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"
October
18, 1943
The first broadcast of Perry Mason was presented on CBS Radio.
October 22, 1938
Among his best-known roles are Emmett "Doc" Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family and its sequel Addams Family Values, and Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He rose to prominence in the 1980s as Jim Ignatowski in the television series Taxi.
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| Suzanne Marie Somers born Suzanne Marie Mahoney October 16, 1946 – October 15, 2023 |
Somers began acting in small roles during the late 1960s and early 1970s, including on various talk shows promoting her book of poetry, and bit parts in movies, such as the "Blonde in the white Thunderbird" in American Graffiti, and an episode of the American version of the sitcom Lotsa Luck (as the femme fatale) in the early 1970s. She also appeared in The Rockford Files in 1974 and had an uncredited role as a topless "pool girl" in Magnum Force in 1973. She also had a guest-starring role on The Six Million Dollar Man, in the 1977 episode "Cheshire Project,” she played a passenger on the first episode of The Love Boat as well as a guest appearance in a 1976 episode of One Day at a Time. She later landed her most famous role of the ditzy blonde "Chrissy Snow" on the ABC sitcom Three's Company in 1977. Also that year, she was a celebrity panelist on Match Game, and appeared with husband Alan Hamel on Tattletales.
The series co-starred John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt in a comedy of errors about two single women living with a single man who pretended to be gay in order to bypass the landlord's policy of prohibiting single men sharing an apartment with single women. The program was an instant success in the ratings, eventually spawning a short-lived spin-off series The Ropers (starring Norman Fell and Audra Lindley).
When Three's Company began its fifth season in late 1980, Somers demanded a hefty salary increase from $30,000 to $150,000 an episode as well as a 10 percent ownership of the show's profits. Those close to the situation suggested Somers' rebellion was largely due to her husband Alan Hamel's influences. After ABC denied her a raise in salary, Somers refused to appear in the second and fourth episodes of the season, due to excuses such as a broken rib. She finished the remaining season on her contract, however her role was decreased to just 60 seconds per episode, with her character only appearing in the episode's closing tag in which Chrissy calls the trio's apartment from her parents' home. After ABC fired her from the program and terminated her contract, Somers sued the network for $2 million, saying her credibility in show business had been damaged. The lawsuit was settled by an arbitrator who decided Somers was owed $30,000, due to a single missed episode for which she had not been paid. Future rulings also favored the network and producers. Somers says she was fired for asking to be paid as much as popular male television stars of the day such as Alan Alda and Carroll O'Connor.
In 1983, Suzanne Somers through her Hamel/Somers Productions signed a deal with Columbia Pictures Television.
Somers and her Three's Company co-star John Ritter reconciled their friendship after 20 years of not speaking to each other, shortly before Ritter's death in 2003.
During the 1980s, Somers became a Las Vegas entertainer.
In the early 1990s, she was the spokeswoman in a series of infomercials for the Thighmaster, a piece of exercise equipment which is squeezed between one's thighs above the knees.
During this period of her career, she also performed for U.S. servicemen overseas.
Calling her a legend in the industry, on May 2, 2014, Direct Marketing Response inducted Somers into the Infomercial Hall of Fame.
At the height of her exposure as official spokesperson for Thighmaster infomercials, Somers made her first return to a series, although not on network television. In 1987, she starred in the sitcom She's the Sheriff, which ran in first-run syndication. Somers portrayed a widow with two young kids who decided to fill the shoes of her late husband, a sheriff of a Nevada town. The show ran for two seasons.
Anthony Marcus "Tony" Shalhoub was born.
After a two-year absence from the small screen, Shalhoub starred in another TV
series, Monk,
in which he plays a San Francisco
detective diagnosed with obsessive compulsive
disorder, for USA Network. Michael Richards had been offered the role
when the show was being considered for broadcast on ABC,
a network which would later rerun the first season in 2003, but he eventually
turned it down. Shalhoub was nominated for Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a
Comedy Series seven times consecutively, from 2003-2009, and won in 2003, 2005,
and 2006.
October
10, 1958
77 Sunset Strip first aired
The Radio Corporation of America finalized the sale of the NBC Blue radio network.
Edward J. Noble paid $8 million for the network that was renamed American Broadcasting Company.
October 14, 1968
The first live telecast to come from a manned U.S. spacecraft was transmitted from Apollo 7.
October 15, 1943
Penny Marshall was born Carole Penny Marshall in The Bronx, New York City.
One of her first jobs was for a TV commercial for a
beautifying shampoo. She was hired to play a girl with stringy, unattractive
hair, and Farrah Fawcett
was hired to play a girl with thick, bouncy hair. As the crew was lighting the
set, Marshall's stand-in wore a placard that read "Homely Girl" and
Fawcett's stand-in wore a placard that said "Pretty Girl". Farrah
Fawcett, sensing Marshall's insecurity about her looks, crossed out
"Homely" on the Marshall stand-in placard and wrote
"Plain".
