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"
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| Micky and Peter and the band play along with Davy's original vocals during the NYC stop of the 50th Anniversary tour. |
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MONKEES 50TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR |
The Emmy Award-winning writer, producer, and director of such classic shows as M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frasier, The Simpsons and Everybody Loves Raymond, Ken Levine is also an award-winning radio host and former Major League Baseball broadcaster for the Baltimore Orioles, San Diego Padres and the Seattle Mariners. If you follow baseball on any level, you know that the game, in many ways, is a reflection of life itself. Ken takes that idea a step further in Going Going Gone, a new play that explores our need to be remembered in a world that focuses on celebrating milestones. Though set against the backdrop of sports, Going Going Gone has elements that will remind you of Norm, Cliff and some of the other barflies on Cheers. We’ll ask Ken about that, plus we’ll talk about the influence of Garry Marshall early in his writing career, what Vin Scully mean to him personally (and to baseball fans in general), and more. Ken Levine joins us in our second hour.
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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.
September 12, 1966
The
Monkees first aired
The
series follows the adventures of four young men (the
Monkees) trying to make a name for themselves as rock 'n roll singers. The
show introduced a number of innovative new-wave film techniques to series
television and won two Emmy Awards in 1967. The program ended on Labor Day 1968
at the finish of its second season and has received a long afterlife in
Saturday morning repeats (CBS and ABC) and syndication, as well as overseas
broadcasts.
In
the early 1960s, aspiring filmmakers Bob
Rafelson and Bert
Schneider had formed Raybert Productions and were trying to get
a foot in the door in Hollywood. Inspired by the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night, the duo
decided to develop a television series about a fictional rock 'n' roll group. In
April, 1965, Raybert sold the series idea to Screen Gems, and by August, a
pilot script titled "The Monkeys" was completed by Paul
Mazursky andLarry Tucker. Rafelson has said that
he had the idea for a TV series about a music group as early as 1960, but had a
hard time interesting anyone in it until 1965, by which time rock and roll
music was firmly entrenched in pop culture.
On
September 8, 1965, trade publications Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter ran an ad
seeking "Folk & Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in new TV
series." As many as 400 hopefuls showed up to be considered as one of
"4 insane boys." Fourteen actors from the audition pool were
brought back for screen tests, and after audience research, Raybert chose
their final four.
Micky
Dolenz, son of screen actor George
Dolenz, had prior screen experience (under the name "Mickey
Braddock") as the 10-year-old star of the Circus Boy series
in the 1950s. He was actively auditioning for pilots at the time and was told
about the Raybert project by his agent.
Englishman Davy Jones was a former jockey who had
achieved some initial success on the musical stage (appearing with the cast
of Oliver! on The Ed Sullivan Show the night of the
Beatles' live American debut). Already appearing in Columbia Pictures
productions and recording for the Colpix record
label, he had been identified in advance as a potential star for the series.
Texan Michael
Nesmith, whose mother Bette Nesmith Graham had invented a correction
fluid and founded the company that would become Liquid
Paper, had served a brief stint in the U.S. Air Force and had also recorded
for Colpix under the name "Michael Blessing." Nesmith was the only
one of The Monkees who had come in based on seeing the trade magazine ad. He
showed up to the audition with his laundry and impressed Rafelson and
Schneider with his laid-back style and droll sense of humor. Nesmith also wore
a woolen hat to keep his hair out of his eyes when he rode his motorcycle, leading
to early promotional materials which nicknamed him "Wool Hat." The
hat remained part of Nesmith's wardrobe, but the name was dropped after the
pilot.
Peter Tork was
recommended to Rafelson and Schneider by friend Stephen
Stills at his own audition. Tork, a skilled
multi-instrumentalist, had performed at various Greenwich Village folk clubs
before moving west, where he worked as a busboy.
Rafelson
and Schneider wanted the style of the series to reflect avant
garde film techniques—such as improvisation, quick cuts, jump cuts,
breaking the fourth wall, and free-flowing, loose narratives—then
being pioneered by European film directors. Each episode would contain at least
one musical "romp" which might have nothing to do with the storyline.
