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"
He was featured in the television show Rowan
& Martin's Laugh-In, where he played straight man to Dick Martin.
Born on a carnival
train near the small town of Beggs, Oklahoma, under the name of “Daniel
Hale David”, Rowan toured with his parents, Oscar and Nellie David, who
performed a singing and dancing act with the carnival. He was orphaned at age
11, spent four traumatic years at the McClelland Home in Pueblo, Colorado, then was taken in by a
foster family at age 16 and enrolled in Central
High School (Pueblo, Colorado). After graduating from high school,
he hitchhiked to Los Angeles,
California, in 1940 and found a job in the mailroom at Paramount Pictures;
quickly ingratiating himself with studio head Buddy DeSylva, a year later he became
Paramount's youngest staff writer.
July 22, 1947
Albert Brooks is born Albert Lawrence Einstein.
Actor, writer, director son of Thelma Leeds (née Goodman), a singer and actress, and Harry Parke (né Einstein), a radio comedian who performed on Eddie Cantor's radio program and was known as Parkyarkarkus. His brothers are comedic actor Bob Einstein, better known by his stage name "Super
Dave Osborne" and Cliff
Einstein, a partner and longtime chief creative officer at the Los Angeles ad
agency Dailey & Associates and his half-brother was Charles Einstein
(1926-2007), a writer who wrote for such shows as Playhouse 90 and Lou Grant. Brooks started his own career in comedy by landing
regular roles on variety shows in the late 1960s and gaining popularity on Saturday
Night Live in the 1970s. Brooks' first film appearance was Taxi Driver
(1976). He began screenwriting and directing in the 1980s, with films including
Lost in America (1985), Defending Your Life (1991), The Muse
(1999) and Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (2005).
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.
The series debuted on July 12, 2002, on USA
Network. It continued for eight seasons, with the final season concluding
on December 4, 2009. The series held the record for the most-watched scripted
drama episode in cable television history from 2009 through 2012 (broken
by The Walking Dead) with "Mr. Monk and the End – Part II", its
series finale, with 9.4 million viewers, 3.2 million of them in the 18–49
demographic. The series was critically acclaimed, winning eight Emmy Awards,
one Golden Globe Award, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
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.
In 1998, Ferrell reprised the Butabi character for the feature-length movie A
Night at the Roxbury, which co-starred his SNL castmates Chris
Kattan and Molly Shannon. The following year, Ferrell and Shannon appeared
together in another SNL sketch movie spin-off, Superstar, about
the nerdy Catholic schoolgirl Mary Katherine Gallagher (played by Shannon).
During his years at SNL, Ferrell also had supporting roles in movie
comedies like Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1995), Zoolander
(2001) and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001).
In 2003, Ferrell starred in the box-office hits Elf, about a human
raised by Santa’s elves, and Old School, about three men in their 30s
who try to relive their college days by starting their own fraternity. Ferrell,
along with his Old School co-stars Luke Wilson and Vince Vaughn, came to
be known in the media as members of the so-called “Frat Pack,” a group of male
Hollywood actors who appeared together in comedies in the late 1990s and 2000s.
Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller were also considered members of the
group.
In recent years, Ferrell has starred in several sports-themed comedies,
including 2006’s Talladega Nights, about auto racing; 2007’s Blades
of Glory, about figure skating; and 2008’s Semi-Pro, about
basketball.
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.
Carl Hilding "Doc" Severinsen the pop and jazztrumpeter is born.
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.
In 1989, he
teamed up with Jerry Seinfeld to co-create the television seriesSeinfeld, where he also acted as
head writer and executive producer. David's work won him a Primetime Emmy
Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1993. In 1999, he created the HBO
series Curb Your Enthusiasm, a
mostly improvised sitcom in which he stars as a fictionalized version of
himself.
Formerly a standup comedian, David went into television comedy,
writing and starring in ABC's Fridays,
as well as writing briefly for Saturday
Night Live.
July 3, 2012
TV
legend Andy Griffith dies age 86 at his North Carolina home.
The actor also was known for his starring role in the
1980s-1990s TV drama
"Matlock," in which he portrayed a shrewd Atlanta defense attorney.
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).
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.
