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.
April 10, 1972. After a 20-year exile in Europe, Charlie Chaplin returned to Hollywood to receive an honorary Oscar. Chaplin, then 82, received probably the longest standing ovation in the history of the Oscar telecast as he walked slowly to the podium to pick up his Academy Award for his "incalculable effect in making motion pictures the art form of the century." Chaplin was quite literally speechless as he looked at the throng of stars whose cheers kept getting louder. He finally uttered "thank you so much," referring to the audience as "sweet people." And there wasn't a dry eye in the house when Jack Lemmon gave him his famous Little Tramp hat and cane.
First hour: Actress Sherry Jackson (The Danny Thomas Show, Trouble Along the Way, Come Next Spring) joins Ed for a conversation about her stepfather, writer/director Montgomery Pittman, as well as some of her favorite roles, including her appearances on 77 Sunset Strip, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek and Batman, as well as her work with Blake Edwards on the feature film Gunn. Sherry will be appearing at the Seventh Annual MidAtlantic Nostalgia Convention, August 9-10-11 at the Marriott Hotel in Hunt Valley, Maryland. Also in this hour: Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen remember Walter Winchell, the controversial gossip columnist who died This Week in TV History.
Second hour: Paul Greenjoins Ed to discuss his latest book, Jennifer Jones: The Life and Films, a sympathetic portrait of the Academy Award-winning star of The Song of Bernadette, Duel in the Sun, Love is a Many Splendored Thing and other classic films from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Also in this hour: a review of the new HBO series Luck, plus tributes to Whitney Houston and Peter Breck.
Join us as we head on out to the Southfork Ranch, along with our guests Tanna Frederick and Michael Preece, on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing Feb. 22-28 at the following times and venues:
WROM Radio Detroit, MI Wednesday 2/22 8pm ET, 5pm PT Sunday 2/26 8pm ET, 5pm PT Click on the Listen Live button at RealmsofMusic.com
One of the most respected and accomplished directors in the television industry, Michael Preece has helmed multiple episodes of such top shows as Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, The Young Riders, Walker: Texas Ranger, Seventh Heaven and the long-running CBS drama Dallas. In fact, Michael not only directed more episodes of the original Dallas than any other director, but had a hand in virtually every major storyline, including “Who Shot J.R.,”Miss Ellie's acceptance of Jock's death, and“Blast from the Past,” the famous cliffhanger in which Pam wakes up to find Bobby in the shower, despite the fact that he had apparently died one year before.
We’ll talk about Dallas, of course, but we’ll also talk about some of the other films, TV series, and actors with whom Michael has worked throughout his career, including Karl Malden, Marlon Brando, Michael Douglas, John Wayne, Steve McQueen, Tim Conway, Chuck Norris, Barbara Bel Geddes and, of course, Larry Hagman. All this and more when Michael Preece joins us in our second hour.
Also joining us this week will be award-winning stage and independent film actress Tanna Frederick (Hollywood Dreams, Queen of the Lot, A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia). Tanna is about to make her directorial debut in the stage production of Claire Chafee’s Why We Have a Body, which begins an eight-week run at the Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica on Friday, March 2. Tanna once said she would never, ever direct... so we’ll ask her what changed her mind, and a whole lot more, when she joins us in our first hour.
Plus: Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen with This Week in TV History. It’ll be a full program as always, and we certainly hope you’ll join us.
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
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.
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.
To quote the Bicentennial
Minute, "And that's the way it was".
One of the most respected and accomplished directors in the television industry, 
Also joining us this week will be award-winning stage and independent film actress 