In retrospect, these vignettes now look very much like music videos: short,
self-contained films of songs in ways that echoed the Beatles' recent ventures
into promotional films for their singles. They also believed strongly in the
program's ability to appeal to young people, intentionally framing the kids as
heroes and the adults as heavies.
Rafelson
and Schneider hired novice director James
Frawley to teach the four actors improvisational comedy. Each of the
four was given a different personality to portray: Dolenz the funny one,
Nesmith the smart and serious one, Tork the naive one, and Jones the cute one.
Their characters were loosely based on their real selves, with the exception of
Tork, who was actually a quiet intellectual. The character types also had much
in common with the respective personalities of the
Beatles, with Dolenz representing the madcap attitude of John
Lennon, Nesmith affecting the deadpan seriousness of George
Harrison, Tork depicting the odd-man-out quality of Ringo
Starr, and Jones conveying the pin-up appeal of Paul
McCartney.
A
pilot episode was shot in San Diego and Los Angeles on a shoestring budget—in
many scenes the Monkees wore their own clothes. Initial audience tests (which
were just then being pioneered) produced very low responses.
The
Monkees debuted September 12,
1966, on the NBC television network. The series was sponsored on alternate
weeks by Kellogg's
Cereals and Yardley
of London.
To
reduce noise on the set during filming, any of the four Monkees who was not
needed in front of the cameras was locked into a converted meat locker. In DVD
commentary, Tork noted that this had the added benefit of concealing any
marijuana use that might be going on, although he admitted that he was the sole
"serious 'head'" of the four of them. (In the 1980s, Tork gave up
alcohol and marijuana use and has volunteered time to help people recovering
from alcoholism.)
Due to
the loosely scripted nature of the series, some episodes would come in too
short for air. The producers decided to fill time with various
"extras", including the Monkees' original screen tests and candid
interviews with the group; these interviews usually lasted one minute, hence
the frequent joke, "We're a minute short as usual," though the
episode "Find The Monkees" featured a three-minute epilogue
interview. Although the early episodes contained it, the show eventually bucked
the trend of using a laugh track, which was standard practice at the time.
Most of the episodes from Season 2 did not contain canned laughter, which NBC
later cited as one of the reasons for cancelling the series.
September
13, 1976
The Muppet Show Premiered
Jim Henson's felt creations had two pilots in the
preview two years, but it was not until '76 that the series took off. Many
notable MeTV faces played host on the madcap variety show, from Jim Nabors on
episode two to Florence Henderson on episode nine. Oh, and Lynda Carter had an
awesome appearance, too. Check out nine
MeTV stars who hosted The Muppet Show.
September 15, 1986
NBC aired the pilot episode of L.A.
Law.
Created by Steven
Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, it contained many of
Bochco's trademark features including an ensemble
cast, large number of parallel storylines, social drama, and off-the-wall
humor. It reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and
early 1990s, and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot-topic
issues such as capital punishment, abortion, racism, gay rights, homophobia, sexual
harassment, AIDS,
and domestic violence. The series often also
reflected social tensions between the wealthy senior lawyer protagonists and their
less well-paid junior staff.
In addition to its main cast, L.A.
Law was also well known for featuring then relatively unknown actors
and actresses in guest starring roles, who later went on to greater success in
film and television including: Don
Cheadle, Jeffrey Tambor, Kathy
Bates, David Schwimmer, Jay
O. Sanders, James Avery, Gates
McFadden,Bryan Cranston, C.C.H.
Pounder, Kevin Spacey, Richard
Schiff, Carrie-Anne Moss, William
H. Macy, Stephen Root, Christian
Slater, and Lucy Liu. Several episodes of the show also included
celebrities such as Vanna White,Buddy
Hackett and Mamie
Van Doren appearing as themselves in cameo roles.
The show was popular with audiences
and critics, and won 15 Emmy Awards throughout its run, four of which were
for Outstanding Drama
Series.
September 17, 1951
Cassandra Peterson is born.
The actress s best known for her on-screen
horror hostess character Elvira,
Mistress of the Dark. She gained fame on Los Angeles television station KHJ wearing a
black, gothic, cleavage-enhancing gown as host of Movie
Macabre, a weekly horror movie presentation. Her wickedly vampish
appearance was offset by her comical character, quirky/quick-witted
personality, and valley girl-type speech.
