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"
I watched very little TV growing up and never thought I would end up as a
TV and film writer, producer and director. I thought I would play
center field for the Brooklyn Dodgers and when that fell through I
really had no back up plan. Which is how a lot of people end up in show
business, I think.
In 1969, he met his wife, Diana Meehan. They founded and ran a day care
center in Berkeley, California, during the 1970s.
Gary started his showbiz career while living in Israel in 1972,
landing the lead role of Scooterman in the language teaching show The Adventures of Scooterman. His first "real job" not in front of the cameracame in 1976, when he became a writer for CBS' The Bob Newhart Show. This was followed by The Tony Randall Show and later CBS' Lou Grant, for which he was also producer.
InUbu Productions (named after his dog). In 1982, he created Family Ties
which ran for seven seasons. It was a critical and ratings hit and
continues to be seen to this day in syndication and helped launch the
career of Michael J. Fox. The show was based on the experiences he shared with his wife and family of hippie parents raising children in the 1970s. He later produced Brooklyn Bridge and Spin City. In 1989, he produced the feature film with a marquée cast, Dad, starring Jack Lemmon, Ted Danson, and Olympia Dukakis. This film was followed by Bye Bye Love and Must Love Dogs.
He received numerous awards for his work, including the Women in FilmLucy Award
in recognition of excellence and innovation in creative works that have
enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television in 1994 and the Austin Film Festival's Outstanding Television Writer Award in 2001.
1981, he formed his own company,
Show No. 188 with guest David Pollock Original Airdate: Week of June 12-18, 2013 First hour: Emmy Award-winning television writer David Pollock joins Ed, Tony Figueroa, and Donna Allen as TV Confidential pays tribute to Emmy Award-winning actress Jean Stapleton. David wrote for Stapleton not only on All in the Family, but also her short-lived series with Whoopi Goldberg, Bagdad Café.
Also in this hour: Highlights from our April 2010 conversation with
Emmy Award-winning director Paul Bogart, the regular director of All in the Family from 1976 through 1979. Second hour: David Pollock and Ed look back on the careers of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding,
the comedy twosome who influenced three generations of comedians and
comedy writers, including Bob Newhart, Woody Allen, Jack Burns, George
Carlin, Harry Shearer and David Letterman. David’s book, Boband Ray: Keener Than Most Persons, The Backstayge Story of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding,
is a comprehensive dual biography that was not only written with the
complete cooperation of Bob Elliott and Liz Goulding, Ray’s widow, but
features insights and commentary from numerous friends, colleagues,
family members and admirers of Bob and Ray, including Norman Lear, Carl
Reiner, Stan Freberg, Harry Shearer, Audrey Meadows, Cloris Leachman and
Chris Elliott.
Here is another "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.
In this clip James Gandolfini talks to Zoe about being scared.
James Gandolfini also dropped by Weekend Update back in 2004,
playing a "New Jersey resident" who's there to comment on
governor Jim McGreevey's gay sex scandal.
'The Sopranos' all came down to the writing. I wouldn't have been on for as long as I was if the writing weren't so good.
James Gandolfini
James Gandolfini died suddenly today after a suspected heart attack while in Rome to attend the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily.
