he was cast in Friends, a half-hour comedy about the careers and love lives of six young adults living in New York City. Schwimmer played Ross Geller, a neurotic paleontologist and the older brother of the obsessive-compulsive Monica Geller (Courteney Cox Arquette). One of the show’s key storylines involved Ross’s on-again, off-again romantic relationship with Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston), Monica’s high school friend and current roommate who, for a time early in the series, worked as a waitress at Central Perk, a coffee shop that served as a gathering spot for the six friends. Friends, which debuted on September 22, 1994, on NBC, became a massive hit and a pop-culture icon, propelling Schwimmer and the five other main cast members--Aniston, Cox Arquette, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry--to Hollywood stardom. The show inspired fashion and hairstyle trends (notably Aniston’s layered cut, known as “The Rachel”), as well as such catchphrases as “How you doin’?” and “We were on a break.” After 10 seasons, the final episode of Friends aired on May 6, 2004; more than 50 million viewers reportedly tuned in, one of the all-time largest audiences for a TV finale. (By comparison, the most-watched last episode in TV history, the l983 finale of M*A*S*H, drew some 106 million viewers, while the last episode of Seinfeld, in 1998, was seen by over 76 million people.) In addition to his work on Friends, Schwimmer has appeared in such movies as The Pallbearer (1996), with Gwyneth Paltrow; Six Days Seven Nights (1998), with Harrison Ford and Anne Heche; Picking Up the Pieces (2000) with Woody Allen and Kiefer Sutherland; and HBO’s critically acclaimed World War II miniseries Band of Brothers (2001). Schwimmer played the title role in the 2005 film Duane Hopwood and voiced the character of Melman the Giraffe in the animated feature Madagascar (2005).
November 3, 1956 The Wizard of Oz is broadcast on television for the first time.
Some 45 million people tuned in to CBS to see the movie, which was broadcast on Ford Star Jubilee. Judy Garland's 10-year-old daughter, Liza Minnelli, introduced the program.
November 5, 1911 Leonard Slye, later known as Roy Rogers, is born in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Rogers first came to Hollywood in the 1920s as a migrant fruit picker. In the early 1930s, he joined a singing group called Uncle Tom Murray's Hollywood Hillbillies, which first sang on the radio in 1931. Rogers went on to sing with other similar groups, including the Sons of the Pioneers, which recorded hits like "Tumbling Tumbleweeds." The Sons of the Pioneers group was recruited for low-budget western films, and Rogers was soon playing bit parts for Republic Pictures, the same studio where cowboy star Gene Autry worked. When Autry quit over a dispute with the studio in 1937, Rogers gained more exposure. Starring with his trick horse, Trigger, and his frequent co-star Dale Evans, Rogers soon became one of the Top 10 moneymakers in Hollywood. Rogers also followed Autry into the radio medium, launching The Roy Rogers Show in 1944. The show, a mix of music and drama, always closed with the song "Happy Trails," which became known as Rogers' theme song.
After Rogers' wife died in 1946, he married co-star Dale Evans. His radio program ran until 1955. In 1951, a TV version of the program debuted and ran until 1957. Rogers became one of the wealthiest men in Hollywood by diversifying his money: His empire included a TV production studio, real estate, cattle, horses, a rodeo show, and a restaurant chain. Roy Rogers died in 1998.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Grammy and Emmy Award-winning Charles Fox will be our special guest on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, premiering Monday, Nov. 1 at 9pm ET, 6pm PT on Shokus Internet Radio, with encore presentations Tuesday, Nov. 2 at 11:05pm ET, 8:05pm on PIV World Radio, Friday, Nov. 5 at 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org, plus three times a day on ShokusRadio.com through Sunday, Nov. 7.
