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 first became known for his role as Alex P. Keaton
on the popular sitcom Family Ties, and went on to star in such films as Back
to the Future and Teen Wolf as well as the TV series Spin City.
In 1999, he announced that he was battling Parkinson's Disease. He left Spin
City in 2000 but later guest starred on such shows as Scrubs and Boston
Legal.
Quotes
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my
acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.
Actor. Born Michael Andrew Fox, on June 9, 1961, in
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Fox began using the middle initial 'J' (presumably
smoother-sounding than 'A') professionally to distinguish himself from another
acting "Michael Fox." Michael J. Fox first achieved stardom in 1982,
as the acquisitive Reagan-era poster-boy Alex P. Keaton on the popular
television sitcom Family Ties.
Hailing from Canada, where he grew up the youngest of five children to Bill and
Phyllis Fox, Michael struggled in school and was too small - he is five feet,
four inches tall - to compete in his favorite activity, ice hockey. He found an
outlet in drama class, and in 1976 made his professional debut in the CBS
series Leo and Me at age 15 (playing a 10-year-old). After starring in
the CBS movie Letters from Frank (also filmed in Canada), Fox dropped
out of high school and drove to Los Angeles with his father. There, he found
work in the series Palmerstown, U.S.A. before landing the role in Family
Ties, where he wooed audiences with his confident charm and impeccable
comic timing for seven years.
He also had enormous success on the big screen,
playing Marty McFly in Robert Zemeckis' zany romp, Back to the Future (1985). After
playing comic roles in Teen Wolf and The Secret of My Success,
Fox wanted to broaden his range and took some unlikely dramatic turns, playing
a factory worker in Light of Day, a cocaine-snorting fact checker in Bright
Lights, Big City, and earning critical acclaim for his starring role
alongside Sean Penn in Brian DePalma's Vietnam saga Casualties of War.
Audiences applauded Fox's return to Back to the
Future, for sequels II and III in 1989 and 1990. His pitch-perfect
portrayal of a George Stephanopoulos-type character in The American President (1995)
earned Fox accolades once again, but it was his ceremonious return to prime
time television in the ABC sitcom Spin City, which launched in 1996,
that put Fox back where he belonged - delighting audiences on a weekly basis
with a schedule that allowed him more time with his family. In 1999, he
contributed his trademark voice and comic flare as the title character (a little
white mouse) in the film adaptation of E.B. White's
Stuart Little. Fox was honored with a star on the fabled Hollywood Walk
of Fame in December 2002.
In late 1999, Fox made the startling announcement that
he had been battling Parkinson's disease since 1991, and had even undergone
brain surgery to alleviate tremors. Despite Spin City's incredible
success and a showering of Emmy and Golden Globe awards, Fox announced in early
2000 that he would leave the show, which he also executive produced, to spend
time with his family, and to concentrate on raising money and awareness for
Parkinson's disease - including the May 2000 launch of the Michael J. Fox
Foundation for Parkinson's Research. Fox won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his
final season on Spin City, along with the respect and support of the
entire Hollywood community.
In 2004, Fox guest starred in the television comedy Scrubs as Dr. Kevin
Casey, a surgeon with obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 2006, he appeared in a
recurring role on the drama Boston Legal. Fox was nominated for an Emmy
Award for best guest appearance. In 2009, he appeared on the dark drama, Rescue
Me, and his television special Michael J. Fox: Adventures of an
Incurable Optimist, based on his best-selling book by the same title, aired
on ABC.
Fox married the actress Tracy Pollan (who played Ellen, Alex Keaton's
girlfriend, on Family Ties) in 1988. The couple has four children: son
Sam, twin girls Aquinnah and Schuyler, and daughter Esmé Annabelle.
Griffith was born in Mount Airy, North Carolina, the only child of Geneva (née Nunn) and Carl Lee Griffith. At a very young age,
Griffith had to live with relatives until his parents could afford to get a
home of their own. Without a crib or a bed, he slept in drawers for a few months. In
1929, when Griffith was three years old, his father took a job working as a carpenter and was finally able
to purchase a home in Mount Airy's "blue-collar" southside.
Like his mother, Griffith grew up listening to music.
His father instilled a sense of humor from old family stories. By the time he
entered school he was well aware that he was from what many considered the
"wrong side of the tracks". He was a shy student, but once he found a
way to make his peers laugh, he began to come out of his shell and come into
his own.
As a student at Mount Airy High School, Griffith
cultivated an interest in the arts, and he participated in the school's drama program. A growing love of music, particularly swing, would change his life.
