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"
Most of you know Richard Anderson as either Oscar Goldman on The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, Lieutenant Steve Drumm on the final season of Perry Mason, or Dr. Richard Malcolm, the title character in The Night Strangler. But scroll down the list of Richard’s credits, and you’ll find that he not only appeared in some of the most iconic films of all time—including Forbidden Planet, Seven Days in May, John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, Martin Ritt’s The Long, Hot Summer and Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory—but either worked with, got to know or otherwise crossed paths with some of the most iconic names in motion picture history… one of whom, by the way, played a pivotal role very early in Richard’s career.
The first hour of this week’s program will include a replay of our June 2016 conversation with Jimmy Weldon. The voice of Yakky Doodle on Yogi Bear, which continues to air on Cartoon Network and Boomerang, Jimmy also hosted one of the very first local children’s TV shows, The Webster Webfoot Show, which originated in Dallas and aired for many years in Los Angeles and in Fresno. Some of you may remember Jimmy from his many appearances on such classic TV shows as Dallas and The Rockford Files.
Jimmy Weldon has also been one of the country’s leading motivational speakers for more than four decades. He shares many of his ideas in his book, Go Get ’Em Tiger, a part autobiographical, part motivational book that shows that the real definition of success is becoming the person you want to be and doing what you really want to do.  |
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 12, 1937
William "Bill" Henry
Cosby, Jr. the American comedian, actor, author, television producer, and activist is born.
A veteran stand-up performer,
he got his start at various clubs, then landed a vanguard role in the 1960s
action show I Spy. He later starred in his own
series, The Bill Cosby
Show, in 1969. He was one of the major characters on the
children's television show The Electric
Company for its first two seasons, and created the humorous
educational cartoon series Fat
Albert and the Cosby Kids, about a group of young friends
growing up in the city. Cosby also acted in numerous films. Cosby's net worth
is estimated at over $300 million.
July 12, 2002
The first season of Monk began.
Adrian Monk was a brilliant detective for the San Francisco Police Department until his wife, Trudy, was killed by a car bomb in a parking garage, which Monk then believed was intended for him. In a later episode, he discovers the bomb was truly meant for Trudy. He later believes that Trudy's death was part of a larger conspiracy that she had uncovered during her time as a journalist. Trudy's death led Monk to suffer a nervous breakdown. He was then discharged from the force and became a recluse, refusing to leave his house for three and a half years. Until the final episode, Trudy's death was Monk's only unsolved case.
He is finally able to leave the house with the help of his nurse, Sharona Fleming. The breakthrough allows him to work as a private detective and a consultant for the homicide unit despite limitations rooted in his obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), which had grown significantly worse after the tragedy, along with several other phobias.
Monk's compulsive habits are numerous, and a number of phobias compound his situation, such as his fear of germs. Monk has 312 fears, some of which are milk, ladybugs, harmonicas, heights, imperfection, claustrophobia, driving, food touching on his plates, messes, and risk. He, however, had a breakthrough from claustrophobia later in the series. The OCD and plethora of phobias inevitably lead to very awkward situations and cause problems for Monk and anyone around him as he investigates cases. These same personal struggles, particularly the OCD, are what aid him in solving cases, such as his sharp memory, specific mindset, and attention to detail. In one episode entitled "Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan", Marci Maven has compiled a list of all of Adrian's fears. In another episode, he tries to conquer his fears by doing various activities which involved his phobias. For example, he tries drinking milk, climbing a ladder, and putting a ladybug on his hand, but when things are scattered unorganized across a table, he cannot resist the compulsion to arrange them neatly.
July 15, 1964
The Universal Studio Tour opened.
The Tour is the signature attraction at the park, and goes into a working movie studio, with various film and Television sets on the lot. In recent years, guests have sat in multi-car trams for the duration of the ride. The Tour lasts about 45–50 minutes and is led by a live tour guide who can be seen throughout the tram on video screens. It travels through the Front Lot, Backlot and various attractions, passing sets and props from movies along the way.
From the beginning, Universal had offered tours of its studio. After Carl Laemmle opened Universal City on March 14, 1915, he would later invite the general public to see all the action for an admission fee of just $0.05, which also included a lunch box containing chicken inside. There was also a chance to buy fresh produce, since then-rural Universal City was still in part a working farm. This original tour was discontinued in around 1930, due to the advent of sound films coming to Universal.
