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"
Early in his acting training, when studying at the American Theater Wing, one of Jones' teachers wasWill Lee, who in 1969 would playMr. HooperonSesame Street.Jones is considered bySesame Workshopto be the first celebrity guest onSesame Street,since inserts of the actor reciting thealphabetand counting numbers appeared inthe unbroadcast test pilotsand heavily influenced the show's pedagogical models. These inserts were later included infirst seasonepisodes, beginning withepisode 0002. However, Jones didn't originally think the show would last and thought the Muppets were the problem; he toldMatt Robinsonthat "this Muppet business has got to go, kids will be terrified."
In 1978, Jones appeared on Sesame Street in Episode 1148 as a movie star who visits Hooper's Store in search of the perfect egg cream. In the story, Mr. Hooper slowly recognizes him as a famous movie star, "I've seen almost every picture you've made!" (As a big fan, Mr. Hooper makes no mention of Jones's segments from Sesame Street’s early years where the cast would sometimes transition to his recitation of the alphabet by name. One of which, in Episode 0077, includes Mr. Hooper so furious over the misplacement of his glasses that he can't even think of the alphabet. Gordon urges him to watch James Earl Jones to help.)
In "Wuntafordy," an animated Sesame segment singing the numbers "1 to 40" a cappella-style by The Lemmings, Jones contributed the spoken voice saying "30."
Jones also performed the voice of the Mountain King in the Creature Shop-effects TV-movie Merlin.
CTW Board of Advisors chairman Gerald S. Lesser and other researchers paid particularly close attention to James Earl Jones' appearance, in terms of children's response and the effectiveness of his alphabet recitation. Lesser described the basic performance as follows:
“Mr. Jones' recitation of the alphabet takes a full minute and a half. He stares compellingly at the camera. At the time the sequence was made, his head was shaved for his role of Jack Johnson in The Great White Hope, and it gleams in the close-up. His immense hollow voice booms the letter names ominously. His lip movements are so exaggerated that they can easily be read without the sounds.<ref>Lesser, Gerald S. Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street. 1974. p. 120-121.”
During the recitation, each letter appeared briefly near the actor's head prior to its being named, remains for the recitation and then disappears, and a pause in both Jones' speech and the visuals occurs before the next letter. The result of this particular staging prompted a particular positive response from viewers that producer Samuel Y. Gibbon, Jr. and research director Edward L. Palmer, as well as Dr. Lesser, termed "the James Earl Jones effect." The first time a child sees the performance, he responds to the invitation to say the alphabet along with the actor. Upon later viewings, the children would name the letter as soon as it appeared, but before it was named by Jones. Further repetition encouraged children to shout out the letter even before it appears. The "James Earl Jones effect" thus demonstrated to Sesame Street's producers and curriculum advisors the value of both repetition and anticipation, and supplied proof that Sesame Street could promote interactive learning as opposed to merely passive viewing.
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.
The original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, was
created for Hanna-Barbera Productions by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears,
CBS executive Fred
Silverman, and character designerIwao
Takamoto. The show centers around four kids, whom were unofficially called
"Mystery Inc." whose hobby was mystery solving. The basic premise
remained unchanged through the many series of the franchise: criminal
activities were covered up as faux supernatural events with red herrings and
clues leading up to the eventual undoing. The meddlesome kids were Fred Jones
is the stocky, straight-laced member; Daphne Blake, beautiful but danger-prone
red-head; Velma Dinkley, the pudgy, bespectacled brains of the outfit; Norville
"Shaggy" Rogers, the pencil-thin chow hound and the star of the show,
the gangly, bow-legged Great Dane Scooby-Doo.
The original voice cast featured veteran voice actor Don Messick
as Scooby-Doo, Top 40 radio DJ Casey Kasem
as Shaggy, actor Frank Welker as Fred, actress Nicole
Jaffe as Velma, and musician Indira Stefanianna Christopherson as Daphne.
September
13, 1974
The
first episode of "Police Woman" aired on NBC.
Based on an original screenplay by Lincoln C. Hilburn,
the show revolves around Sgt. "Pepper"
Anderson (Angie Dickinson),
an undercover police officer working for the Criminal Conspiracy Unit of
the Los Angeles Police Department.
Sergeant William "Bill" Crowley (Earl
Holliman) was her immediate superior, and Pete Royster (Charles
Dierkop) and Joe Styles (Ed
Bernard) were the other half of the undercover team that
investigated everything from murders to rape and drug crimes. In many
episodes, Pepper went undercover (as a prostitute, nurse, teacher, flight
attendant, prison inmate, dancer, waitress, etc.) in order to get close enough
to the suspects to gain valuable information that would lead to their arrest.
September 13, 1974
The
first episode of "The Rockford Files" aired on NBC.
The show was created by Roy
Huggins and Stephen J. Cannell.
Huggins created the television show Maverick (1957–1962), which starred Garner, and
he wanted to recapture that magic in a "modern day" detective
setting. He teamed with Cannell, who had written for Jack
Webb productions such as Adam-12 and Chase (1973–1974, NBC), to create The
Rockford Files.
