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"
that we could use to momentarily forget about those
things that leave a bad taste in our mouths
.
To Kill a Mockingbird makes its return to Broadway October 5 with original cast members Jeff Daniels as Atticus Finch and Tony Award®-winner Celia Keenan-Bolger as Scout. Join us as Jeff welcomes everyone back in this short film written by Mockingbird playwright Aaron Sorkin.
The detective series featured
crime-solving beauties instructed by a mysterious voice on a speaker phone
known only as Charlie. Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith, and Farrah Fawcett played
the original Angels. Fawcett's blown-dry, feathered hair launched a national
fad, and the actress left the show after a year to pursue a career in movies.
Subsequent Angels included Cheryl Ladd, Shelley Hack, and Tanya Roberts. In
2000, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu played the Angels in a movie
version of the show.
August 19, 1921
TV producer Gene Roddenberry, best known
as the creator of Star Trek, is born in El Paso, Texas.
His family moved to Los Angeles when Roddenberry was
a toddler, and his father became a police officer. Roddenberry also studied
criminal justice at Los Angeles City College but became a pilot instead through
the Civilian Pilot Training Program. During World War II, Roddenberry flew
bombing missions in the South Pacific with the U.S. Army Air Corps. Shot down
during a raid, he survived and won a medal. A second crash, when he was working
as a Pan Am pilot after the war, killed 14 people and convinced Roddenberry to
give up flying.Instead,
Roddenberry became a police officer like his father. But before long, he
discovered that living the police life paid less than writing about it for TV,
so he began writing scripts for Dragnet and other police TV dramas. In
1963, he produced a short-lived NBC show, The Lieutenant, about life in
the U.S. Marines.
A
lifelong science-fiction fan, Roddenberry wanted to try his hand making a
sci-fi TV program. He convinced superstar Lucille Ball to fund a pilot.
Although the first pilot was rejected, a second take was picked up, and Star
Trek premiered in 1966.
Although
the show ran for only three years and never placed better than No. 52 in the
ratings, Roddenberry's sci-fi series became a cult classic and spawned four
television series and nine movies.
Roddenberry
died on October 24, 1991, and was one of the first people to be
"buried" in space.
Alex Haley, author of Roots
(1976), was born in Ithaca, New York.
After 20 years in the U.S. Coast Guard, Haley retired and wrote books,
including The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965). In 1976, he published
his best-known work, Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The blend of
fact and fiction, drawn largely from stories recited by Haley's grandmother,
chronicles seven generations of Haley's family history, from the enslavement of
his ancestors to his own quest to trace his family tree.
Roots became a TV miniseries
in 1977. The eight-part series was aired on consecutive nights and became the
most watched dramatic show in TV history. Some 130 million people-nearly half
the country's population at the time--watched the final episode of the series.
Haley died on Feb. 10, 1992.
Her early acting credits included a 1979 episode of Barnaby Jones and the pilot episode of Simon & Simon "Details at Eleven" in 1981, episode one of season two of The Greatest American Hero, two episodes of The A-Team as two different characters in the 1983 episode "The Only Church in Town" and the 1984 episode "Hot Styles," and The Love Boat. She appeared in the science fiction series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and as Diane Chambers' best friend in the sitcom Cheers, before eventually becoming a regular on the ABC action drama The Fall Guy. After The Fall Guy, she played Christine Sullivan on the 1980s television comedy series Night Court from the third season until the show's end. She played Georgie Anne Lahti Hartman on the comedy series Hearts Afire, co-starring John Ritter. Post also had regularly recurring guest star roles on The District and on Scrubs as the mother of Dr. Elliot Reid.
Film credits include There's Something About Mary (1998), in which she played the mother of Cameron Diaz's character. She played a call girl and dominatrix in the 1988 TV movie Tricks of the Trade opposite Cindy Williams, and a singer in Glitz with Jimmy Smits, based on the novel by Elmore Leonard. She also had a starring role in NBC's 1995 movie Visitors in the Night. She appeared as reporter Christine Merriweather in the 2007 improvisational comedy film (released in 2017) Cook Off!.
Post was the voice of June Darby on the computer animated robot superhero TV series Transformers: Prime. She appeared as recurring character Barbara 'Bunny' Fletcher in the first four seasons of Chicago P.D.
In 2001, Stewart was named the third most
powerful woman in America by Ladies Home
Journal. In 2004, she was convicted of lying to investigators
about a stock sale and served five months in prison. Stewart began a strong
comeback campaign in 2005, with her company returning to profitability in 2006.
August
5, 1956
Maureen Denise McCormick was born.
Actress, reality show
participant, and recording artist.
She became one of America's most beloved comic
actresses, is born near Jamestown, New York. Her father, an electrician, died
when Ball was two. By age 15, Ball had decided to attend drama school and
become an actress. However, the shy, skinny teenager received little
encouragement and was rejected at least four times from Broadway chorus lines
before finally becoming a chorus girl 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 argued that 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 situation comedies 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 in 1989, at the age of 78.
