Here is another "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.
RIP David Frye
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
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"
Friday, March 04, 2011
Your Mental Sorbet: David Frye - The Voices of America
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
TV Confidential Archives Feb. 21, 2011
Best of Show | First hour: An encore presentation of our Nov. 8, 2010 conversation wtih Ken Corday, executive producer of Days of Our Lives. Ken's book, The Days of Our Lives: The True Story of One Family’s Dream and The Untold History of Days of Our Lives, not only chronicles the history of Days of Our Lives on television, but pays tribute to his parents, Ted and Betty Corday, the creators and original executive producers of the series. |
Monday, February 28, 2011
This week in Television History: March 2011 Part I
listen to me on me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:
Mondays 9pm ET, 6pm PT | |
Tuesdays 11:05pm ET, 8:05pm PT | |
Fridays 7pm ET and PT | |
Saturdays 11pm ET, 8pm PT |
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.
March 4, 1995
John Candy dies. The larger-than-life comedic star John Candy dies suddenly of a heart attack on this day in 1995, at the age of 43. At the time of his death, he was living near Durango, Mexico, while filming Wagons East, a Western comedy co-starring the comedian Richard Lewis.
Born in 1950, Candy's first professional acting work was in children's theater in his native Canada. In 1972, he was accepted into the prestigious Second City comedy troupe in Toronto, where he would become a regular writer and performer for the group's television program, SCTV, alongside other rising comics like Eugene Levy (later Candy's co-star in Splash) and Harold Ramis (Ghostbusters). When SCTV moved to network television in 1981, Candy moved with it; that year and the next, he won Emmy Awards for writing for the show. Candy's recurring (and most famous) SCTV persona was Yosh Shmenge, a clarinet player in a polka band. He would reprise the character in a mock documentary, The Last Polka, on HBO in 1985 and would also play a polka musician in the smash hit Home Alone (1990).
Candy made his big break into movies with Splash (1984), in which he stole most of his scenes as the idle, high-living brother of the main character, played by Tom Hanks. The film, directed by Ron Howard, was a smash hit, jump-starting the careers of Candy, Hanks, Darryl Hannah and Levy. In one particularly memorable scene, Candy throws himself with abandon around a racquetball court, using his hefty frame to full comedic effect. Six-foot-three and weighing as much as 275 pounds, he struggled with dieting over the years, but his heft undoubtedly contributed to his success as a comic performer.
After Splash, Candy was in high demand as a lovable oaf. He starred in a number of box-office hits over the next 10 years, including Spaceballs (1987), and collaborations with the writer, producer and director John Hughes in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), The Great Outdoors (1988) and Uncle Buck (1989). A devoted sports fan and co-owner of the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League, he was also part owner of House of Blues, with the actors Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi. In 1993, Candy won praise for his role as the sensitive coach of an unlikely Jamaican bobsled team in Cool Runnings (1993).
At the time of his death, Candy had just completed his directorial debut, the Fox Television movie comedy Hostage for a Day. He had performed two-thirds of his scenes in Wagons East, which was finished after the filmmakers' insurance company paid a reported $15 million settlement. Another recently wrapped movie, Canadian Bacon, was released in 1995. Candy was survived by his wife, Rosemary, and their two children, Jennifer and Christopher.
March 4, 1996
Minnie Pearl dies. A longtime fixture of Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, comedian Minnie Pearl dies on this day. Pearl was famous for her comic monologues about hillbilly life, and was featured on the long-running syndicated show Hee Haw from 1970 to 1990.
March 5, 2006
Jon Stewart hosts 78th annual Academy Awards ceremony.
By early 2006, Jon Stewart, the irreverent host of The Daily Show, a fake television news program on Comedy Central, had seen the ratings for his show jump dramatically as a result of its coverage of the 2004 presidential election. The show spawned a popular spin-off, The Colbert Report, starring Daily Show regular Stephen Colbert, and a best-selling parody of a social studies textbook, America (The Book). On March 5, 2006, however, Stewart took on his highest-profile gig to date--hosting the 78th annual Academy Awards ceremony at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles.
In preparation for the Oscars, Stewart enlisted a team of writers from The Daily Show led by Ben Karlin, a former editor of the satirical newspaper The Onion and the then-executive producer of both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. After the stars swanned down the red carpet, the ceremony began with a filmed segment suggesting Stewart was the last possible choice for the hosting gig and showing a series of former hosts refusing the job.
While Stewart’s deadpan humor might have had audiences laughing at home, his constant poking fun at Hollywood and the stars themselves seemed to meet with a less friendly reception from the Kodak Theatre audience. Jokes about Scientology and Hollywood’s liberal politics fell flat, but the audience did warm up to Daily Show-style fake ads mocking Oscar-campaigning tactics and Stewart’s ad-libbed running joke about the exuberant acceptance speech given by the rap group Three 6 Mafia, who won an Oscar for Best Song for “It’s Hard Out There For a Pimp” (from Hustle & Flow).
