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 Judy Norton as Mary Ellen Walton, the eldest daughter on The Waltons, reruns of which air twice a day, Monday through Friday, on the INSP digital cable channel. What you may not know is that over the years since The Waltons, Judy’s accomplishments have encompassed the worlds of music, theatre, cabaret, stage and film production, and independent filmmaking.
Among her recent credits, Judy Norton wrote, produced and stars in Inclusion Criteria, an independent film about a painter who suddenly finds herself haunted by a tragedy that devastated her family many years before. Also starring Lauri 
Hendler (Gimme a Break), Inclusion Criteria premiered earlier this month on Amazon Prime and is now available for streaming on demand. We’ll ask Judy how she came to write Inclusion Criteria, plus we’ll get caught up on some on her other recent projects (including the offbeat web series Disorganized Zone), when she joins us in our second hour.
Also this week: Chuck Harter returns for Part 2 of our look at the history of The Monkees and their impact on music and television. Chuck wrote Hey, Hey, We’re The Monkees, the acclaimed documentary that originally aired on The Disney Channel, and for which Chuck interviewed Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork and other key people behind the Monkees phenomenon. Among other things, we’ll talk about the songs written by Boyce and Hart, Neil Diamond and Mike Nesmith (and particularly how Mike’s songs each have a distinct signature of their own); how the Monkees world tour of 1967 changed the dynamics of The Monkees television series (both seasons of which are now available on Blu-ray); how the Monkees feature motion picture Head was ahead of its time; and how the ill-fated NBC special 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee marked the beginning of the end of the group. An accomplished musician himself, Chuck Harter will also perform two Monkees tunes for us when he joins us in our first hour. |
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 12, 1998
The pilot episode of Junkyard Wars aired.
Scrapheap
Challenge is
a game
show where
teams of contestants had 10 hours (around sunset) in which to build a
working machine that could do a specific task, using materials available in
a scrapheap. The format was exported to
the United States, where it was known as Junkyard Wars. The US show
was also produced by RDF Media, and was originally shown on The Learning Channel. Repeats have aired on
another Discovery network, the Science Channel. A campaign has recently been launched on Facebook and Twitter to try to convince the
producers to bring back the series.
April 15, 1948
Hollywood
Screen Test debuts.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
 |
Chuck McCann
September 2, 1934 – April 8, 2018
|
Good Night Mr. McCann
Everyone who has ever watched Happy Daysknows that, in many respects, “Mrs. C” (the character played by Marion Ross) was the one who held everything together. Everyone was drawn to her, including—and especially—The Fonz. What you may not know is that, for many years, off camera, Marion Ross always felt invisible—a Hollywood outsider—despite the fact that she had appeared in just about every major TV series in the two decades prior to Happy Days, as well as such films as Operation Petticoat, Teacher’s Pet, The Glenn Miller Story, The Proud and Profane and Airport, and despite the fact that Happy Days itself was the No. 1 show on television.
Marion talks about her struggle with invisibility, and how she overcame that, in My Days: Happy and Otherwise, an inspiring new memoir that includes great stories about Marion’s work alongside Lauren Bacall, Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable, Tony Curtis and her idol, Noel Coward, plus memories from her Happy Days cast mates—including the very last interviews ever given by Garry Marshall and Erin Moran. Marion Ross will join us in our second hour.Calendar year 1968 marks the 50th anniversary of the final season of The Monkees (NBC, 1966-1968), the groundbreaking series starring Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, and Michael Nesmith that not only won the Emmy Award for Best Comedy Series of 1966, but continues to attract viewers worldwide, spanning three generations. Though some still question the authenticity of the group (criticizing it for being “made for television”), time has shown that all four Monkees were indeed talented musicians in their own right, leaving their mark in the world of music as well as television.Our friend Chuck Harterwill join us this week to discuss the legacy of The Monkees, from their origins in 1965 (and how the series nearly never made it on the air) to the height of Monkee-mania in 1967, to the pivotal role that MTV and Rhino Records played in the group’s comeback in 1986, to the death of Davy Jones in 2012 and the ongoing live tours of today. Chuck wrote Hey, Hey, We’re The Monkees, the acclaimed documentary that originally aired on The Disney Channel, and for which Chuck interviewed just about key person behind the Monkees phenomenon (including all four Monkees themselves). An accomplished musician himself, Chuck Harter will also perform a few Monkees tunes when he joins us in our first hour.