Griffith was raised Baptist and
looked up to Ed Mickey, a minister at Grace Moravian Church, who led the brass band and taught him to
sing and play the trombone.
Mickey nurtured Griffith's talent throughout high school until graduation in
1944. Griffith was delighted when he was offered a role in The Lost Colony, a play still performed today on Roanoke Island. He performed as
a cast member of the play for several years, playing a variety of roles, until
he finally landed the role of Sir Walter Raleigh, the namesake of North Carolina's
capital.
After graduation, he taught English for a few years at
Goldsboro High School in Goldsboro, North Carolina, where he taught, among others, Carl Kasell. He also began to
write.
Griffith's early career was as a monologist, delivering long
stories such as What it Was, Was Football, which is told from the point of view of a rural backwoodsman trying to figure
out what was going on in a football game.[6] Released as a single
in 1953 on the Colonial label, the monologue was a hit for Griffith, reaching
number nine on the charts in 1954.
In 1957 Griffith made his film début, starring in the film A Face in the Crowd. Although he plays a "country boy", this
country boy is manipulative and power-hungry, a drifter who becomes a television host and uses his
show as a gateway to political power. Co-starring Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau, Tony Franciosa, and Lee Remick (in her film début
as well), this now-classic film, directed by Elia Kazan, showcases
Griffith's powerful talents. Written by Budd Schulberg, and partly
based on the on-stage phoniness of Arthur Godfrey, the film
demonstrated, quite early on, the power that television can have upon the
masses. This prescient film was seldom run on television until the 1990s.
A 2005 DVD reissue of A Face in the Crowd includes a
mini-documentary on the film, with comments from Schulberg and
surviving cast members Griffith, Franciosa, and Neal. In his interview,
Griffith, revered for his wholesome image for decades, reveals a more complex
side of himself. He recalls Kazan prepping him to shoot his first scene with
Remick's teenaged baton twirler, who captivates Griffith's character on a trip to Arkansas. Griffith also
expresses his belief that the film was far more popular and respected in more
recent decades than it was when originally released.
Griffith's first appearance on television had been in
1955 in the one-hour teleplay of No Time for Sergeants on The United
States Steel Hour. That was the first of two appearances on that series.
Beginning in 1960, Griffith starred as Sheriff Andy Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show for the CBStelevision network. The show took place in the fictional town of Mayberry, North Carolina, where
Taylor, a widower, was the sheriff and town sage. The show was filmed at
Desilu Studios, with exteriors filmed at Forty Acres in Culver City, CA.
From 1960 to 1965, the show co-starred character actor and
comedian—and Griffith's longtime friend—Don Knotts in the role of DeputyBarney Fife, Taylor's best
friend and partner. He was also Taylor's cousin in the show. In the series
première episode, in a conversation between the two, Fife calls Taylor
"Cousin Andy", and Taylor calls Fife "Cousin Barney". The
show also starred child actorRon Howard (then known as Ronny
Howard), who played Taylor's only child, Opie Taylor.
It was an immediate hit. Although Griffith never
received a writing credit for the show, he worked on the development of every
script. While Knotts was frequently lauded and won multiple Emmy Awards for his comedic
performances (as did Frances Bavier in 1967), Griffith was never nominated for
an Emmy Award during the show's run.
In 1967, Griffith was under contract with CBS to do
one more season of the show. However, he decided to quit the show to pursue a
movie career and other projects. The series continued as Mayberry R.F.D., with Ken Berry starring as a widower
farmer and many of the regular
characters recurring, some regularly and some as guest appearances. Griffith
served as executive producer (according to Griffith, he came in once a week to
review the week's scripts and give input) and guest starred in five episodes
(the pilot episode involved his marriage to Helen Crump).[10] He made final
appearances as Taylor in the 1986 reunion television film, Return to Mayberry, and in two reunion specials in 1993 and 2003.
Matlock (1986–1995)
After leaving his still-popular show in 1968, and
starting his own production company (Andy Griffith Enterprises) in 1972,
Griffith starred in less-successful television series such as Headmaster (1970), The New Andy Griffith Show (1971), Adams of Eagle Lake (1975) Salvage 1 (1979), and The
Yeagers (1980).