In the post-show media analysis the next morning, the consensus seemed to be that Stewart struggled; his hosting performance and its reception by the audience was compared with less-successful hosts from the past, such as David Letterman and Chris Rock, as opposed to Oscar favorites like Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg. He was praised, however, for poking fun at the bloated, self-important nature of the Academy Awards ceremony itself, with its often-overdone production numbers and political posturing by the stars themselves. Stewart earned a second Oscars hosting gig--and better reviews--in 2008, in the wake of Hollywood’s writers’ strike and in the midst of the presidential campaign season.
The 78th annual Oscars were also memorable for the surprising upset victory of the ensemble drama Crash in the Best Picture category. After the Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee took home the Best Director Oscar for Brokeback Mountain, that film’s string of awards seemed to have given it the front-runner’s momentum to win Best Picture, the last statuette of the night. The New York Times called Crash’s selection as Best Picture a “stunning twist” to the evening, while Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times observed that some Academy voters may have been uncomfortable with the subject matter of Brokeback Mountain, which starred Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as sheepherders who fall in love while working in Wyoming in the early 1960s. Acting awards went to Rachel Weisz (Best Supporting Actress for The Constant Gardener), George Clooney (Best Supporting Actor for Syriana), Reese Witherspoon (Best Actress for Walk the Line) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Best Actor for Capote).
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Agnes Moorehead and Detroit 187: Next on TV CONFIDENTIAL
Charles Transberg, Tony Trupiano and Robert Thompson will be our guests on our next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, premiering Monday, Feb. 28 at 9pm ET, 6pm PT on Shokus Internet Radio, with additional airings Tuesday, Mar. 1 at 11:05pm ET, 8:05pm PT on Passionate World Radio, Friday, Mar. 4 at 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org, and Saturday, Mar. 5 at 8pm PT and Sunday, Mar. 6 on KWDJ 1360-AM (Ridgecrest, CA).
Most Baby Boomers think of Agnes Moorehead as Endora, the powerful witch who loved to fools of us mere mortals (and particularly her son-in-law, Darrin Stephens) every week on the long-running ABC comedy series Bewitched. But though Bewitched made Agnes Moorehead a star, it was just one chapter in her long, distinguished and very diverse career, which saw her leave her mark in film, television, theater and radio, including her many collaborations with such legends as Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten and Charles Laughton. That is the key point behind I Love The Illusion, an excellent biography of Agnes Moorehead by film and television historian Charles Tranberg. We’ll talk about Agnes Moorehead when Charles Tranberg joins us in our second hour.
In our first hour, media consultant and radio talk show host Tony Trupiano will join us as we discuss Detroit 187, the critically acclaimed ABC police drama that is one of many film and TV productions currently being filmed on location in Detroit, Michigan. We’ll talk about what production of Detroit 187 has meant to the community of Detroit, as well as the tax credit program that was designed as an incentive to bring film companies to Michigan, but which has become the subject of political debate.
Plus: pop culture critic Robert Thompson on Charlie Sheen’s latest meltdown and what that bodes for the future of Two and a Half Men.
TV CONFIDENTIAL: A radio talk show about television
Tuesdays 11:05pm, 8:05pm PT
Passionate World Radio
Fridays 7pm ET and PT
Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org
Saturdays 8pm PT
Sundays 2pm PT
KWDJ 1360-AM (Ridgecrest, Calif.)
Three times a day, every day
on Shokus Internet Radio
www.tvconfidential.net
blog.tvconfidential.net
Also available as a podcast via iTunes and FeedBurner
Find us now on Facebook
Friday, February 25, 2011
Your Mental Sorbet: Fernwood 2Night - W.D. 'Bud' Prize
Here is another "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.
RIP Kenneth Mars
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
Monday, February 21, 2011
This week in Television History: February 2011 Part IV
listen to me on me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:
Mondays 9pm ET, 6pm PT | |
Tuesdays 11:05pm ET, 8:05pm PT | |
Fridays 7pm ET and PT | |
Saturdays 11pm ET, 8pm PT |
February 23, 1997
Schindler's List is shown on NBC, the first network to broadcast a movie without commercial interruption.
Ford Motor Company, which sponsored the broadcast, showed one commercial before and after the film.
The 1993 film about German factory owner Oskar Schindler, who saved the lives of Jewish workers in his factory during World War II, was Spielberg's most ambitious movie to date. The picture, filmed in black and white, won Spielberg his first Academy Award as Best Director, and it also garnered Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay awards. The film's screenplay, by Thomas Keneally and Steven Zallian, was adapted from Keneally's novel, Schindler's Ark, published in 1982.