The show was credited as "A Public Arts/Roy
Huggins Production" along with Universal
Studios and in association with Cherokee Productions.
Cherokee was owned by Garner, with partners Meta Rosenberg and Juanita
Bartlett, who doubled as story editor during most of The
Rockford Files run.
TV
talk-show host Oprah Winfrey gives a brand-new Pontiac G-6 sedan, worth
$28,500, to everyone in her studio audience: a total of 276 cars in all.)
Oprah
had told her producers to fill the crowd with people who “desperately needed”
the cars, and when she announced the prize (by jumping up and down, waving a
giant keyring and yelling “Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car!”),
mayhem–crying, screaming, delirium, fainting–broke out all around her. It was,
as one media expert told a reporter, “one of the great promotional stunts in
the history of television.”
Alas, scandal wasn’t far behind. For one thing, the
gift wasn’t really from Oprah at all. Pontiac had donated the cars, paying the
hefty price tag out of its advertising budget, because the company hoped that
that the giveaway would drum up some enthusiasm for its new G-6 line. (To this
end, during the segment, Winfrey herself took a tour of a Pontiac plant,
gushing over the cars’ satellite radios and fancy navigation systems.) The car
company also paid the state sales tax on each of the automobiles it donated.
However, that still left the new-car recipients with a large bill for their
supposedly free vehicles: Federal and state income taxes added up to about
$6,000 for most winners. Some people paid the taxes by taking out car loans;
others traded their new Pontiacs for cheaper, less souped-up cars. “It’s not
really a free car,” one winner said. “It’s more of a 75 percent-off car. Of
course, that’s still not such a bad deal.”
Two months later, Oprah hosted another giveaway
episode, this one for teachers from around the country. Their gifts were worth
about $13,000 and included a $2,249 TV set, a $2,000 laptop, a $2,189
washer/dryer, sets of $38 champagne glasses and a $495 leather duffel bag. This
time, the show’s producers had learned their lesson: they also gave each
audience member a check for $2,500, which they hoped would cover the tax bill
for all the loot. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite–most people in the audience
owed the Internal Revenue Service between $4,500 and $6,000–but the PR gimmick
worked: Oprah’s giveaways have earned some of the highest ratings in the
program’s history.
Herbie Hancock was the night's biggest winner, taking home five
awards, followed by Michael Jackson,
who won three. The night's main award, though, went to The Cars for
"You Might Think," making this the first of a very small number
of times in which the winner of Video
of the Year did not take home any other awards that night.
In terms of nominations,
Hancock's "Rockit" and The Police's
"Every Breath You
Take" were the year's most
nominated videos, with each receiving eight nominations apiece. Meanwhile, the
most nominated artist of 1984 was Cyndi Lauper,
who aside from winning the Best Female Video Moonman received nine nominations
that year for two of her videos: six for "Girls
Just Want to Have Fun" and three
for "Time
After Time."
Clayton Moore was the Lone Ranger and Jay Silverheels was Tonto. The television
series aired from 1949 to 1957, withClayton
Moore in the starring role. Jay
Silverheels, a member of the Mohawk tribe
of Canada played
The Lone Ranger's Indiancompanion, Tonto.
From 1952 to 1954. due to a contract dispute, John
Hart replaced Moore in the title role. The live-action series
initially featured Gerald Mohr as the narrator. Fred Foy was
both narrator and announcer of the radio series
from 1948 until its ending and then became announcer of the television version,
for which narration of the story was dropped. The Lone Ranger was
the highest-rated television program on ABC in the early 1950s and its first
true "hit".
The children's adventure television series created (though uncredited) by David
Gerrold and produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, who co-developed the
series with Allan Foshko. During its original run, it was broadcast on
the NBC television
network. However, it also aired in daily syndication in the early
1980s as part of the "Krofft Superstars" package. In 1985, it
returned to late Saturday mornings on CBS as a replacement
for the canceled Pryor's Place - also a Krofft production.
It was later shown in reruns on the Sci Fi Channel in
the 1990s.
Re-runs of this series now airs Saturday mornings on Me-TV. It has since
become a cult classic and is now available on DVD.
First
televised Major League baseball game on station W2XBS (the station that was
to become WNBC-TV). Announcer Red
Barber called the game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at
Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York.
At the time, television was still in its infancy. Regular programming
did not yet exist, and very few people owned television sets--there were only
about 400 in the New York area. Not until 1946 did regular network broadcasting
catch on in the United States, and only in
the mid-1950s did television sets
become more common in the American household.
In 1939, the World's Fair--which was being held in New
York--became the catalyst for the historic broadcast. The television was one of
fair’s prize exhibits, and organizers believed that the Dodgers-Reds
doubleheader on August 26 was the perfect event to showcase America's grasp on
the new technology.
By today's standards, the video coverage was somewhat
crude. There were only two stationary camera angles: The first was placed down
the third base line to pick up infield throws to first, and the second was
placed high above home plate to get an extensive view of the field. It was also
difficult to capture fast-moving plays: Swinging bats looked like paper fans,
and the ball was all but invisible during pitches and hits.