Ironically, the modern Universal Studio Tour was initially reborn as a way to sell more lunches in the Studio Commissary. The late 50’s and early 60’s were a difficult time for Hollywood studios. The arrival of television had weakened movie attendance and more and more productions were going on location to save costs. The grand old movie back lots were quickly becoming a thing of the past. In the mid 1950’s, Universal began letting bus companies drive on to the property (the same bus companies that offered guided tours of the homes of Hollywood stars) as a way to increase revenues. The studio charged the bus companies a small fee and also benefited from the extra lunches they could sell to the tourists in the Studio Commissary. The bus drivers were given a hand-typed script to read that highlighted the studio facilities as well as hyped upcoming Universal releases like Bonzo Goes to College and Monster on the Campus.
When MCA purchased Universal in the late 1950’s, they began to look for a way to revive the old Studio Tour as part of a new image for Universal City Studios. In 1963 legendary movie mogul Lew Wasserman, then president of MCA/Universal, asked Vice President Al Dorskind to look into the feasibility of creating a permanent tour.
The modern tour was established to include a series of dressing room walk-throughs, peeks at actual production, and later, staged events. This grew over the years into a full-blown theme park.
July 16, 1967
Will Ferrell is born in Irvine, California.
After rising to fame on TV’s Saturday Night Live,
Ferrell starred in a string of big-screen comedies, including Old School
and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.
Ferrell graduated from the University of Southern California in
1990 and went on to join The Groundlings, an improvisational comedy group whose
members have included Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz and Lisa Kudrow. In 1995,
Ferrell became a cast member of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Over the
course of his seven seasons with the show, he became known for his
impersonations of such celebrities as President George W. Bush, game show host
Alex Trebek and Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton. Ferrell also
became known for the fictional characters he created, including cowbell player
Gene Frenkle of Blue Oyster Cult, cheerleader Craig Buchanan and dense
nightclubber Steve Butabi.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
Known around the world as the mom on E.T., not to mention the legendary “scream queen” of such modern classic horror movies as The Howling, The Frighteners and Cujo, Dee Wallace is also an accomplished teacher, having earned her teaching credentials from The University of Kansas and taught in the public school system. She has also expanded her teaching platform, and the principles that she had found empowering for children, into daily sessions, her weekly radio show, Conscious Creation, and the stuffed bear Buppa LaPaloo, which also serves as an important teaching tool for children ages four to seven.
This week’s show will also include a conversation with actor Jonathan Goldsmith, the man known around the world as The Most Interesting Man in the World in a wildly popular series of commercials for Dos Equis beer that ran from 2007 to 2016. Though he patterned his delivery for The Most Interesting Man after his longtime friend Fernando Lamas, Jonathan brought more real world experience to the role than anyone could have imagined, from driving a garbage truck to make ends meet when he first came out to Hollywood, to saving a man from freezing to death in the High Sierras, to saving a woman from drowning, to debunking a mystic healer in the Philippines and defying the legendary curse of the ghost town of Bodie, California. 
Plus: Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen will pay tribute to the late Roger Moore as part of an expanded edition of This Week in TV History that will include highlights from Ed’s interview with Sir Roger in March 1994 in which the actor discussed his experience as a contract player at Warner Bros. and playing cousin Beau Maverick on Maverick. As Moore did not often speak publicly about his experience on Maverick, this is a rare interview indeed. |
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 3, 2012
TV
legend Andy Griffith dies age 86 at his North Carolina home.
Andrew Samuel Griffith was born on June 1, 1926, in
Mount Airy, North Carolina. He majored in music at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in 1949. Griffith went on to teach school
for several years before finding success as a stand-up comedian. In 1957, he
made his feature film debut in the critically acclaimed drama "A Face in
the Crowd," starring, in a serious role, as a drifter who becomes a
manipulative, power-hungry celebrity.