Spielberg started making amateur films in his teens, and by the late 1970s he had become heavily involved in production and scriptwriting. He gained fame early in his career for directing such blockbusters as Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Poltergeist, and a string of other phenomenal successes. He established his own independent production company, Amblin' Entertainment, in 1984, where he produced Gremlins, Back to the Future, Arachnophobia, Cape Fear, and more. In 1994, he formed DreamWorks SKG with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, and the following year the trio announced a partnership with Microsoft Corporation, called DreamWorks Interactive, which produced interactive games and teaching tools. Just months before he released Schindler's List, Spielberg released Jurassic Park, which featured computer-generated dinosaurs that took the world by storm. He won his second Academy Award for Best Director in 1999 for Saving Private Ryan. Virtually all of Spielberg's films have been box office smashes.
February 25, 1950
Comedy program Your Show of Shows, hosted by Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, first airs on this day in 1950.
Although the show lasted only four seasons, it became a classic of television's golden era, featuring comedy by future stars Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, and others. The series was one of television's Top 20 hits for three of its four years.
February 27, 2003
Children’s Television Host Fred Rogers succumbs to stomach cancer at 74.
The talented writer and puppeteer, known to generations of children simply as “Mr. Rogers,” hosted Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood on public television for more than 30 years.
A native of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Rogers filmed the famed show in Pittsburgh, 30 miles east of his hometown. He studied early childhood development at the University of Pittsburgh and, in 1962, was ordained as Presbyterian minister with a mission to work with children and families through television. Beginning in 1954, he worked as a puppeteer on a show called The Children’s Corner, before beginning work on his own show, which first aired in 1968.
Singing his well-known theme song, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” Rogers would enter his living-room-like set at the beginning of each episode, changing his shoes and sweater. He would then take his viewers on a magical trolley ride to the “Neighborhood of Make-Believe,” where he introduced them to characters such as King Friday XIII, his wife Queen Sara Saturday, Curious X the Owl, and Henrietta Pussycat. Even in an era of slick packaging and new technology in children’s programming, Rogers found continued success by sticking to his original message—that children should love each other and themselves. He aimed to help children deal with troubling emotions, like fear and anger, as well as everyday problems, like visiting the dentist.
Rogers composed most of his show’s songs and did much of the puppeteering and voices himself. Despite countless awards and honors, including four Emmys® and a George Foster Peabody Award, Rogers once remarked, “I have never really considered myself a TV star. I always thought I was neighbor who just came in for a visit.” He taped his last show in December 2000, but came out of retirement briefly to film public service announcements helping parents and children deal with the September 11th tragedy. One of Rogers’ trademark red sweaters now hangs in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Join Us This Week for The Best of TV CONFIDENTIAL
The next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, featuring encore presentations of our conversations with Days of Our Lives executive producer Ken Corday and Grammy and Emmy Award-winning composer Charles Fox, premieres Monday, Feb. 21 at 9pm ET, 6pm PT on Shokus Internet Radio, with additional airings Tuesday, Feb. 22 at 11:05pm ET, 8:05pm PT on Passionate World Radio, Friday, Feb. 25 at 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org, and Saturday, Feb. 26 at 8pm PT and Sunday, Feb. 27 on KWDJ 1360-AM (Ridgecrest, CA).Executive producer of Days of Our Lives since 1986, Ken Corday is also the author of The Days of Our Lives: The True Story of One Family’s Dream and The Untold History of Days of Our Lives, a very moving book that tells the story of how Ken’s parents, Ted and Betty Corday, not only created the series in 1965, but overcame many obstacles behind the scenes over the past 45 years, from personal tragedies to the ever-looming threat of cancellation. Our conversation with Ken from November 2010 will be replayed in our first hour.
Our second hour will feature a rebroadcast of our November 2010 interview with Charles Fox, one of the most accomplished composers of the late 20th century. Charles not only wrote such classic songs as “I Got a Name,” “Ready to Take a Chance Again” and “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” but has also scored more than 100 motion pictures and television series, including the theme songs for such iconic TV shows as Love, American Style, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Wonder Woman and The Love Boat. Charles’ book, Killing Me Softly: My Life in Music, 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 a loving tribute to the teacher who mentored him, French composer and conductor Nadia Boulanger.TV CONFIDENTIAL: A radio talk show about television
Tuesdays 11:05pm, 8:05pm PT
Passionate World Radio
Fridays 7pm ET and PT
Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org
Saturdays 8pm PT
Sundays 2pm PT
KWDJ 1360-AM (Ridgecrest, Calif.)