One of the most accomplished composers of the late 20th century, Charles Fox is the man who wrote such classics as “I Got a Name,”“Ready to Take a Chance Again” and one of the most performed songs ever, “Killing Me Softly with His Song.”Charles Fox has also scored more than 100 motion pictures and television series, including Goodbye, Columbus, Barbarella, Foul Play, One on One, The Last American Hero and The Other Side of the Mountain, as well as wrote the theme songs for such iconic TV shows as Love, American Style, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Wonder Woman and The Love Boat, as well as the original theme to ABC’s Monday Night Football and the signature music for ABC’s Wide World of Sports.Charles Fox is also the author ofKilling Me Softly: My Life in Music, a wonderful book that is not only filled with stories of his collaborations with Garry Marshall, Colin Huggins, Thomas L. Miller and Edward K. Milkis, Jerry Goldsmith, Jim Croce, Barry Manilow, Lena Horne, Fred Astaire and other music and TV legends, but is also a loving tribute to the teacher who mentored him, French composer and conductor Nadia Boulanger. We’ll be talking about Charles’ work with Mlle. Boulanger, as well as his life in music, film and television, when he joins us during our second hour.
Here is another "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.
This initial 15-minute, color unaired Munsters pilot for the series starts out with Marilyn being escorted home after a night out and her would-be beau being frightened off when he sees Marilyn's Uncle Herman. Grandpa heads to his lab to concoct a love potion that will entice whomever Marilyn should want--despite her appearance.
CW33 takes a look at the Munster Mansion in Texas. A real house modeled after The Munsters home from the 1960s sitcom. Every year the home is turned into a haunted house for Halloween, raising money for charity.
First hour: Actor and author Frank Bank (Leave It to Beaver, Call Me Lumpy) joins Ed and guest co-host Stu Shostak as they pay tribute to the late Barbara Billingsley. Also in this hour: Ed and Frankie take a look at the first month of the new fall television season, including why CBS is the only network that has not struggled so far.
Second hour: Producer/director Ron Satlof is the guest this hour. Ron produced the long-running NBC series McCloud, as well as directed episodes of such popular series as Hawaii Five-O, Barnaby Jones, Quincy, M.E., The Amazing Spiderman, Magnum, p.i., The A Team, Hunter, Jake and the Fatman and Diagnosis Murder, as well as the Perry Mason TV movies from the late 1980s. Early in his career, he worked with Martin Scorcese on Mean Streets and with Don Siegel and Walter Matthau on Charley Varrick. Ron’s latest film, which he produced, directed and co-wrote, is Misconceptions, a thoughtful comedy-drama about the changing perceptions of family today that also touches on topical social issues.
Bonus Segment: In this special edition of This Week in TV History, Tony Figueroa remembers the births of Johnny Carson and Kirk Cameron, Drew Carey's debut broadcast as host of The Price Is Right and the premiere of Saturday Night Live.
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.
October 25, 1924 Billy Barty was born William John Bertanzetti. Barty was one of the most famous 20th century people with dwarfism.
Coogan began his movie career as a child actor in silent films. Many years later, he became known as Uncle Fester on The Addams Family (TV show, 1964-1966). In the interim, he shocked the United States by suing his mother and stepfather over his squandered film earnings and provoked California to enact the first known legal protection for the earnings of child performers. He began his acting career as an infant in both vaudeville and film, with an uncredited role in the 1917 film Skinner's Baby. Charlie Chaplin discovered him in a Los Angeles vaudeville house, doing the shimmy, a popular dance at the time, on the stage. His father, Jack Coogan, Sr. was also an actor. The boy was a natural mimic, and delighted Chaplin with his abilities in this area. As a child actor, he is best remembered for his role as Charlie Chaplin's irascible sidekick in the film classic The Kid (1921) and for the title role in Oliver Twist, directed by Frank Lloyd, the following year. He was also the first star to get heavily merchandised, with peanut butter, stationery, whistles, dolls, records, and figurines just being a sample of the Coogan merchandise. He also travelled internationally to huge crowds. Many of his early films are lost or unavailable, but Turner Classic Movies recently presented The Rag Man with a new score. Coogan was famous for his pageboy haircut and his The Kid outfit of oversized overalls and cap, which was widely imitated, including by the young Scotty Beckett in the Our Gang films. Jackie Coogan has his hand and foot prints in concrete out front of Grauman's Chinese Theater, Ceremony #19, on December 12, 1931 (his former wife Betty Grable, Ceremony #68, on February 15, 1943 also). He also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of 1654 Vine Street, just south of Hollywood Blvd. As a child star, Coogan earned an estimated $3 to 4 million, but the money was taken by his mother, Lilian, and stepfather, Arthur Bernstein, for extravagances such as fur coats, diamonds, and cars. He sued them in 1938 (at age 23), but after legal expenses, he only received $126,000 of the approx. $250,000 left. When Coogan fell on hard times, Charlie Chaplin gave him some financial support. The legal battle did, however, bring attention to child actors and resulted in the state of California enacting the California Child Actor's Bill, sometimes known as the Coogan Bill or the Coogan Act. This requires that the child's employer set aside 15% of the child's earnings in a trust, and codifies such issues as schooling, work hours and time-off. Jackie's mother and stepfather attempted to soften the situation by pointing out that the child was having fun and thought he was playing. However, virtually every child star from Baby Peggy on has stated that they were keenly aware that what they were doing was work.