Nevertheless, the experiment was a success, driving
interest in the development of television technology, particularly for sporting
events. Though baseball owners were initially concerned that televising
baseball would sap actual attendance, they soon warmed to the idea, and the
possibilities for revenue generation that came with increased exposure of the
game, including the sale of rights to air certain teams or games and television
advertising.
Today, televised sports is a multi-billion dollar
industry, with technology that gives viewers an astounding amount of visual and
audio detail. Cameras are now so precise that they can capture the way a ball
changes shape when struck by a bat, and athletes are wired to pick up
field-level and sideline conversation.
August 27, 1964
Comedian Gracie Allen died.
Burns and Allen started performing a successful
vaudeville act in the early 1920s and married in 1926. In 1932, they first
appeared on the popular radio program The Guy Lombardo Show. Audiences
loved Allen's gentle, ditzy character, and CBS launched a half-hour show, The
Adventures of Gracie, in 1934. Renamed
The Burns and Allen Show in
1936, the radio show ran until 1950, achieving Top 10 ratings almost
continually.
The
pair launched a TV series that ran from 1950 to 1958, and they appeared in more
than a dozen movies during their 35-year career together in what became one of
the most successful and beloved comedy acts in history. Allen retired after a
mild heart attack in 1958. After her death, Burns visited her grave once a
month while continuing to work in TV, theater, nightclubs, and movies. He wrote
many books, including Gracie: A Love Story, a tribute to his wife. Burns
died in 1996 at the age of 100.
Saved by the Bell aired
in Australia on Channel Seven, and from 1990 until 2004 on Nickelodeon.
Reruns have aired in local syndication and on TBS,MTV2 and E!.
In 1965, Eden signed a
contract with Sidney Sheldon to
star on his up-and-coming fantasysitcomI Dream of Jeannie that would air on NBC. After various brunette starlets and beauty queens
unsuccessfully tried out for the role she was approached by Sheldon who had
seen her in The Brass Bottle and had been recommended by various colleagues.
Eden played Jeannie, a beautiful genie set free from her bottle by astronaut and United States Air Forcecaptain (later major) Anthony
Nelson, played by Larry
Hagman. Hoped to be a blockbuster like its
rival-show Bewitched, I
Dream of Jeannie was only a mild ratings success, topping off its
first year at #27, tying withLassie.
The series spent its second, third, and fifth seasons out of the top thirty
programs. Season four proved to be the sitcom's most successful year, ending at
#26.
In the series, Eden wore
her trademark "Jeannie Costume", a costume that was designed by Gwen
Wakeling with the colors pink and red
chosen by Eden. During the second season reporters visiting the set would joke
that Eden had no navel as it was almost never visible when in costume. The
story picked up momentum and as it did the network censors began to insist that
her navel remain hidden. In the fourth season George
Schlatter the creator of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In expressed a desire to premiere Eden's navel on his show. As soon as his intentions were
revealed the network held a meeting of executives to discuss his idea and it
was deemed inappropriate to do so. However, her navel is glimpsed in a few
season four and season five episodes, much to the dislike of the censors. After
four years of dating, Jeannie and Anthony got married in the show's fifth
season, a decision that was forced by the network. Eden complained to the
network about the two marrying, claiming that this change in the plotline would
take away from the show's humor and the sexual tension between Jeannie and
Anthony. However, even after the change, the network had grown tired of the
series by the end of the 1969-1970 television season and canceled the show
after five seasons and 139 episodes. The series became hugely popular during
decades of syndication and has had two spin-off reunion movies. The first, I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years
Later a 1985 television
movie, starred all the original cast
excluding Larry Hagman, who was
unavailable due to the shooting schedule of his then-current series, "Dallas". The role of Anthony Nelson was played by Wayne
Rogers for this film only. The second
television spin-off movie of the series aired in 1991 and was called I Still Dream of Jeannie, in which Hagman was still absent—Anthony Nelson doesn't
appear in this film at all. There was talk of a third I Dream of
Jeannie movie but, with the death of Larry Hagman, no projects have
been cast or even written.
In 1978, she starred in the
feature film Harper Valley PTA, based on the popular
country song. This led to a namesake television series in 1981; in both the movie and the TV series, she
played the show's heroine, Stella Johnson. The show won 11 of its 13 time slots
during its first season. It was a comedy version of Peyton Place with Anne Francine playing
wealthy villain Flora Simpson Reilly. In one episode Stella dressed in a blue
and gold genie costume and in another she played both Stella and her cousin
Della Smith (similar to Jeannie's evil twin-sister character). The show Harper Valley PTA began January 16, 1981, and was renamed
simply Harper Valley when the show began its second season on
October 29, 1981. The show ran until August 14, 1982, producing 29 episodes
for NBC and Universal MCA, which were rerun in 2000
by TV Land.
n 1990, Eden had a recurring role
of a billionairess seeking revenge against J. R. Ewing in
five episodes of the final season of Dallas, playing the captivating character Lee Ann De La Vega, reuniting her
with her I Dream of Jeannie costar Hagman. In her final episode, the character
admits that her maiden name was "Lee Ann Nelson", which was a
production gag, as "Nelson" was the surname of Hagman's character,
and Eden's character's married name, in I Dream of Jeannie.