Three times a day, every day
on Shokus Internet Radio
www.tvconfidential.net
blog.tvconfidential.net
Also available as a podcast via iTunes and FeedBurner
Find us now on Facebook
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Your Mental Sorbet: Archie Bunker & Irene Lorenzo
Here is another "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.
RIP Betty Garrett.
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
Monday, February 14, 2011
Kenneth Mars
Kenneth "Ken" Mars died today. He may be best-remembered for his roles in several Mel Brooks films: the insane Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind in 1968's The Producers, and the relentless Police Inspector Hans Wilhelm Fredrich Kemp in 1974's Young Frankenstein.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Mars made his acting debut in 1962 as a book publisher on the comedy series Car 54, Where Are You?. Afterwards, he appeared on such television series as Gunsmoke, Get Smart, McMillan & Wife and The Bob Crane Show. Mars played Harry Zarakartos on the television sitcom He & She, and was featured in a number of small roles in programs such as the Misfits of Science pilot episode, the audio program Adventures in Odyssey, and the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Shadowplay". He was cast opposite Bette Davis in Hello Mother, Goodbye!, a 1973 television pilot that was aired by NBC but never added to its schedule. From 1970 till 1974 he guest starred in 5 episodes of Love, American Style, playing random characters. In 1977, he became a series regular on Fernwood 2-Night, playing "Bud Prize" on the fictional comedy talk show and later appeared on America 2-Night in the same role.
Mars often played characters with exaggerated accents. He was German in The Producers, Young Frankenstein and was the Croatian musicologist Hugh Simon in What's Up, Doc?. In 1975, ABC/Dunhill released a comedy LP produced by Earl Doud titled "Henry the First" featuring Mars in a number of comedy bits as Henry Kissinger, including a cover version of the Bachman–Turner Overdrive song, Takin' Care of Business.
Mars cultivated his voice-over career, launching it by voicing several characters on Uncle Croc's Block. He voiced the roles of Ariel's father King Triton in The Little Mermaid, and Littlefoot's Grandpa Longneck in The Land Before Time movie series and the spin-off television series.
This week in Television History: February 2011 Part III
listen to me on me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:
Mondays 9pm ET, 6pm PT | |
Tuesdays 11:05pm ET, 8:05pm PT | |
Fridays 7pm ET and PT | |
Saturdays 11pm ET, 8pm PT |
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.
February 15, 1960
"Danny Meets Andy Griffith" was telecast on The Danny Thomas Show.
In the episode, Griffith played fictional Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry, North Carolina, who arrests Thomas for running a stop sign. Future players in The Andy Griffith Show, Frances Bavier and Ron Howard, appeared in the episode as townspeople, Henrietta Perkins, and Sheriff Taylor's son, Opie.
February 16, 1950
What's My Line debuts on TV
TV game show What's My Line debuts on this day in 1950. The show, produced by game show magnates Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, became the longest-running prime-time game show in the history of television. It ran for 18 years. A radio version launched in 1952 but was cancelled in 1953.
February 20, 1972
Radio personality and newspaper columnist Walter Winchell dies at the age of 74.
Winchell's influential gossip and news show, Walter Winchell's Jergens Journal, ran for 18 years.
Winchell started as a vaudeville performer, working with an array of future stars, including Eddie Cantor and George Jessel. He began writing about Broadway in 1922 for the Vaudeville News and in 1929 began writing a syndicated column for the New York Daily Mirror, which ran for three decades. But dishing on socialites became his claim to fame when he began his radio news show in 1930. His fast-paced show was packed with short news and gossip items-his rapid-fire radio prattle was clocked at 215 words a minute. Millions of people tuned into his witty and extremely popular Sunday evening show, which he introduced with, "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press!"
A gossip columnist when few others existed, Winchell ruined more than a few careers with reports that some maintained were sensationalistic, reckless, and actually untrue. His show popularized catchphrases like "blessed event" and "scram," and peers admired his penchant for finding fresh ways to report on Hollywood's elite. Winchell starred as himself in several films, including Love and Hisses in 1937 and Daisy Kenyon in 1947.
What some called captivating reporting was labeled yellow journalism by others. His career declined in the 1950s. Like so many other radio stars, Winchell's career lost its sparkle when Americans' allegiance turned to television. Meanwhile, he made an unpopular decision to back Senator Joseph McCarthy's "Red Scare," publicly accusing a number of Hollywood stars of being communists. In the 1960s, the New York Daily Mirror closed and his column ended. One of his last major jobs was narrating The Untouchables, a popular television drama series, from 1959 to 1963. When he died penniless in 1972, it was reported that just one person-his daughter-showed up at his funeral.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)