Oct 26, 1946 Pat Sajak born.
On this day in 1946, Patrick Leonard Sajdak, who will one day be known to millions of game-show fans as the Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak, is born in Chicago. Wheel of Fortune, which debuted in 1975, became the longest-running syndicated game show on American television, turning Sajak and his co-host, Vanna White, into pop-culture icons. After attending Chicago’s Columbia College, Sajak joined the Army in 1968 and went to Vietnam, where he was a disc jockey for Armed Forces Radio in Saigon. After his discharge from the military, he worked in radio and TV and in 1977 became a weatherman for a Los Angeles TV station. In 1981, Wheel of Fortune’s creator, Merv Griffin (who also developed the long-running game show Jeopardy!, which debuted in 1964) tapped Sajak to take over hosting duties from Chuck Woolery for a network daytime version of Wheel. In 1983, Wheel of Fortune became a syndicated evening program. It has remained on the air continuously since that time, with Sajak and White as co-hosts.
October 27, 1954 Disneyland, Walt Disney's first television series, premieres on ABC.
The one-hour show, introduced by Tinkerbell, presented a rotating selection of cartoons, dramas, movies, and other entertainment. The show ran for 34 years under various names, including Walt Disney Presents and The Wonderful World of Disney. The program was the longest-running prime-time series on network TV.
October 28, 1950 Popular radio personality Jack Benny moves to television with The Jack Benny Show. The TV version of the show ran for the next 15 years.
Jack Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky in 1894. His father, a Lithuanian immigrant, ran a saloon in Waukegan, Illinois, near Chicago. Benny began playing violin at age six and continued through high school. He began touring on the vaudeville circuit in 1917. In 1918, he joined the navy and was assigned to entertain the troops with his music but soon discovered a flair for comedy as well. After World War I, Benny returned to vaudeville as a comedian and became a top act in the 1920s. In 1927, he married an actress named Sadye Marks; the couple stayed together until Benny's death in 1974. Benny's success in vaudeville soon won him attention from Hollywood, where he made his film debut in Hollywood Revue of 1929. Over the years, he won larger roles, notably in Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). Movies were only a sideline for Benny, though, who found his natural medium in radio in 1932. In March 1932, then-newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan, dabbling in radio, asked Benny to do an on-air interview. Benny reluctantly agreed. His comedy, though, was so successful that Benny was offered his own show almost immediately, which debuted just a few months later. At first a mostly musical show with a few minutes of Benny's comedy during interludes, the show evolved to become mostly comedy, incorporating well-developed skits and regular characters. In many of these skits, Benny portrayed himself as a vain egomaniac and notorious pinchpenny who refused to replace his (very noisy) antique car and who kept his money in a closely guarded vault. His regulars included his wife, whose character, Mary Livingstone, deflated Benny's ego at every opportunity; Mel Blanc, who used his famous voice to play Benny's noisy car, his exasperated French violin teacher, and other characters; and Eddie Andersen, one of radio's first African American stars, who played Benny's long-suffering valet, Rochester Van Jones. The program ran until 1955. In the 1950s, Benny began experimenting with television, making specials in 1950, 1951, and 1952. Starting in 1952, The Jack Benny Show aired regularly, at first once every four weeks, then every other week, then finally every week from 1960 to 1965. Benny was as big a hit on TV as on the radio. Despite the stingy skinflint image he cultivated on the air, Benny was known for his generosity and modesty in real life. He died of cancer in Beverly Hills in 1974.