After spending time in rehabilitation for leg paralysis from Guillain–Barré syndrome in 1986, Griffith returned to television as the title
character, Ben Matlock, in the legal drama Matlock (1986–1995) on NBC and ABC. Matlock was a country lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia, who was known for his Southern drawl and for always winning his cases. Matlock also
starred unfamiliar actors (both of whom were childhood fans of Andy Griffith) Nancy Stafford as Michelle
Thomas (1987–1992) and Clarence Gilyard Jr. as Conrad
McMasters (1989–1993). By the end of its first season it was a ratings
powerhouse on Tuesday nights. Although the show was nominated for four Emmy
Awards, Griffith once again was never nominated. He did, however, win a
People's Choice Award in 1987 for his work as Matlock.
During the series' sixth season, he served as
unofficial director, executive producer and writer of the show.
This show is mentioned on TV's longest animated show The Simpsons and is noted as Grandpa Simpson's favorite show as
well as Marge Simpson's mother Jacqueline Bouvier's as well.
Most of the TV movies Griffith starred in were also
attempts to launch a new series. 1974's Winter Kill launched the
short lived Adams of Eagle Lake which was canceled after only two episodes in 1975. A
year later, he starred as a New York City attorney for the DA's office in Street
Killing which also failed to launch a new series. Two television films for
NBC in 1977, The Girl in The Empty Grave
and Deadly Game, were attempts
for Griffith to launch a new series featuring him as Police Chief Abel Marsh, a
more hard-edged version of Andy Taylor; despite strong ratings for both films,
both were unsuccessful.
While appearing in television films and guest roles on
television series over the next 10 years, Griffith also appeared in two feature
films, both of which flopped at the box office. He co-starred with Jeff Bridges as a crusty old
1930s western actor in the comedy Hearts of the West (1975), and he appeared alongside Tom Berenger as a gay
villainous colonel and cattle baron in the
western comedy spoof Rustlers' Rhapsody (1985).
He also appeared as an attorney in the NBC mini-series
Fatal Vision in 1984, which
is considered a precursor to his role in Matlock.
Griffith stunned many unfamiliar with his A Face in
the Crowd work in the television film Crime of
Innocence (1985), where he
portrayed a callous judge who routinely sentenced juveniles to hard prison
time. He further stunned audiences with his role as a dangerous and mysterious
grandfather in 1995's Gramps,
co-starring the late John Ritter.
He also appeared as a comical villain in the spy movie spoof Spy Hard (1996) starring Leslie Nielsen. In the
television film A Holiday Romance (1999), Griffith played the role of "Jake
Peterson." In the film Daddy and Them (2001),
Griffith portrayed a patriarch of a dysfunctional southern family.
In the feature film Waitress (2007), Griffith played a crusty diner owner who takes a shine to Keri Russell's character. His
latest appearance was the leading role in the romantic comedy, independent filmPlay The Game (2009) as a lonely, widowed grandfather re-entering
the dating world after a 60-year hiatus. The cast of Play The Game also
included Rance Howard,
Ron Howard's real-life father, who made appearances in various supporting roles
on The Andy Griffith Show, and Clint Howard, Ron's younger
brother, who had the recurring role of Leon (the kid offering the ice
cream cone or peanut butter sandwich) on TAGS.
Singing
and recording career
Griffith sang as part of some of his acting roles,
most notably in A Face In The Crowd and in many episodes of both The
Andy Griffith Show and Matlock. In addition to his recordings of
comic monologues in the 1950s, he made an album of upbeat country and gospel
tunes during the run of The Andy Griffith Show, which included a version
of the show's theme sung by Griffith under the title "The Fishin'
Hole". In recent years, he has recorded successful albums of classic Christianhymns for Sparrow Records. His most
successful was the 1996 release I Love to Tell the Story: 25 Timeless Hymns, which was certified platinum by the RIAA.
By the end of 1955, Elvis
Presley had nearly 18 months of nonstop touring behind him and two dozen
singles already under his belt, though his only hits were on the Country and
Western charts. He was a hardworking and hard-to-categorize up-and-comer, but the
next six months would make him a superstar. It was his debut single on
RCA/Victor, his new label, which propelled Elvis to the top of the pop charts.
But if "Heartbreak Hotel" is what made him the king of the radio and
record stores during the spring of 1956, it was television that truly made him
the King of Rock and Roll. And if any one moment might be called his
coronation, it was his appearance on The Milton Berle Show on
this day in 1956, when he set his guitar aside and put every part of his being
into a blistering, scandalous performance of "Hound Dog."
This was not Presley's first
television appearance, nor even his first appearance onMilton Berle.
Between January and March 1956, Elvis made six appearances on Tommy and Jimmy
Dorsey's Stage Show, and on April 3, he appeared for the first time
with Uncle Miltie. But every one of those appearances featured Elvis either in
close-up singing a slow ballad, or full body but with his movements somewhat
restricted by the acoustic guitar he was playing. It was on his second Milton
Berle Show appearance that he put the guitar aside and America
witnessed, for the very first time, the 21-year-old Elvis Presley from head to
toe, gyrating his soon-to-be-famous (or infamous) pelvis.