Mission: Impossible Premiered:
Interesting that Star
Trek and Mission: Impossible were Desilu productions
premiering so close together, and today they both continue to be major
Hollywood franchises for Bad Robot Productions. The pilot is of note because
the self-destructing message was delivered on a vinyl LP, not a tape. It was
also the only episode to be written by creator Bruce Geller.
September
17, 1991
The first episode of "Home Improvement" aired on
ABC.
The series centers on the Taylor family, which
consists of Tim (Tim Allen),
his wife Jill (Patricia Richardson) and their three children:
the oldest child, Brad (Zachery Ty Bryan), the middle child Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) and youngest child,
Mark (Taran Noah Smith). The Taylors live in suburban Detroit, and
have a neighbor named Wilson Wilson (Earl
Hindman) who is often the go-to guy for solving the Taylors' problems.
Tim is a stereotypical American male, who loves power
tools, cars and sports. In
particular, he is an avid fan oflocal
Detroit teams. In numerous instances Tim wears Lions, Pistons,
and Tigers clothing, and many plots revolve around
the teams. He is a former salesman for the fictional Binford Tool company, and
is very much a cocky, overambitious, accident-prone know-it-all.
Witty but flippant, Tim jokes around a lot, even at inappropriate times, much
to the dismay of his wife. However, Tim can sometimes be serious when
necessary. Jill, Tim's wife, is loving and sophisticated, but not exempt from
dumb moves herself. in later seasons she returns to college to study
psychology. Family life is boisterous for the Taylors with the two oldest
children, Brad and Randy, tormenting the much younger Mark, all while
continually testing and pestering each other. Such play happened especially
throughout the first three seasons, and was revisited only occasionally until
Jonathan Taylor Thomas left at the beginning of the eighth season. During the
show's final season, Brad and Mark became much closer due to Randy's absence.
Brad, popular and athletic, was often the moving
factor, who engaged before thinking, a tendency which regularly landed him in
trouble. Randy, a year younger, was the comedian of the pack, known for his
quick-thinking, wisecracks, and smart mouth. He had more common sense than Brad
but was not immune to trouble. Mark was somewhat of a mama's
boy, though later in the series (in the seventh season) he grew into a
teenage outcast who dressed in black clothing. Meanwhile, Brad became
interested in cars like his father and took up soccer. Randy joined the school
drama club, and later the school newspaper; in the eighth season, he left for Costa Rica.
Each episode includes Tim's own Binford-sponsored
home improvement show, called Tool Time, a
"meta-program," or show-within-a-show. In hosting this show, Tim
is joined by his friend and mild-mannered assistant Al Borland (Richard
Karn), and a "Tool Time girl" — first Lisa (Pamela
Anderson) and later Heidi (Debbe
Dunning) — whose main duty is to introduce the pair at the beginning of the
show with the line "Does everybody know what time it is?" The Tool
Time girl also assists Tim and Al during the show by bringing them tools.
Although revealed to be an excellent salesman and
TV personality, Tim is spectacularly accident prone as a handyman, often
causing massive disasters on and off the set, to the consternation of his
co-workers and family. Many Tool Time viewers assume that the
accidents on the show are done on purpose, to demonstrate the consequences of
using tools improperly. Many of Tim's accidents are caused by his devices being
used in an unorthodox or overpowered manner, designed to illustrate his mantra
"More power!". This popular catchphrase would not be uttered after Home
Improvement's seventh season, until Tim's last line in the series
finale.
Tool
Time was conceived as a parody of the PBS
home-improvement show This
Old House. Tim and Al are caricatures of the two principal cast
members of This Old House, host Bob Vila and
master carpenter Norm Abram. Al Borland has a beard and always wears
plaid shirts when taping an episode, reflecting Norm Abram's appearance on This
Old House. Bob
Vila appeared as a guest star on several episodes of Home Improvement,
while Tim Allen and Pamela Anderson both appeared on Bob Vila's show Home
Again.
