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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| Peter Claver Cullen July 28, 1941 – August 26, 2026 |
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| Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
| Dolly Rebecca Parton January 19, 1946 – August 25, 2026 |
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| Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
July 24, 1956
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their last comedy show together at New York's Copacabana Club.
Born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, Martin started a
nightclub act after working as a prizefighter and a steelworker in the 1940s.
Lewis, the son of performers, debuted in comedy acts with his parents at age
five and was working steadily as a comic by 1946, when he met Dean Martin. The
pair performed an act in which screwball Lewis constantly interrupted straight
man Martin's singing. They made their first appearance in 1946 at a club in
Atlantic City and were an instant hit, soon in demand for radio and movie
performances. The pair made 16 movies together, starting with My Friend Irma
in 1949. By 1956, though, the pair decided to call it quits.
After the duo split up,
Martin launched his own TV variety show, which ran from 1965 to 1974. In the
late 1950s and early 1960s, Martin teamed up with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis,
Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop to perform in Las Vegas. The group quickly
became known as the Rat Pack, a suave group of young, fast-living entertainers.
The group made several movies together in the early 1960s, including Ocean's
Eleven (1960), Sergeants Three (1962), and Robin and the Seven
Hoods. Martin died in 1995.
Lewis went on to sign one of the most lucrative film contracts of the day, a $10 million deal for 14 films with Paramount. Lewis' films, including Cinderfella (1960) and The Nutty Professor (1963), failed to attract much praise from American critics but made him a star in France, where he has long been considered a comic genius. After a long absence from film, he gave an acclaimed performance in the 1986 film The King of Comedy, co-starring Robert De Niro.
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| Michele Ann Marie "Shelley" Fabares January 19, 1944 – August 22, 2026 |
Shelley Fabares was known for her television roles as Mary on the sitcom The Donna Reed Show (1958–1963), Francine Webster on One Day at a Time, and as Christine Armstrong on the sitcom Coach (1989–1997), the latter of which earned her two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations. After Coach ended in 1997, Fabares voiced the role of Martha Kent on Superman: The Animated Series.[28] She reprised the role twice, once in Justice League and again for the direct-to-video film Superman: Brainiac Attacks (2006). Her film roles included playing the leading lady to Elvis Presley in Girl Happy (1965), Spinout (1966), and Clambake (1967). In 1962, her recording of "Johnny Angel" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
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| Good Night Ms. Fabares |
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| Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
August 19, 1981
Charlie's Angels aired its final episode.
August 19, 1921
TV producer Gene Roddenberry, best known as the creator of Star Trek, is born in El Paso, Texas.
His family moved to Los Angeles when Roddenberry was a toddler, and his father became a police officer. Roddenberry also studied criminal justice at Los Angeles City College but became a pilot instead through the Civilian Pilot Training Program. During World War II, Roddenberry flew bombing missions in the South Pacific with the U.S. Army Air Corps. Shot down during a raid, he survived and won a medal. A second crash, when he was working as a Pan Am pilot after the war, killed 14 people and convinced Roddenberry to give up flying. Instead, Roddenberry became a police officer like his father. But before long, he discovered that living the police life paid less than writing about it for TV, so he began writing scripts for Dragnet and other police TV dramas. In 1963, he produced a short-lived NBC show, The Lieutenant, about life in the U.S. Marines.A
lifelong science-fiction fan, Roddenberry wanted to try his hand making a
sci-fi TV program. He convinced superstar Lucille Ball to fund a pilot.
Although the first pilot was rejected, a second take was picked up, and Star
Trek premiered in 1966.
Although
the show ran for only three years and never placed better than No. 52 in the
ratings, Roddenberry's sci-fi series became a cult classic and spawned four
television series and nine movies.
Roddenberry died on October 24, 1991, and was one of the first people to be "buried" in space.
August 11, 1921
Alex Haley, author of Roots (1976), was born in Ithaca, New York.
After 20 years in the U.S. Coast Guard, Haley retired and wrote books,
including The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965). In 1976, he published
his best-known work, Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The blend of
fact and fiction, drawn largely from stories recited by Haley's grandmother,
chronicles seven generations of Haley's family history, from the enslavement of
his ancestors to his own quest to trace his family tree.