Winkler is best known for his role as Fonzie on the 1970s American sitcomHappy Days. "The Fonz", a leather-clad greaser and auto mechanic, started out as a minor character at the show's beginning, but had achieved top billing by the time the show ended. Winkler started acting by appearing in a number of television commercials. In October 1973, he was cast for the role of Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, nicknamed The Fonz or Fonzie, in the TV show Happy Days. The show was first aired in January 1974. During his decade on Happy Days, Winkler also starred in a number of movies, including The Lords of Flatbush (1974), playing a troubled Vietnam veteran in Heroes (1977), The One and Only (1978), and a morgue attendant in Night Shift (1982), which was directed by Happy Days co-star Ron Howard. In 1979 Winkler appeared in the made-for-TV movie An American Christmas Carol, which was a modern remake of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. An American Christmas Carol was set in Concord, New Hampshire during the Great Depression. Winkler played the role of Benedict Slade, the Ebenezer Scrooge equivalent of that film. After Happy Days, Winkler put his acting career on the back burner, as he began concentrating on producing and directing. He quickly worked on developing his own production company and, within months, he had opened Winkler-Rich Productions. He produced several television shows including MacGyver, So Weird and Mr. Sunshine, Sightings, and the game shows Wintuition and The Hollywood Squares (the latter from 2002–2004 only). He also directed several movies including the Billy Crystal movie Memories of Me (1988) and Cop and a Half (1993) with Burt Reynolds. As the 1990s continued, Winkler began a return to acting. In 1994 he returned to TV with the short-lived right-wing comedy Monty on Fox which sank in mere weeks. Also in 1994, he co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in the holiday TV movie One Christmas, her last film. In 1998, Adam Sandler asked Winkler to play a college football coach, a supporting role in The Waterboy (1998). He would later appear in three other Sandler films, Little Nicky (2000) where he plays himself and is covered in bees, Click (2006, as the main character's father), and You Don't Mess with the Zohan(2008). He has also played small roles in movies such as Down to You (2000), Holes (2003), and I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007). Winkler recently had a recurring role as incompetent lawyer Barry Zuckerkorn in the Fox Television comedy Arrested Development. In one episode, his character hopped over a dead shark lying on a pier, a reference to his role in the origin of the phrase "jumping the shark". After that episode, Winkler in interviews stated that he was the only person to have "jumped the shark" twice. When Winkler moved to CBS for one season to star in 2005–06's Out of Practice, his role as the Bluth family lawyer on Arrested Development was taken over by Happy Days co-star Scott Baio in the fall of 2005, shortly before the acclaimed but Nielsen-challenged show ceased production. In October 2008, Winkler appeared in a video on funnyordie.com with Ron Howard, reprising their roles as Fonzie and Richie Cunningham, encouraging people to vote for Barack Obama. The video entitled "Ron Howard’s Call to Action" also features Andy Griffith.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
One of the funniest comedians in show business today, as well as a skilled dramatic actor, Kevin Pollak is the host of Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show, a weekly live Internet talk show that is often described as “The Charlie Rose Show, but with a sense of humor.” If you haven’t seen Kevin’s show, it is not only very well done, but very entertaining. We’ll talk about this and more when Kevin Pollak joins us in our first hour.
Also joining us this week will be actor Ron Masak, Sheriff Mort Metzger on Murder, She Wrote and the author of I’ve Met All My Heroes From A to Z, a heartfelt tribute to some of the many people Ron has met in his show business career who have had an impact on his life, including Neil Armstrong, Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Garth Brooks, Roy Campanella, Joe DiMaggio, Rogers Hornsby, Rock Hudson, Cary Grant, Vince Lombardi, Audie Murphy, Elvis Presley, Alan Shepard, John Wayne and General Norman Schwarzkopf. Ron has also written a one-man show in which he plays the great American humorist Mark Twain. We’ll talk about that and more when he joins in our second hour.
Also joining us in our second hour will be actress Stephanie Zimbalist, Laura Holt on Remington Steele and the star of many other stage, screen and television productions, including Tea at Five, an acclaimed one-woman show in which Stephanie plays Academy Award-winning actress Katharine Hepburn. Tea at Five is playing at the Falcon Theatre in Burbank, California through Sunday, Nov. 14.
Here is another "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths. 