James Joseph Gandolfini, Jr. was born on September 18, 1961 in Westwood, New Jersey. His parents were devout Roman Catholics and spoke Italian at home. Due to such influence, Gandolfini had a strong sense of being Italian, and regularly visited Italy. Gandolfini was introduced to acting as a young man living in New York City, when he accompanied a friend, actor Roger Bart, to a Meisner technique acting class. In 2003, Gandolfini appeared in a series of television commercials, with Greg Schiano, promoting Rutgers football. Gandolfini performed in a 1992 Broadway production of On the Waterfront for six weeks. One of his best-known film roles was that of Virgil, a brutal woman-beating mob enforcer, in the 1993 romantic thriller True Romance. Gandolfini said that one of his major inspirations for the role of Virgil, in True Romance, was an old friend of his, who was a hitman. In 1994 film Terminal Velocity, Gandolfini played Ben Pinkwater, a seemingly mild-mannered insurance man who turns out to be a violent Russian mobster. In Get Shorty (1995), he appeared as a bearded ex-stuntman with a Southern accent, and in The Juror (1996), he played a mob enforcer with a conscience. He played the Mayor of New York in the 2009 remake of The Taking of Pelham 123. Gandolfini returned to HBO in 2007 as the executive producer of the Emmy-nominated documentary special, Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq, his first project after The Sopranos
and the first production for his company Attaboy Films, which was
opened in 2006 with producing partner Alexandra Ryan. He returned to the
stage in 2009, appearing in Broadway's God of Carnage with Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis and Jeff Daniels. In June 2010, it was announced that Gandolfini would be executive producing an HBO film about Ernest Hemingway and his relationship with Martha Gellhorn, titled Hemingway & Gellhorn and starring Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman. Philip Kaufman directed the film, which was written by Barbara Turner and Jerry Stahl, and began shooting in 2011. Gandolfini reunited with Sopranos creator David Chase for Not Fade Away
Actress Channing Chase and singer/actress Peggy King will join us on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing June 19-25 at the following times and venues:
WROM Radio
Detroit, MI
Wednesday 6/19
8pm ET, 5pm PT
2am ET, 11pm PT
Sunday 6/23
8pm ET, 5pm PT
2am ET, 11pm PT
Click on the Listen Live button at WROMRadio.net
Indiana Talks
Marion, IN
Wednesday 6/19
11pm ET, 8pm PT
with replays at various times throughout the week
Click on the player at IndianaTalks.com
or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in Indiana Talks
Share-a-Vision Radio
San Francisco Bay Area
Friday 6/21
7pm ET, 4pm PT
10pm ET, 7pm PT
Click on the Listen Live button at KSAV.org
or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in KSAV
Talktainment Radio
Columbus, OH
Thursday 6/20
2am ET, 11pm PT
Friday 6/21
3am ET, Midnight PT
Noon ET, 9am PT
Click on the Listen Live button at TalktainmentRadio.com
KKYT 93.7 FM The Coyote
Ridgecrest, CA
Sunday 6/23
9pm PT
Monday 6/24
Midnight ET
Click on the Listen Live button at Coyote395.com
or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in KKYT
KHMB Radio 1710 AM
Half Moon Bay, CA
Sunday 6/23
9pm PT
Monday 6/24
Midnight ET
Click on the Listen Live button at KHMBRadio.com
or use the Live365 app on your smartphone and type in KHMB
The Radio Slot Network
San Francisco, CA
Monday 6/24
9pm ET, 6pm PT
with replays at various times throughout the week
Click on the Talk Slot button at RadioSlot.com
Passionate World Radio
Ann Arbor, MI
Tuesday 6/25
9:30pm ET, 6:30pm PT
with replays at various times throughout the week at PWRTalkonDemand.com
Click on the Listen Now button at PWRTalk.com
If you watch AMC’s Mad Men, you know Channing Chase as Dorothy "Dot" Campbell, the socialite mother of Sterling Cooper and Partners executive Peter Campbell, who has been coping with oncoming dementia as part of the storyline this season. If you don’t watch Mad Men, you’ll recognize Channing for her appearances in such films and TV series as Evan Almighty, Charlie Wilson’s War, Family Matters, Life with Bonnie and ER, as well as such national TV commercials for Dell Computers, Discover Card, Glade, Arm & Hammer, Campbell Soup and other major sponsors. Channing Chase will be joining us in our second hour.
If you’re a member of the Television Academy, we ask that you please consider Channing’s work as Dot Campbell this week as you cast your final ballot for Emmy nominations next week. The season finale of Mad Men airs Sunday, June 23 on AMC.
Also this week: We’ll take you back to the Golden Age of Television along with our guest Peggy King. Fresh Air host Terry Gross once described Peggy King as “one of the foremost interpreters of American music,” and someone who “should be declared a national treasure.” Peggy began her career in radio as a vocalist with the big band orchestras of Charlie Spivak, Ray Anthony and Ralph Flanagan before moving into television, where she recorded a jingle for Hunt’s Tomato Sauce that led to appearances on The Jack Benny Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Today Show, The Tonight Show, and The Hallmark Hall of Fame, starring roles in “The Strange Journey of Jenny Hill” (a famous episode of Maverick) and Zero Hour (the 1957 cult classic that served as the inspiration for Airplane!), and a regular stint on The George Gobel Show during the era of live television.