Roots became a TV miniseries in 1977. The eight-part series was aired on consecutive nights and became the most watched dramatic show in TV history. Some 130 million people-nearly half the country's population at the time--watched the final episode of the series. Haley died on Feb. 10, 1992.
August
3, 1941
Martha Helen Stewart (née Kostyra) was born.
Business magnate, television host, author and magazine publisher. As founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, she has gained success through a variety of business ventures, encompassing publishing, broadcasting, and merchandising. Stewart's syndicated talk show, Martha, is broadcast throughout the world, she has written numerous bestselling books, and she is the publisher of Martha Stewart Living magazine.In 2001, Stewart was named the third most
powerful woman in America by Ladies Home
Journal. In 2004, she was convicted of lying to investigators
about a stock sale and served five months in prison. Stewart began a strong
comeback campaign in 2005, with her company returning to profitability in 2006.
August 5, 1956
Maureen Denise McCormick was born.
August
5, 1956
On August 5, 1957, TV's American Bandstand began broadcasting nationally
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The
show that evolved into "American Bandstand" began on Philadelphia’s
WFIL-TV in 1952, a few years before the popular ascension of rock and roll.
Hosted by local radio personality Bob Horn, the original "Bandstand" "nevertheless
established much of the basic format of its later incarnation. In the first
year after Dick Clark took over as host in the summer of 1956, Bandstand
remained a popular local hit, but it took Clark’s ambition to help it break
out. When the ABC television network polled its affiliates in 1957 for
suggestions to fill its 3:30 p.m. time slot, Clark pushed hard for Bandstand,
which network executives picked up and scheduled for an August 5, 1957
premiere.
Renamed
"American Bandstand," the newly national program featured a number of
new elements that became part of its trademark, including the high school
gym-like bleachers and the famous segment in which teenage studio guests rated
the newest records on a scale from 25 to 98 and offered such criticisms as
“It’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.” But the heart of
"American Bandstand" always remained the sound of the day’s most
popular music combined with the sight of the show’s unpolished teen “regulars”
dancing and showing off the latest fashions in clothing and hairstyles.
"American Bandstand" aired five days a
week in live national broadcast until 1963, when the show moved west to Los
Angeles and began a 24-year run as a taped weekly program with Dick Clark as
host.
August 6, 1911
Lucille Ball was born.
She became one of America's most beloved comic actresses, is born near Jamestown, New York. Her father, an electrician, died when Ball was two. By age 15, Ball had decided to attend drama school and become an actress. However, the shy, skinny teenager received little encouragement and was rejected at least four times from Broadway chorus lines before finally becoming a chorus girl in 1926. In 1933, she was hired as the Chesterfield cigarette girl and was featured in all the company's advertisements. Attracting attention with her Chesterfield ads, she finally began playing bit parts in Hollywood movies in 1933. By the late 1930s, the starlet had graduated to comic supporting roles. In 1940, she met Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz while shooting Too Many Girls. The couple married the following year.Ball
continued to land movie roles that didn't fully showcase her talent.
Frustrated, she turned to radio and starred as a ditzy wife in My Favorite
Husband from 1948 to 1951. CBS decided to launch the popular series on the
relatively new medium of TV. Lucy insisted Desi be cast as her husband in the
TV version, though the network executives argued that no one would believe the
couple were married. Desi and Lucy performed before live audiences and filmed a
pilot, convincing network executives that audiences responded well to their
act, and CBS cast Desi for the show.
I Love Lucy became one of the
most popular TV situation comedies in history, ranking in the top three shows
for six years and turning the couple's production company, Desilu, into a
multimillion-dollar business. Ball became president of the company in 1960,
after she and Desi divorced. She also starred in several other "Lucy"
shows, including The Lucy Show, which debuted in 1962 and ran for six
seasons, and Here's Lucy, in which she starred with her two children
until the show was cancelled in 1974. A later show, Life with Lucy,
featuring Lucy as a grandmother, was cancelled after only eight episodes. Ball
worked little in the last years of her life. She died of congestive heart
failure in 1989, at the age of 78.
August 8, 1956
The Dumont network made its final
telecast.
DuMont's latter-day
obscurity, caused mainly by the destruction
of its extensive program archive by the 1970s, has
prompted TV historian David Weinstein to refer to it as the "Forgotten
Network" or "Network Is Long Gone". A few popular
DuMont programs, such as Cavalcade of Stars and Emmy
Award winner Life Is Worth Living, appear in
television retrospectives or are
mentioned briefly in books about U.S. television history.