Marshall first gained prominence as a television actress with a recurring
guest role of Myrna Turner on The Odd
Couple (1971–1975), and made two guest star appearances on The Mary
Tyler Moore Show as Paula Kovacks, Mary's neighbor in her new
apartment building.
In 1974, her brother Garry Marshall
was the creator and part-time writer for the hit TV series Happy Days with Ron Howard and Henry Winkler. For an episode that aired
November 11, 1975 titled "A Date with Fonzie", he hired
Marshall and actress Cindy Williams
to play dates for Howard's and Winkler's characters, LaVerne DeFazio and
Shirley Feeney, a pair of wise-cracking brewery workers. The pair were a hit
with the studio audience and Garry Marshall co-created and starred them
in a hit spin-off, Laverne and
Shirley (1976–1983). The characters of Laverne and Shirley also
appeared in five more episodes of Happy Days. In 1983, while still
filming Laverne and Shirley, she guest-starred on another popular
sitcom, Taxi,
in a cameo appearance as herself. In the Taxi episode "Louie Moves
Uptown", Marshall is turned down for residency in a new
high-rise condo in New York City. The Laverne and Shirley episode
"Lost in Spacesuits" is referenced in the scene.
Because male actors such as co-star Ron Howard and husband Rob Reiner later became directors, and at
the encouragement of her brother, Marshall became interested in directing. She
directed two episodes of Laverne and
Shirley and other TV assignments. She soon moved on to
theatrical films, her first film being Jumpin'
Jack Flash (1986) starring Whoopi Goldberg. Marshall has directed
several successful feature films
since the mid-1980s, including 1988's Big starring Tom Hanks (the first film directed by a
woman to gross over US$100 million), Awakenings (1990) starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, and A League of
Their Own (1992) with Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Madonna
and Rosie O'Donnell.
She has also lent her voice to Ms. Botz, the evil nanny, on the first
produced episode of The Simpsons, and played a cameo role
as herself in HBO's series Entourage.
October 15th, 1973
Tomorrow first aired.
October 2, 1928 September 29, 1948
Bryant Charles Gumbel is born.
NBC Sports
Gumbel was hired by NBC Sports in the fall of 1975 as co-host of its National
Football League pre-game show GrandStand with Jack Buck. From 1975 until January 1982 (when he left to do The Today Show)
Gumbel hosted numerous sporting events for NBC including Major
League Baseball, college
basketball and the National Football League. Gumbel returned to sportscasting for NBC when he
hosted the prime time coverage of the 1988
Summer Olympics from Seoul and the PGA Tour in 1990.
One of Gumbel's more memorable moments during his time
at NBC Sports occurred in 1982, when he was on-site for the "Epic in Miami" NFL playoff game between the San Diego Chargers and Miami
Dolphins. At the end of the game,
Gumbel told the viewing audience "If you didn't like this football game
then you don't like football!"
Today
Gumbel began his affiliation with Today as the
program's chief sports reporter contributing twice-weekly features to the
program, including a regular series entitled "Sportsman of the Week,"
featuring up-and-coming athletes. In June 1981, NBC announced that Tom Brokaw would depart Today to anchor the NBC
Nightly News with Roger Mudd beginning in the spring of 1982. The search for
Brokaw's replacement was on, and the initial candidates were all NBC News
correspondents, including John
Palmer, Chris
Wallace, Bob Kur, Bob Jamieson, and Jessica Savitch. The candidates auditioned for Brokaw's job
throughout the summer of 1981 when Brokaw was on vacation. Gumbel became a
candidate for the job just by chance when he served as a last-minute substitute
for Today co-anchor Jane Pauley in August 1981. Gumbel so impressed executive
producer Steve Friedman and other NBC executives that he quickly became a top
contender for the Today anchor position.
While Friedman and other NBC executives favored Gumbel
as Brokaw's replacement, another contingent within the NBC News division felt
strongly that Brokaw should be replaced by a fellow news correspondent, not a
sports reporter. Chris Wallace was the favored candidate of then-NBC News
president Bill Small. NBC News decided to split the difference, selecting
Gumbel as the program's anchor and Wallace as the Washington-based anchor. Jane
Pauley would remain co-anchor in New York. Brokaw signed off of Today on
December 18, 1981, and Gumbel replaced Brokaw on January 4, 1982.
The Gumbel-Pauley-Wallace arrangement, known
internally as the "Mod Squad," lasted only nine months. It was an
arrangement that proved intriguing on paper but unwieldy on television. Gumbel
served as the show's traffic cop, opening and closing the program and
conducting New York-based interviews, but Pauley and Wallace handled
newsreading duties, and Wallace conducted all Washington-based hard news
interviews. With ABC's Good
Morning America in first place
and expanding its lead, NBC News made Gumbel the principal anchor of Today
beginning September 27, 1982, with Jane Pauley as his co-anchor. Wallace became
chief White House correspondent covering President Reagan, and John Palmer,
previously a White House correspondent, became Today's New York-based
news anchor.
