Your Mental Sorbet: Joe Cocker and John Belushi SNL: "Feeling Alright" 1978

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

John Belushi would have been 65 years old today
Joe Cocker and John Belushi SNL: "Feeling Alright" 1978 from Two Hares on Myspace.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

TV CONFIDENTIAL Archives: Show No. 217 with guests Joe Franklin and Julian David Stone

Show No. 217 with guests Joe Franklin and Julian David Stone
 
Original Airdate: Week of Jan. 15-21, 2014
 
First hour: Ed welcomes Julian David Stone, author of The Strange Birth, Short Life and Sudden Death of Justice Girl, an epic novel that not only brings to life the Golden Age of Live Television, but also explores the underside of early network TV and, particularly, the era of McCarthyism and the blacklist. Also in this hour: A replay of our November 2011 edition of The Sounds of Lost Television featuring highlights of Joe Franklin's Memory Lane, recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running talk show in TV history.  

Second hour: Joe Franklin himself joins Ed and Phil Gries for a nostalgic look at his amazing 70-year career as a radio and TV talk show host, including his long-running weekday show on WWOR-TV, as well as his current radio interviews for Bloomberg Radio. Joe will be releasing a new CD, Joe Franklin’s TV Audio Archives, featuring more than ten hours of highlights from the Memory Lane show. You can pre-order the CD by contacting Rick Russo at this email address.

Reuben Kinkaid and The Professor, plus The Beatles in 1964: Next on TVC

We’ll remember actors Dave Madden and Russell Johnson on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing Jan. 22-28 at the following times and venues:

WROM Radio
Detroit, MI
Wednesday 1/22
8pm ET, 5pm PT
2am ET, 11pm PT
Sunday 1/26
8pm ET, 5pm PT
2am ET, 11pm PT
Click on the Listen Live button at WROMRadio.net

WYYR: Yesteryear Radio
Vero Beach, FL
Wednesday 1/22
9pm ET, 6pm PT
Click the On Air button at WYYR.com

Indiana Talks
Marion, IN
Wednesday 1/22
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

Talktainment Radio
Columbus, OH
Thursday 1/23
2am ET, 11pm PT
Friday 1/24
3am ET, Midnight PT
Noon ET, 9am PT
Click on the Listen Live button at TalktainmentRadio.com

Share-a-Vision Radio
San Francisco Bay Area
Friday 1/24
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

Boost Radio Network
Paramus, NJ
Sunday 1/26
8pm ET, 5pm PT
Click on the On the Air button at BoostRadio.com

KHMB Radio 1710 AM
Half Moon Bay, CA
Sunday 1/26
9pm PT
Monday 1/27
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 1/27
10pm ET, 7pm PT
with replays Tuesday thru Friday at 10pm ET, 7pm PT
Click on the Talk Slot button at RadioSlot.com

PWRNetwork
Ann Arbor, MI
Tuesday 1/28
9:30pm ET, 6:30pm PT
with replays at various times throughout the week
Click on the Live Radio button at PWRTalk.com

For many Baby Boomers and Generation Xers, the news last week of the deaths ofDave Madden (Reuben Kinkaid on The Partridge Family) and Russell Johnson(The Professor on Gilligan’s Island) Thursday represented more than just the passing of two iconic television actors. Because we grew up watching them ― either every week when their shows were in first-run on their respective networks, or every day after school when Partridge andGilligan first went into reruns ― in many respects it’s as if a part of our childhood has died. That they both passed away within hours of each other made that news a double blow.

For these reasons and more, we’ll spend our first hour remembering these two actors along with Tony Figueroa, Donna Allen and This Week in TV History. We’ll talk about Partridge and Gilligan, but we’ll also discuss some of their other contributions to television, including The Twilight Zone (in the case of Russell Johnson) and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (in the case of Dave Madden).

Then Phil Gries will join us in our second hour as The Sounds of Lost Televisionlooks back at Sunday, February 9, 1964: the night of The Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the first official appearance of the group on American television. Phil has put together another great collection of rarely heard audio clips that not only captures the magic of that historic television moment, but gives you a sense of how television news covered The Beatles, particularly during their first year in America, as well as how the influence of The Beatles of American music and, for that matter, American television.