Reaction to Elvis'
performance in the mainstream media was almost uniformly negative. "Mr.
Presley has no discernible singing ability....For the ear, he is an unutterable
bore," wrote critic Jack Gould in the next day's New York Times.
"His one specialty is an accented movement of the body that heretofore has
been primarily identified with the repertoire of the blonde bombshells of the
burlesque runway. The gyration never had anything to do with the world of
popular music and still doesn't." In the New York Daily News,
Ben Gross described Presley's performance as "tinged with the kind of
animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos," while the New
York Journal-American's Jack O'Brien said that Elvis "makes up for
vocal shortcomings with the weirdest and plainly suggestive animation short of
an aborigine's mating dance." Meanwhile, the Catholic weekly America got
right to the point in its headline: "Beware of Elvis Presley."
June 6, 1971
The Ed Sullivan Show airs
for the very last time.
Sunday nights, 8:00 pm, CBS. Ask
almost any American born in the 1950s or earlier
what television program ran in that timeslot on that network, and they'll
probably know the answer: The Ed Sullivan Show. For more than two
decades, Sullivan's variety show was the premiere television showcase for
entertainers of all stripes, including borscht-belt comedians, plate-spinning
vaudeville throwbacks and, most significantly, some of the biggest and most
current names in rock and roll. Twenty-three years after its 1948 premiere, The
Ed Sullivan Show had its final broadcast on this day in 1971.
In its first eight years of existence, there was no
such thing as rock and roll to be featured on the program originally called Toast
of the Town, yet even its first broadcast made music history when Broadway
composers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II gave the world its first
taste of the score from their upcoming musical, South Pacific. Over the
years, live performances of new and current Broadway shows were featured
regularly on Ed Sullivan, including Julie Andrews singing "Wouldn't
It Be Loverly?" from My Fair Lady and Richard Burton singing
"What Do The Simple Folk Do?" from Camelot. Classical and
opera performers also made frequent appearances, but of course The Ed
Sullivan Show is now remembered most for providing so many iconic moments
in the history of televised rock and roll.
Elvis Presley's first appearance on The Ed Sullivan
Show, in September 1956,was actually one of his most restrained and
least thrilling. It was notable, however, given Ed Sullivan's assertion earlier
that year that he'd never allow "The King" on his show. By the time
the Beatles rolled around, Sullivan was far more comfortable with the hysteria
young Elvis had caused. In fact, it was Ed Sullivan personally witnessing
Beatlemania up close at London's Heathrow airport in 1963 that led the Beatles
being booked for their historic February 1964 American television debut.
Through the rest of the 60s, The Ed Sullivan Show continued to host the
day's biggest rock acts: The Rolling Stones, The Supremes, The Doors, The Mamas
and the Papas, Janis Joplin and more.
Gladys Knight and the Pips were the musical guests on
the final episode of The Ed Sullivan Show, which was cancelled shortly
after its rerun broadcast on this day in 1971.
Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and
countless other Warner Bros. cartoon characters, was born in San Francisco.
His parents, who ran a women's clothing business,
moved with their son to Portland, Oregon, when Blanc was a child. Blanc began
performing as a musician and singer on local radio programs in Portland before
he was 20. In the late 1920s, he and his wife, Estelle, created a daily radio
show called "Cobwebs and Nuts," which became a hit. Blanc made many
other radio appearances and became a regular on Jack Benny's hit radio show,
providing the sounds of Benny's ancient car (The Maxwell) and playing several
other characters.
In 1937, Blanc made his
debut with Warner Bros., providing the voice for a drunken bull in a short
cartoon called "Picador Porky." Another actor provided the pig's
voice, but Blanc later replaced him. In 1940, Bugs Bunny debuted in a short
called "A Wild Hare." Blanc said he wanted the rabbit to sound tough
and streetwise, so he created a comic combination of Bronx and Brooklyn
accents. Other characters Blanc created for Warner Bros. included the Road
Runner, Sylvester, and Tweety Bird. He performed in some 850 cartoons for
Warner Bros. during his 50-year career. For other studios, he provided the
voices of Barney Rubble and Dino the dinosaur in The Flintstones, Mr.
Spacely for The Jetsons, and Woody Woodpecker's laugh.