Gumbel and Pauley had a challenging first two years
together as Today anchors as they sought to find a rhythm as a team. Good
Morning America solidified its lead over Today in the ratings during
the summer of 1983, and Pauley's departure for maternity leave sent Today
into a ratings tailspin. But when Pauley returned in February 1984, she and
Gumbel began to work well together as a team. NBC took Today on the road
in the fall of '84, sending Gumbel to the Soviet Union for an unprecedented
series of live broadcasts from Moscow. Gumbel won plaudits for his performance
in Moscow, erasing any doubts about his hard-news capabilities. That Moscow
trip began a whirlwind period of travel for Today. Remote broadcasts
from Vietnam, Vatican City, Europe, South America, and much of the United
States followed between 1984 and 1989. Today began to regain its old
ratings dominance against Good
Morning America throughout 1985,
and by early 1986, the NBC program was once again atop the ratings.
In 1989, Gumbel, who was already known for his strong
management style as Today anchor, wrote a memo to Today executive
producer Marty Ryan, on Ryan's request, critiquing the program and identifying
its shortcomings. Many of Gumbel's criticisms were directed at fellow Today
staffers. This memo was leaked to the press. In the memo, Gumbel commented that
Willard Scott, "holds the show hostage to his assortment of
whims, wishes, birthdays and bad taste...This guy is killing us and no one's
even trying to rein him in". He commented that Gene Shalit's movie reviews "are often late and his
interviews aren't very good."
There was enough negative backlash in regard to
Gumbel's comments toward Scott, that Gumbel was shown making up with Scott on Today.
Following Jane Pauley's departure from Today in
December 1989, Gumbel was joined by Deborah Norville in a short-lived partnership that lasted just over a
year. Today dropped to second place in the ratings during this period as
a result of intensely negative publicity surrounding Norville's replacement of
Pauley, and Gumbel's feud with Scott. Norville was replaced by Katie Couric in April 1991, and the Gumbel-Couric team helped
refocus Today as the morning news program on public affairs during the
1992 presidential campaign. The program returned to first place in the ratings
in December 1995.
Gumbel's work on Today earned him several Emmys and a large
group of fans. He is the second longest serving co-host of Today,
serving two months less than Couric. Gumbel stepped down from the show on
January 3, 1997 after 15 years.
Public Eye with
Bryant Gumbel
After 15 years on the Today show, Bryant Gumbel moved
to CBS to host a new prime time news-magazine called "Public Eye with
Bryant Gumbel" during the 1997–1998 television season. The show lasted
just one season before being cancelled. The show aired on Wednesday nights
between 9 and 10 pm.
The Early Show
After leaving the Today Show and Dateline
NBC in 1997, Gumbel moved to CBS, where he hosted
various shows before becoming co-host of the network's morning show The Early Show on November 1, 1999. Gumbel left The Early Show
(and CBS that same year) in May 2002. He returned to his morning television
roots when, in the spring and summer of 2010, he served as special guest
moderator of ABC's "The View" for multiple days.
Real Sports with
Bryant Gumbel
Gumbel has concentrated most of his energy recently on
his duties as host of HBO's acclaimed investigative series Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel (a show that he has hosted since 1995). HBO's web
page claims that Real Sports has been described as "flat out TV's
best sports program" by the Los Angeles Times. Also according to HBO, Real Sports
has earned 15 sports Emmys, and a 2006 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for broadcast journalism, the first time in the
award's history that it was given to a sports program. The award was for a
story called "The Sport of Sheikhs", an investigation into the
exploitation of children as camel jockeys in the United
Arab Emirates.
September 29, 1953
Make Room for Daddy premiered on ABC-TV.
The Judy Garland Show premiered on CBS-TV.
September 29, 1963
My Favorite Martian first aired.
The show starred Ray Walston as Uncle Martin (the Martian) and Bill Bixby as Tim O’Hara. A human-looking extraterrestrial in a one-man spaceship crash-lands near Los Angeles. The ship’s pilot is, in fact, an anthropologist from Mars and is now stranded on Earth. Tim O’Hara, a young newspaper reporter for The Los Angeles Sun, is on his way home from Edwards Air Force Base (where he had gone to report on the flight of the X-15) back to Los Angeles when he spots the spaceship coming down. The X-15 nearly hit the martian’s spaceship and caused it to crash.
September 30, 1958
Naked City first aired
September 30,
1958
The first episode
of The Rifleman aired on
ABC-TV.
October 1, 1958
Kraft Television Theater broadcasts its last episode.