TV CONFIDENTIAL: A radio talk show about television
Wed and Sun 8pm ET, 5pm PT on WROM Radio
Wed 9pm ET, 6pm PT on WYYR: Yesteryear Radio
Wed 11pm ET, 8pm PT on IndianaTalks.com
Fri 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org
Fri Noon ET, 9am PT on Talktainment Radio
Sun 8pm ET, 5pm PT Boost Radio Network
Sun 9pm PT, Mon Mid ET on KHMB Radio 1710 AM (Half Moon Bay, Calif.)
Mon 10pm ET, 7pm PT on The Radio Slot Network
Tue 9:30pm ET, 6:30pm PT on PWRNetwork
Tape us now, listen to us later, using DAR.fm/tvconfidential
Also available as a podcast via iTunes, FeedBurner
and now on your mobile phone via www.stitcher.com/TVConfidential
Follow us online at www.tvconfidential.net
Follow us now on Twitter: Twitter.com/tvconfidential
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This Week in Television History: January 2014 PART IV

Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:

CLICK HERE for a list of Stations

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.

January 21, 1959

Carl Switzer, better known as Alfalfa from the Our Gang comedies, is shot and killed in a brawl. 

Switzer, who became a hunting guide and bartender in Northern California after his acting career fizzled, was shot after an argument over a $50 debt. Authorities ruled the shooting "justifiable homicide."

January 23, 2004

Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) died in Windsor, Vermont at age 76.

He was survived by three children, Michael Derek, Laurie Margaret, and Maeve Jeanne. His wife of 45 years, Anne Jeanne Laurie Keeshan, died February 25, 1996. Keeshan's grandson, Britton Keeshan, became the youngest person at that time to have climbed the Seven Summits by climbing Mount Everest in May 2004. He carried photographs of his grandfather on that ascent, and buried a photo of the two of them at the summit.

Keeshan was buried in Saint Joseph's Cemetery in Babylon, New York.

January 25, 1949

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences presents its first industry award at the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles. 

The Emmy for most popular program went to Pantomime Quiz Time, and puppeteer Shirley Dinsdale and her puppet Judy Splinters won an award for Outstanding TV Personality. Most of the awards were for programs produced by TV station KTLA. The station also won an award for Outstanding Overall Achievement.

January 26, 1979

The Dukes of Hazzard premieres.  

The Dukes of Hazzard was a television comedy about two good-old-boy cousins in the rural South and their souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger known as the General Lee, debuts on CBS. The show, which originally aired for seven seasons, centered around cousins Bo Duke (John Schneider) and Luke Duke (Tom Wopat) and their ongoing efforts to elude their nemeses, the crooked county commissioner "Boss" Jefferson Davis Hogg (Sorrell Booke) and the bumbling Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane (James Best).

The Dukes of Hazzard was known for its car chases and stunts and the General Lee, which had an orange paint job, a Confederate flag across its roof and the numbers "01" on its welded-shut doors, became a star of the show. The General Lee also had a horn that played the first 12 notes of the song "Dixie." Due to all the fast driving, jumps and crashes, it was common for several different General Lees to be used during the filming of each episode.

The General Lee also had a CB (Citizens Band) radio and Luke and Bo Duke's CB nicknames or "handles" were Lost Sheep #1 and Lost Sheep #2, respectively. "The Dukes of Hazzard" (along with the 1977 trucking movie "Smokey and the Bandit") helped promote the CB craze that swept America from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s.

Among the other cars featured on the show were Boss Hogg's white Cadillac Deville convertible, Uncle Jesse Duke's (Denver Pyle) Ford pickup truck and various tow trucks and vehicles belonging to Cooter Davenport (Ben Jones), the local mechanic. Bo and Luke's short-shorts wearing cousin Daisy Duke (Catherine Bach) drove a yellow Plymouth Roadrunner with black stripes and later a Jeep with a golden eagle emblem on the hood and the word "Dixie" on the doors.

The final episode of The Dukes of Hazzard originally aired on August 16, 1985. 

The show spawned several TV specials and a 2005 movie starring Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott and Jessica Simpson.

 

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

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa