Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:
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.
January
26, 1926
John Logie Baird gave the world's first demonstration of true
television before 50 scientists in an attic room in central London.
In
1927, his television was demonstrated over 438 miles of telephone line between
London and Glasgow, and he formed the Baird Television Development Company.
(BTDC). In 1928, the BTDC achieved the first transatlantic television
transmission between London and New York and the first transmission to a ship
in mid-Atlantic. He also gave the first demonstration of both colour and
stereoscopic television.
January 27, 1976
The Happy Days spin-off Laverne and Shirley, featuring two
Milwaukee women who work on a brewery assembly line preimers.
The show starred Penny Marshall, sister of producer
Garry Marshall, and Cindy Williams. Fierce rivalry erupted between the two
stars, and Williams left the show in 1982. The show lasted only one more season
before its cancellation in 1983.
January 28, 1936
Alan
Alda is born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo.
A six-time Emmy Award and Golden
Globe Award winner, he is best known
for his roles as Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H and Arnold Vinick in The West Wing. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook
School of Journalism and a member of the advisory board of The Center for Communicating Science.
Family and early life
Alda was born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo in The Bronx, New York City. His father, Robert Alda (born Alphonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D'Abruzzo),
was an actor and singer, and his mother, Joan Browne, was a former showgirl.
His father was of Italian descent and his mother was of Irish ancestry. His adopted surname, "Alda," is a portmanteau of ALphonso and D'Abruzzo. When Alda
was seven years old, he contracted poliomyelitis. To combat the disease, his parents administered a
painful treatment regimen developed by Sister Elizabeth Kenny that consisted of applying hot woollen blankets to
his limbs and stretching his muscles. Alda attended Archbishop Stepinac High
School in White
Plains, New York. In 1956, he
received his Bachelor of Science degree in English from Fordham College of Fordham
University in the Bronx, where he was
a student staff member of its FM radio station, WFUV. Alda's half-brother, Antony Alda, was born the same year and would also become an
actor.
During Alda's junior year, he studied in Paris, acted in a
play in Rome,
and performed with his father on television in Amsterdam. In college, he was a member of the ROTC, and after
graduation, he served for a year at Fort Benning, Georgia, then joined the U.S.
Army Reserve, and served for six
months as a gunnery officer. A year after graduation, he married Arlene Weiss, with whom he has three daughters: Eve, Elizabeth, and Beatrice. Two of his 7 grandchildren are aspiring actors. The
Aldas have been longtime residents of Leonia,
New Jersey. Alda frequented Sol &
Sol Deli on Palisade Avenue in the nearby town of Englewood,
New Jersey—a fact mirrored in his
character's daydream about eating whitefish from the establishment, in an
episode of M*A*S*H in which Hawkeye sustains a head injury.
Career
January 28, 1956
Young country-rock singer Elvis Presley makes his
first-ever television appearance on the TV musical-variety program Stage
Show on this day in 1956.
Presley
sang "Heartbreak Hotel," which quickly became a hit single. In total,
Elvis appeared on six shows. The program was hosted by swing band leaders Tommy
and Jimmy Dorsey. Elvis went on to appear on Ed Sullivan's immensely popular
variety show, Toast of the Town, in the fall of 1956. The appearance
made Elvis a household name.
January 28, 1986
Challenger explodes
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when the NASA Space Shuttle orbiterChallenger (OV-099) (mission STS-51-L) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members, which included five NASA astronauts and two Payload Specialists. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 EST (16:39 UTC). Disintegration of the vehicle began after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff. The O-ring failure caused a breach in the SRB joint it sealed, allowing pressurized burning gas from within the solid rocket motor to reach the outside and impinge upon the adjacent SRB aft field joint attachment hardware and external fuel tank. This led to the separation of the right-hand SRB's aft field joint attachment and the structural failure of the external tank.Aerodynamic forces broke up the orbiter.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