The Tool
Time theme music, an early 1960s-style saxophone-dominated
instrumental rock tune, was sometimes used as the closing theme music for Home
Improvement, especially when behind the credits were running the blooper
scenes that took place during the taping of a Tool Time segment.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was". Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
This week’s program will include a return visit from pioneering television writer/producer Rita Lakin. Rita not only spent more than two decades in television writing and producing such shows as Dr. Kildare, Peyton Place, The Mod Squad, Dynasty and The Movie of the Week, but was one of the first solo female writers in network television — at a time when the industry was still almost entirely run by men. Though she didn’t know it at the time, Rita helped pave the way for many women behind the scenes in film and TV today. She speaks candidly about her experiences in her memoir, The Only Woman in the Room: Episodes from My Life and Career as a T.... Rita Lakin will join us in our second hour.
Our first hour will include a special expanded edition of This Week of TV History that discusses the golden anniversary of the premiere of the original Star Trek, and the various ways in which the Star Trek franchise continues to influence our culture. | ||
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.
September 8, 1966
Star Trek premieres.
Although Star Trek ran for only three years and
never placed better than No. 52 in the ratings, Gene Roddenberry's series
became a cult classic and spawned four television series and ten movies.
The first Star Trek
spin-off was a Saturday morning cartoon, The Animated Adventures of Gene
Roddenberry's Star Trek, which ran from 1973 to 1975 (original cast members
supplied the voices).
The TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation first
aired in 1987 and was set in the 24th century, starring the crew of the new,
larger U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D, captained by Jean-Luc Picard
(played by Patrick Stewart). This series became the highest-rated syndicated
drama on television and ran until 1994.
Another spin-off, Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine, premiered in 1992, featuring a 24th-century crew
that lived in a space station rather than a starship.
Star Trek: Voyager,
which debuted in 1995 and ran until 2001, was the first to feature a female
captain, Kathryn Janeway (played by Kate Mulgrew). In this series, the crew of
the U.S.S. Voyager is stranded more than 70,000 light years from
Federation space and is trying to find its way home.
The final spin-off to air
on TV was Enterprise, which premiered in the United States on September
26, 2001. The final two episodes of that show aired in May 2005.
And this Saturday.
September 8, 1966
That Girl primeried.
The sitcom ran on ABC from
1966 to 1971 and starred Marlo Thomas as the title character
Ann Marie, an aspiring (but only sporadically employed) actress, who moves from
her hometown of Brewster, New York to try to make it big in New York City. Ann has to take a number of
offbeat "temp" jobs to support herself in between her various
auditions and bit parts. Ted Bessell played her boyfriend
Donald Hollinger, a writer forNewsview Magazine; Lew Parker and Rosemary DeCamp played Lew Marie and
Helen Marie, her concerned parents. Bernie Kopell, Ruth Buzzi and Reva Rose played Ann and
Donald's friends. That Girl was developed by writers Bill Persky and Sam Denoff, who had served as head
writers on The Dick Van Dyke Show (with which Thomas's father, Danny Thomas, was closely associated)
earlier in the 1960s.
Each
episode begins with a pre-credits teaser in which an odd incident occurs or a
discussion foreshadows the episode's story. The scene almost always ends with
someone exclaiming "...that girl!", just as Ann wanders into the shot
or the character notices her. The words "That Girl" would appear over
the freeze-frame shot of Ann. The opening credits during the first season
featured Thomas, in character, strolling the streets of New York. From the
second season forward, the opening shot was the view from a Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train crossing the New Jersey Meadowlands between Newark andPenn Station near Laurel Hill Park, then Thomas flying a
kite in Central
Park, and
seeing (and exchanging winks with) her double in a store window. Lyrics were
added to the theme for the final season, written by series co-creator Sam Denoff, sung by Ron Hicklin.
That
Girl was
one of the first sitcoms to focus on a single woman who was not a domestic or
living with her parents. Some consider this show the forerunner of the highly
successful Mary Tyler Moore Show, Murphy Brown, and Ally McBeal, and an early indication of
the changing roles of American women in feminist-era America. Thomas's goofy charm, together with Bessell's dry wit, made That
Girl a solid performer on the ABC Television Network, and while the
series, in the overall ratings, never made the top thirty during its entire
five-year run, the series did respectably well.