Peggy King still performs these days, plus she is the host of Off the Cuff, a radio talk show that which you can hear every month on Yesteryear Radio. Peggy King will be joining us in our first hour.
Plus: Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen with an expanded edition of This Week of TV History that includes a look at the life and career of comedian George Carlin.
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.
June 20, 1948
Toast of
the Town premieres. On this day in 1948, Ed Sullivan's long-running variety show premieres.
Although later known simply as The Ed Sullivan Show, the series debuts
as Toast of the Town. Among the many performers who made their TV debuts
on the show were Bob Hope, Lena Horne, the Beatles, and Walt Disney. Elvis
Presley also made several high-profile performances on the show, in 1956 and
1957. The show ran until 1971.
June 22, 2008
Stand-up comedian, writer and actor George Carlin dies
of heart failure at the age of 71.
Born
in New York City, Carlin dropped out of high school and joined the Air Force.
While stationed in Shreveport, Louisiana, he got a job as a radio disc jockey; after
his discharge, he worked as a radio announcer and disc jockey in Boston and
Fort Worth, Texas. Carlin and his early radio colleague, Jack Burns, formed a
moderately successful stand-up comedy duo, appearing in nightclubs and on The
Tonight Show with Jack Paar. They soon parted ways, and Carlin made his
first solo appearance on The Tonight Show in 1962. Three years later, he
began a string of performances on The Merv Griffin Show and was later
hired as a regular on Away We Go, 1967’s summer replacement for The
Jackie Gleason Show. Carlin cemented his early career success with the
release of his debut comedy album, the well-reviewed Take-Offs and Put-Downs,
that same year.
During the late 1960s, Carlin had a recurring role on the sitcom That
Girl, starring Marlo Thomas, and made numerous TV appearances on shows such
as The Ed Sullivan Show and Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Seeking
to make a leap into big-time stardom, the relatively clean-cut, conventional
comic reinvented himself around 1970 as an eccentric, biting social critic and
commentator. In his new incarnation, Carlin began appealing to a younger,
hipper audience, particularly college students. He began dressing in a
stereotypically “hippie” style, with a beard, long hair and jeans, and his new routines
were punctuated by pointed jokes about religion and politics and frequent
references to drugs.
Released in 1972, Carlin’s second album, FM/AM, won a Grammy Award
for Best Comedy Recording. A routine from his third hit album, Class Clown (also
1972) grew into the comic’s now-famous profanity-laced routine “Seven Words You
Can Never Say on Television.” When it was first broadcast on New York radio, a
complaint led the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to ban the broadcast
as “indecent.” The U.S. Supreme Court later upheld the order, which remains in
effect today. The routine made Carlin a hero to his fans and got him in trouble
with radio brass as well as with law enforcement; he was even arrested several
times, once during an appearance in Milwaukee, for violating obscenity laws.
More popular than ever as a countercultural hero, Carlin was asked to be the
first guest host of a new sketch comedy show, Saturday Night Live, in
1975. Two years later, he starred in the first of what would be 14 comedy specials
on the cable television station HBO (the last one aired in March 2008). Carlin
had a certain degree of success on the big screen as well, including a
supporting role in Outrageous Fortune (1987), a memorable appearance in Bill
& Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and a fine supporting turn in the
drama The Prince of Tides (1991). More recently, he played a Roman
Catholic cardinal in Kevin Smith’s satirical comedy Dogma (1999).
Though a 1994 Fox sitcom, The George Carlin Show, lasted only one
season, Carlin continued to perform his HBO specials and his live comedy gigs
into the early 21st century. He also wrote best-selling books based on his
comedy routines, including Brain Droppings (1997), Napalm & Silly
Putty (2001) and When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004).
According to his obituary in the New York Times, Carlin gave his last
live comedy show in Las Vegas just weeks before his death.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
- Gary David Goldberg