In his 1988
autobiography, That's Not All Folks, Blanc described a nearly fatal
traffic accident that left him in a coma. Unable to rouse him by using his real
name, a doctor finally said, "How are you, Bugs Bunny?" and Mel
replied, in Bugs' voice, "Ehh, just fine, doc. How are you?"
Blanc
continued to provide voices until the late 1980s, most memorably voicing Daffy
Duck dueling with Donald Duck in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988). After
Mel Blanc died of complications from heart disease, his son Noel, trained by
his father, provided the voices for the characters the elder Blanc had helped
bring to life.
It is the 177th and 178th episodes of the series overall. The title is derived
from the expression "All good things must come to an end",
a phrase used by the character "Q"
during the episode itself. Capt.Jean-Luc
Picard inexplicably finds his mind jumping between the present (stardate 47988)
and the past just prior to the USSEnterprise-D's first mission six
years earlier at Farpoint Station and over twenty-five
years into the future, where an aged Picard has retired to the family vineyard in Labarre, France. These jumps occur without
warning, and the resulting discontinuity in Picard's behavior frequently leaves
him and those around him confused.
In the future, he gains passage on the USS Pasteur, which is
under the command of his now ex-wife, Dr. Beverly
Picard, whom he convinces to find the anomaly.
In the past, despite having the Enterprise's mission to Farpoint
Station cancelled by Starfleet to investigate the anomaly, Picard insists
on continuing, believing the impending encounter with Q to
be more important. After reaching the place where he had first encountered the
Q in the form of a net near Farpoint Station and finding nothing there, Picard
enters his ready room, only to find himself once again in Q's courtroom. Q
reveals that the trial started seven years ago never concluded, and the current
situation is humanity's last chance to prove themselves to the Q Continuum,
but secretly reveals that he himself is the cause of Picard's time jumping. Q
challenges Picard to solve the mystery of the anomaly, cryptically stating that
Picard will destroy humanity.
As Jean-Luc Picard arrives at the anomaly in all three time periods, he
discovers that the anomaly is much larger in the past, but does not exist at
all in the future. As the past and present Enterprises scan
the anomaly with tachyon beams, the USS Pasteur is attacked
by Klingon ships,
but the crew is saved due to the timely arrival of the future Enterpriseunder
the command of Admiral William Riker. He fires
on several of the attacking Klingon warships, which causes them to flee the
neutral zone. It is revealed that Riker and Worf are in a feud over the
late Enterprise counselor Deanna Troi,
with whom both had a serious relationship and who had died years earlier. Q
once again appears to Picard and takes him to billions of years in the past
on Earth,
where the anomaly, growing larger as it moves backwards in time, has taken over
the whole of the Alpha Quadrant and has prevented the formation
of life on Earth. When Picard returns to the future, he discovers the anomaly
has appeared, created as a result of his orders, and the tachyon pulses from
the three eras are sustaining it. Data and
Geordi determine that they can stop the anomaly by having all three Enterprises fly
into the centre of it and create static warp shells. Picard relays the orders
to each Enterprise. Each ship suffers warp core breaches, with Q
telling the future Picard that "all good things must come to an end"
just before the future Enterpriseexplodes.
Picard finds himself facing Q in the courtroom as before. Q congratulates
Picard for being able to think in multiple timelines simultaneously to solve
the puzzle, which is proof that humanity can still evolve, much to the surprise
of the Q Continuum. Q admits to helping Picard to solve it with the time
jumping since he was the one that put them in this situation, and then goes on
to explain that the anomaly never actually existed and that his past and
present have been restored. He then withdraws from the courtroom and bids
farewell to Picard by saying "See you ... out there". Picard then
returns to the Enterprise of the present and no longer jumping
through time.
As the senior staff plays their regular poker game, they
reflect on the future the captain told them, to prevent them from drifting
apart. For the first time ever, Picard decides to join the game, expressing
regret he had not done so before, saying "...and the sky's the
limit," suggesting more adventures lay ahead for the crew.
Strike Force Five was a limited series podcast hosted by American comedians and talk show hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver. Each episode features conversations between the comedians on different subjects defined by an alternating leading host. Running 12 episodes from August 30 to October 10, 2023, it was created to support the five hosts' employees who were all temporarily out of work due to the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, and its improvised nature aimed to demonstrate their importance to their shows.
On May 11, 2026 Stephen Colbert reunites with his Strike Force Five podcast co-hosts for a rowdy group interview that went far too long for one broadcast episode. Watch the entire segment here then keep an eye out for a special emergency episode of the Strike Force Five podcast dropping soon wherever you get your podcasts. Special thanks to Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver!