August 1, 1971
The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour debuts.
The popular variety show, featuring music, comedy routines and sarcastic banter between vertically challenged Sonny and his statuesque wife, Cher.Sonny
and Cher had been singing and performing comedy in nightclubs for more than a
decade. They released several hit records in the 1960s, most notably "I
Got You, Babe," before launching their show. The series rated well and
showcased future comedy stars, including Teri Garr and Steve Martin.
Despite
the show's popularity, the couple suffered marital problems and announced in
the spring of 1974 that they were divorcing and would cancel the show. After
divorcing in 1975, both Sonny and Cher tried and failed to launch solo
comedy-variety shows. They revived their show together briefly in 1976 and
1977. Cher went on to a successful film career, winning the Best Actress Oscar
for Moonstruck (1987). Bono later became a politician, serving as mayor
of Palm Springs and a U.S. congressman.
August 1, 1981
MTV launches. MTV: Music Television goes on the air for the first time ever, with the words (spoken by one of MTV’s creators, John Lack): “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.” The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first music video to air on the new cable television channel, which initially was available only to households in parts of New Jersey.
MTV went on to revolutionize the music industry and become an influential source of pop culture and entertainment in the United States and other parts of the world, including Europe, Asia and Latin America, which all have MTV-branded channels.In MTV’s early days, its programming consisted of basic music videos that
were introduced by VJs (video jockeys) and provided for free by record
companies. As the record industry recognized MTV’s value as a promotional
vehicle, money was invested in making creative, cutting-edge videos. Some
directors, including Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Three Kings) and
Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), worked on music
videos before segueing into feature films. In the 1980s, MTV was instrumental
in promoting the careers of performers such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince
and Duran Duran, whose videos played in heavy rotation.
By the late 1980s, MTV started airing non-video programming, geared toward teenagers and young adults. Its popular reality series The Real World launched in 1992 and was followed by such highly rated shows as The Osbournes, Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, Laguna Beach, My Super Sweet 16 and The Hills. MTV also debuted animated series including Beavis and Butthead and Celebrity Deathmatch, as well as documentaries, news, game shows and public service campaigns on topics ranging from voting rights to safe sex. MTV developed a reputation for pushing cultural boundaries and taste; the airing of Madonna’s 1989 “Like a Prayer” video is just one famous example. In 1984, the channel launched the MTV Music Video Awards, which were followed in 1992 by the MTV Movie Awards. Today, MTV’s music-video programming is largely confined to one show, Total Request Live.
July 24, 1956
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their last comedy show together at New York's Copacabana Club.
After the duo split up,
Martin launched his own TV variety show, which ran from 1965 to 1974. In the
late 1950s and early 1960s, Martin teamed up with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis,
Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop to perform in Las Vegas. The group quickly
became known as the Rat Pack, a suave group of young, fast-living entertainers.
The group made several movies together in the early 1960s, including Ocean's
Eleven (1960), Sergeants Three (1962), and Robin and the Seven
Hoods. Martin died in 1995.
Lewis
went on to sign one of the most lucrative film contracts of the day, a $10
million deal for 14 films with Paramount. Lewis' films, including Cinderfella
(1960) and The Nutty Professor (1963), failed to attract much praise
from American critics but made him a star in France, where he has long been
considered a comic genius. After a long absence from film, he gave an acclaimed
performance in the 1986 film The King of Comedy, co-starring Robert De
Niro.
July 19, 1989
Rebecca
Shaeffer (age 21) is murdered at her Los Angeles home by
Robert John Bardo, a mentally unstable man who had been stalking her.
Schaeffer’s death helped lead to the passage in California of legislation
aimed at preventing stalking.
Arrested the next day in Tucson, Arizona, Bardo was later
prosecuted by the Los Angeles County district attorney Marcia Clark, who later
became famous as a prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial. In 1991, Bardo was
convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison without the
possibility of parole. In 1994, California passed the Driver’s Privacy
Protection Act, which prevented the Department of Motor Vehicles from releasing
private addresses.
The 2002 film Moonlight Mile, loosely inspired by Schaeffer’s story,
was written and directed by Brad Silberling, who had been dating the young
actress at the time of her death.