"The Andy Griffith Show" premiered in the fall of 1960 and quickly became a hit. Griffith played the amiable Sheriff Andy Taylor, a widower raising his young son Opie, played by Ron Howard (now a successful Hollywood director, whose credits include "A Beautiful Mind" and "The Da Vinci Code"). Set in the small, idyllic community of Mayberry (based on Griffith's hometown of Mount Airy), the show included an ensemble of eccentric characters such as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife (played by Don Knotts), prim Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier), gas-station attendant Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors), Floyd the barber (Howard McNear) and Otis the town drunk (Hal Smith). The folksy sitcom, memorable for its whistled theme song, which played over opening credits featuring Andy and Opie on their way to go fishing, continues to air in reruns. Additionally, the program spawned the TV shows "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." (1964-69) and "Mayberry R.F.D." (1968-71). Mayberry RFD - S01E01 - Andy and Helen Get Married by superannuatedlps During the 1970s and 1980s, Griffith appeared in several short-lived TV series and various made-for-TV movies before again finding success in the legal drama "Matlock," which originally aired from 1986 to 1995. The actor's final role was in the 2009 feature film "Play the Game." Also in 2009, the Andy Griffith Museum opened in Mount Airy. The TV legend died of a heart attack on July 3, 2012, at his home on Roanoke Island in North Carolina.
July 4, 1927
Playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon born in the
Bronx section of New York City.
In one of his earliest jobs, in the 1950s,
Simon wrote for Sid Caesar’s live comedy television program Your Show of
Shows, alongside other future greats such as Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. As Simon went on to write for the stage and big
screen, humor would continue to play a major role in his work. Simon’s first
Broadway play, Come Blow Your Horn, opened in 1961. He went on to write
over 30 plays, including Barefoot in the Park (1963), The Odd Couple
(1965), The Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1969), The Sunshine Boys
(1972), Chapter Two (1977), the autobiographical trilogy of Brighton
Beach Memoirs (1983), Biloxi Blues (1985) and Broadway Bound
(1986), Lost in Yonkers (1991) and The Goodbye Girl (1993).
Simon wrote the screenplay for many of his stage productions that were
adapted for the big screen. In 1967, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda starred in a
cinematic version of Barefoot in the Park, about a young newlywed couple
in Manhattan. Redford had also appeared in the original Broadway cast. In 1968,
Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau starred in a film version of The Odd Couple,
about the mismatched roommates Felix Ungar, a neurotic neat freak, and Oscar
Madison, a slob. Matthau also played Oscar Madison in the original Broadway
production. The Odd Couple later became a popular TV sitcom that aired
from 1970 to 1975 and starred Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. In 1998, Lemmon
and Matthau reunited for The Odd Couple II. (The pair appeared in a
number of comedic films together, starting with 1966’s The Fortune Cookie
and including 1993’s Grumpy Old Men and its 1995 sequel.)
Simon has received four Academy Award nominations for Best Screenplay: for The
Odd Couple, The Sunshine Boys (1975), which starred Matthau and George
Burns, The Goodbye Girl (1977), which starred Richard Dreyfuss and
Marsha Mason (whom Simon was married to from 1973 to 1981) and California
Suite (1978), which featured Jane Fonda, Alan Alda, Michael Caine and
Richard Pryor.
July 6, 1927
Patrick “Pat” Layton Paulsen was born.
The comedian and satirist notable for his roles on several of the Smothers Brothers TV shows, and for his campaigns for President
of the United States in 1968, 1972, 1980, 1988, 1992, and 1996,
which had primarily comedic rather than political objectives, although his
campaigns generated some protest votes
for him.
July 7, 1927
He is best known for leading the NBC Orchestra
on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny
Carson. Severinsen was born in Arlington, Oregon, the son of Minnie Mae
and Carl Severinsen, who was a dentist. He was
nicknamed "Little Doc" after his father, and had originally wanted to
play the trombone. But the senior Severinsen, a
gifted amateur violinist, urged him
to study the violin. The younger Severinsen insisted on
the trombone, but had to settle for the only horn available in Arlington's
small music store a trumpet. A week later,
with the help of his father and a manual of instructions, the seven-year-old
was so good that he was invited to join the high school band.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
Loren Bouchard is the creator and executive producer of Bob's Burgers, which begins its seventh season this fall on Fox. He is also a composer, writer and actor whose other TV credits include Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, Home Movies and The Ricky Gervais Show.
Our first hour will pay tribute to the life and career of Adam West, the iconic actor known to three generations of television viewers around the world as Batman (and, to fans of Family Guy, Mayor Adam West). Our guest for this segment will be Joel Eisner, author of The Official Batman Batbook, plus we’ll play highlights from our interviews with actresses Lee Meriwether and Julie Newmar. 