At
the end of the 1969–1970 season, That Girl was still doing
moderately well in the ratings; however, after four years, Thomas had grown
tired of the series and wanted to move on. ABC convinced her to do one more
year. In the beginning of the fifth season, Don and Ann became engaged,
although they never actually married. The decision to leave the couple engaged
at the end of the run was largely the idea of Thomas herself. She did not want
to send a message to young women that marriage was the ultimate goal for them
and she was worried that it would have defeated the somewhat feminist message
of the show.
September 8, 1986
The Oprah Winfrey Show is
broadcast nationally for the first time.
A huge success, her daytime television talk show turns Winfrey into one of the
most powerful, wealthy people in show business and, arguably, the most
influential woman in America.
Winfrey, who was born in rural Mississippi to a poor unwed teenage mother on
January 24, 1954, began her TV career as a local news anchor in Nashville and
Baltimore before moving to Chicago in 1984 to host a low-rated morning talk
program. She quickly turned the show into a ratings winner, beating out a
popular talk program hosted by Phil Donahue.
At the urging of the Chicago-based
movie critic Roger Ebert, Winfrey signed a syndication deal with King World and
The Oprah Winfrey Show was broadcast nationally for the first
time on September 8, 1986. It went on to become the highest-rated talk show in
TV history.
Proving that talk-show host wasn’t the only role she could play, Winfrey
made her big-screen debut as Sofia in director Steven Spielberg’s The Color
Purple(1985), based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the
same name and co-starring Whoopi Goldberg and Danny Glover. The film earned
Winfrey a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, although she lost the gold
statue to Anjelica Huston (Prizzi’s Honor). Winfrey went on to
star in and produce in 1998’s Beloved, based on Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel, and voice characters for 2006’s Charlotte’s Web
and 2007’s Bee Movie, which co-starred and was co-written by Jerry
Seinfeld. In addition to TV and film, Winfrey became a true media mogul,
branching out to books and magazines, radio, musical theater and the Web. In
2008, she announced plans to launch her own network, named OWN, in 2009.
In 2008, The Oprah Winfrey Show had an
estimated weekly audience of some 46 million viewers in the United States and
was broadcast around the world in 134 countries. Winfrey wields enormous
influence when it comes to promoting products: A recommendation on her show can
turn a book, movie or just about anything else into a bestseller, a phenomenon
that has been dubbed the “Oprah Effect.”
September 9, 1926
The National Broadcasting
Company (NBC) was created by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).
RCA chairman of the board Owen
D. Young and president James
G. Harbord announced the formation of the National Broadcasting
Company, Inc., to begin broadcasting upon RCA's acquisition of WEAF on
November 15. "The purpose of the National Broadcasting Company will be to
provide the best programs available for broadcasting in the United States. ...
It is hoped that arrangements may be made so that every event of national
importance may be broadcast widely throughout the United States,"
announced M.H. Aylesworth, the first
president of NBC, in the press release.Although RCA was identified as the
creator of the network, NBC was actually owned 50% by RCA, 30% by General
Electric, and 20% by Westinghouse.The network officially was launched at 8 p.m.
ET on Monday, November 15, 1926.
September 9, 1966
The Green Hornet
Premiered
Though it followed and crossed over with Batman, The Green Hornet struck a much different tone than its
vigilante peers. The action and plots were taken seriously, though remained a
joyous thrill thanks to Kato. Though it lasted just a season, the series made
Bruce Lee a household name. The debut outing, "The Silent Gun," also
introduced America to the Black Beauty, which remains on of the coolest
vehicles in screen history.
September 9, 1956
Elvis Presley sang "Don't Be Cruel" and "Hound Dog"
on Ed Sullivan's show Toast of the Town.
Presley scandalized audiences
with his suggestive hip gyrations, and Sullivan swore he would never book the
singer on his show. However, Presley's tremendous popularity and success on
other shows changed Sullivan's mind. Although Elvis had appeared on a few other
programs already, his appearance on Ed Sullivan's show made him a household
name.
September 9, 1986
Ted Turner presented the first
of his colorized films on WTBS in Atlanta, GA.
Ted
Turner presented the first of his colorized films -- on his superstation WTBS
in Atlanta, GA. The first Hollywood classic to get the new look was
"Yankee Doodle Dandy". Some people were opposed to the colorization
process, where color is added to black-and-white movies. They felt the
originals should be pristine -- that any change interferes with the original
creativity.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was". Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