August 8, 1956
The Dumont network made its final telecast.
The DuMont
Television Network was one of the world's pioneer commercial television networks,
rivalling NBC and CBS for
the distinction of being first overall in the USA. It began operation in the
United States in 1946. It was owned byDuMont Laboratories,
a television equipment and set manufacturer. The network was hindered by the
prohibitive cost of broadcasting,
by regulations imposed by the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) which restricted the company's growth,
and even by the company's partner, Paramount Pictures.
Despite several innovations in broadcasting and the creation of one of
television's biggest stars of the 1950s (Jackie
Gleason), the network never found itself on solid
financial ground. Forced to expand on UHF channels during an
era when UHF was not yet a standard feature on television sets, DuMont fought
an uphill battle for program clearances outside of their three
owned-and-operated stations in New York, Washington and Pittsburgh, finally
ending network operations in 1956. DuMont's last broadcast, a boxing match,
aired on August 6, 1956.
The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour debuts. The
popular variety show, featuring music, comedy routines and sarcastic banter
between vertically challenged Sonny and his statuesque wife, Cher.
Sonny
and Cher had been singing and performing comedy in nightclubs for more than a
decade. They released several hit records in the 1960s, most notably "I
Got You, Babe," before launching their show. The series rated well and
showcased future comedy stars, including Teri Garr and Steve Martin.
Despite
the show's popularity, the couple suffered marital problems and announced in
the spring of 1974 that they were divorcing and would cancel the show. After
divorcing in 1975, both Sonny and Cher tried and failed to launch solo
comedy-variety shows. They revived their show together briefly in 1976 and
1977. Cher went on to a successful film career, winning the Best Actress Oscar
for Moonstruck (1987). Bono later became a politician, serving as mayor
of Palm Springs and a U.S. congressman.
August 1, 1981
MTV launches. MTV:
Music Television goes on the air for the first time ever, with the words
(spoken by one of MTV’s creators, John Lack): “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and
roll.” The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first music video to
air on the new cable television channel, which initially was available only to
households in parts of New Jersey. MTV went on to revolutionize the music
industry and become an influential source of pop culture and entertainment in
the United States and other parts of the world, including Europe, Asia and
Latin America, which all have MTV-branded channels.
In MTV’s early days, its programming consisted of basic music videos that
were introduced by VJs (video jockeys) and provided for free by record
companies. As the record industry recognized MTV’s value as a promotional
vehicle, money was invested in making creative, cutting-edge videos. Some
directors, including Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Three Kings) and
Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), worked on music
videos before segueing into feature films. In the 1980s, MTV was instrumental
in promoting the careers of performers such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince
and Duran Duran, whose videos played in heavy rotation.
By the late 1980s, MTV started airing non-video programming, geared toward
teenagers and young adults. Its popular reality series The Real World
launched in 1992 and was followed by such highly rated shows as The
Osbournes, Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, Laguna Beach, My Super Sweet 16 and
The Hills. MTV also debuted animated series including Beavis and
Butthead and Celebrity Deathmatch, as well as documentaries, news,
game shows and public service campaigns on topics ranging from voting rights to
safe sex. MTV developed a reputation for pushing cultural boundaries and taste;
the airing of Madonna’s 1989 “Like a Prayer” video is just one famous example.
In 1984, the channel launched the MTV Music Video Awards, which were followed
in 1992 by the MTV Movie Awards. Today, MTV’s music-video programming is
largely confined to one show, Total Request Live.
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their last comedy
show together at New York's Copacabana Club.
Born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, Martin started a
nightclub act after working as a prizefighter and a steelworker in the 1940s.
Lewis, the son of performers, debuted in comedy acts with his parents at age
five and was working steadily as a comic by 1946, when he met Dean Martin. The
pair performed an act in which screwball Lewis constantly interrupted straight
man Martin's singing. They made their first appearance in 1946 at a club in
Atlantic City and were an instant hit, soon in demand for radio and movie
performances. The pair made 16 movies together, starting with My Friend Irma
in 1949. By 1956, though, the pair decided to call it quits.
After the duo split up,
Martin launched his own TV variety show, which ran from 1965 to 1974. In the
late 1950s and early 1960s, Martin teamed up with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis,
Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop to perform in Las Vegas. The group quickly
became known as the Rat Pack, a suave group of young, fast-living entertainers.
The group made several movies together in the early 1960s, including Ocean's
Eleven (1960), Sergeants Three (1962), and Robin and the Seven
Hoods. Martin died in 1995.
Lewis
went on to sign one of the most lucrative film contracts of the day, a $10 million
deal for 14 films with Paramount. Lewis' films, including Cinderfella
(1960) and The Nutty Professor (1963), failed to attract much praise
from American critics but made him a star in France, where he has long been
considered a comic genius. After a long absence from film, he gave an acclaimed
performance in the 1986 film The King of Comedy, co-starring Robert De
Niro.
