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"
First hour: Ed welcomes Michael Trinklein, the sole writer and co-producer of Pioneers of Television, the popular oral history of TV that begins its fourth season on PBS on Tuesday, April 15. Also in this hour: Phil Gries remembers Jackie Gleason, the short-lived prime time interview series hosted by The Great One in January 1961 that came about due to the abrupt cancellation ofYou’re in the Picture. Plus: Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen remember Garroway at Large. Second hour: Ed welcomes actressRuta Lee, one of the entertainment industry’s most active civic contributors, and the former president of The Thalians, the very first Hollywood charity dedicated to the promotion of good mental health. Author Mary Ann Anderson (Ida Lupino: Beyond the Camera, The Making of The Hitch-Hiker Illustrated) co-hosts. The Thalians will be honoring Smokey Robinson at the House of Blues Sunset Strip on Saturday, April 26 as part of a benefit concert that will support the mental health and wellness services provided to America’s wounded warriors and their families served by UCLA Operation Mend. Also in this hour: Greg Ehrbar remembers Shazam! and The Secrets of Isis.
Author and television
producer Mark Bennett and former Tonight Show publicist Charlie Barrett
will join us on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing Apr. 23-28 at the
following times and stations:
WROM
Radio Detroit, MI Wednesday 4/23 8pm ET, 5pm PT 2am ET, 11pm
PT Sunday 4/27 8pm ET, 5pm PT 2am ET, 11pm PT Click on the Listen
Live button at WROMRadio.net
Share-a-Vision Radio San Francisco Bay
Area Friday 4/25 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
Indiana Talks Marion, IN Weekends,
various times Click on the player at IndianaTalks.com or use the TuneIn
app on your smartphone and type in Indiana Talks
KSCO-AM 1080 San Jose, Santa Cruz and
Salinas, CA KOMY-AM 1340 La Selva Beach
and Watsonville, CA Sunday 4/27 11am ET, 8am PT Also streaming at KSCO.com
KHMB-AM 1710 Half Moon Bay, CA Sunday
4/27 9pm PT Monday 4/28 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 4/28 10pm ET, 7pm PT with replays Tuesday thru Friday at 10pm
ET, 7pm PT Click on the Talk Slot button at RadioSlot.com
The longtime producer and director of such
classic television series as The Jack Benny Program, Burns and Allen, The
George Gobel Show, My Three Sons, The Bob Cummings Show and The Tonight
Show with Johnny Carson, Fred de Cordova was also
a bona fide Hollywood legend known for his charisma, sharp wit, and close
connections with Anybody Who Was Somebody in show business and high society. In
the early 1990s, de Cordova was more or less winding down his career when he
happened to meet Mark Bennett, a
young actor and producer who at the time had recently relocated to Los Angeles
from his native Colorado. In an unlikely twist, Fred not only became Mark’s
friend and mentor, but would lead Mark on a journey that would change both their
lives.
That story is at the heart of The
Big Show, a new novella by Mark Bennett that is also a memoir of Mark’s
years working with Fred de Cordova. Though set in the world of set business,
The Big Show is, at its heart, a story about mentorship that readers will
enjoy no matter what their profession. The book includes a very heartfelt
foreword by comedian Bob Newhart. Mark Bennett will join us in our
second hour.
To get us in the mood for our conversation
about Fred deCordova, this week’s program with also include a replay of our July
2013 visit with Charlie Barrett.
Charlie runs The Barrett Company, one
of the top PR and marketing communications firm in the entertainment industry
since 1992. Prior to starting his own company, Charlie was one of the top
publicists at NBC throughout the 1980s, when he was charge of media relations
for such shows as The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
And, in
keeping with the overall theme for this week’s program, Tony Figueroa and Donna
Allen will join us in our first hour as we take a look at what Comedy Central
might do next year to fill its 11:30pm time slot, in light of the recent
announcement that Stephen Colbert will succeed David Letterman as host of The Late
Show in 2015.
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.
April 26, 1989
Lucille Ball dies. Comedian Lucille Ball dies at age 78. During her career, she and husband Desi Arnaz
transformed TV, creating the first long running hit sitcom.
Ball was born in 1911
near Jamestown, New York, to an electrician and a concert pianist. Her father
died when Ball was two. By age 15, Ball had decided to become an actress and
attended drama school. However, the shy, skinny teenager received little
encouragement and was rejected at least four times from Broadway chorus lines,
although she eventually joined one in 1926. In 1933, she was hired as the
Chesterfield cigarette girl and was featured in all the company's
advertisements. Attracting attention with her Chesterfield ads, she finally
began playing bit parts in Hollywood movies in 1933. By the late 1930s, the
starlet had graduated to comic supporting roles. In 1940, she met Cuban
bandleader Desi Arnaz while shooting Too Many Girls. The couple married
the following year.
Ball continued to land
movie roles that didn't fully showcase her talent. Frustrated, she turned to
radio and starred as a ditzy wife in My Favorite Husband from 1948 to
1951. CBS decided to launch the popular series on the relatively new medium of
TV. Lucy insisted Desi be cast as her husband in the TV version, though the
network executives said no one would believe the couple were married. Desi and
Lucy performed before live audiences and filmed a pilot, convincing network
executives that audiences responded well to their act, and CBS cast Desi for
the show.
I
Love Lucy became one of the most
popular TV sitcoms in history, ranking in the top three shows for six years and
turning the couple's production company, Desilu, into a multimillion-dollar
business. Ball became president of the company in 1960, after she and Desi
divorced. She also starred in several other "Lucy" shows, including The
Lucy Show, which debuted in 1962 and ran for six seasons, and Here's
Lucy, in which she starred with her two children until the show was
cancelled in 1974. A later show, Life with Lucy, featuring Lucy as a
grandmother, was cancelled after only eight episodes. Ball worked little in the
last years of her life. She died of congestive heart failure following
open-heart surgery earlier in the month.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, he reprised the role of Steve Austin in a number of TV movies, and appeared in a number of supporting, recurring and cameo roles in feature films and TV series, and lent his voice to a number of animated TV series andvideo games.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Show No. 229 with guests Ruta Lee, Michael Trinklein and Mary Ann Anderson
