Your Mental Sorbet: Time to make the Donuts

Here is another "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.

I was just in the Midwest. I miss Dunkin' Donuts.







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Tony Figueroa

TV Confidential Archives June 27, 2011

Show No. 94 June 27, 2011

First hour: Music journalist Jason Draper, author of Prince: Chaos, Disorder and Revolution, joins Ed for a look at the life, career and music of Prince, and the artist's impact on MTV. Also in this hour: Phil Gries plays excerpts of interviews with Gene Autry, Spike Jones and Carol Burnett that originally aired on Person to Person with Charles Collingwood. Second hour: Ed welcomes actress, director and acting coach Michelle Danner, artistic director of the Edgemar Center of the Arts. Michelle's latest film is an adaptation of John Buffalo Mailer’s play Hello, Herman, the story of a Columbine-like shooting that also takes a hard look at today’s society. Plus: Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen discuss Amos 'n' Andy, the end of the Bicentennial Minutes and the impact of Sonny and Cher's divorce on their popular CBS variety hour.

This Week in Television History: July 2011 PART I

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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.

July 6, 1925

Mervyn "Merv" Edward Griffin, Jr. the American television host and media mogul is born.

He began his career as a radio and big band singer who went on to appear in movies and on Broadway. During the 1960s, Griffin hosted his own talk show, The Merv Griffin Show, and created the game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. A billionaire at his death, he is considered an entertainment business magnate.

Jul 10, 1995

Hugh Grant appears on Tonight Show after Hollywood arrest.

On this day in 1995, Hugh Grant appears on late-night television’s The Tonight Show less than two weeks after being arrested with a Hollywood prostitute. The show’s host, Jay Leno, famously asked the English actor, “What the hell were you thinking?”

Grant, who shot to stardom with the 1994 hit British film Four Weddings and a Funeral, was arrested on June 27, 1995, in a parked car near Sunset Boulevard with a prostitute named Divine Brown and charged with lewd conduct in a public place. At the time of his arrest, Grant, then age 34, was already scheduled to appear on The Tonight Show to promote Nine Months, his first major Hollywood movie. The actor kept his agreement and went on the program, speaking publicly about the incident for the first time. “What the hell were you thinking?” Leno asked him, to which Grant simply responded “I did a bad thing.” The show garnered huge ratings (enabling Leno to beat his late-night talk show rival David Letterman) and Grant was praised for apologizing for his behavior, in contrast to other scandal-plagued celebrities who went into seclusion or blamed their mistakes on others.

Grant pled no contest to the charges against him, paid a fine and received probation. Although the arrest surprised many fans of the actor, who was known for his charm and wit, his career did not seem to suffer in the end and he went on to star in a number of films, most often romantic comedies, including Notting Hill (1999), Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), About a Boy (2002), Love Actually (2003) and Music and Lyrics (2007). Though Grant’s long-term girlfriend, the English model and actress Elizabeth Hurley, stuck by him during the scandal, the couple announced their separation in 2000 after 13 years together.

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

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Tony Figueroa