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.
Oct 4, 1990
Beverly Hills, 90210 debuts on Fox.
Created by Darren Star and produced by Aaron Spelling, the show turned its relatively unknown cast of actors, including Luke Perry, Jason Priestley and Tori Spelling (Aaron’s daughter), into household names. It also tackled a number of topical issues ranging from domestic abuse to teen pregnancy to AIDS and paved the way for other popular teen dramas, including Dawson’s Creek and The O.C.
Beverly Hills, 90210 originally centered around Brenda (Shannen Dougherty) and Brandon Walsh (Priestley), middle-class high-school-age twins from Minnesota who relocate to ritzy Beverly Hills with their parents. The Walshes attend the fictional West Beverly Hills High School, along with bad boy Dylan (Perry), popular blonde Kelly (Jennie Garth), rich kid Steve (Ian Ziering), virginal Donna (Spelling) and nerdy David (Brian Austin Green). Over the course of the show’s 10 seasons, the characters became entangled in numerous love triangles, graduated from high school and moved on to college and careers.
The show was the first big hit for the screenwriter and producer Darren Star, who went on to create the 90210 spinoff Melrose Place, which originally aired from 1992 to 1999, and the popular HBO TV series Sex and the City, which originally aired from 1998 to 2004. Aaron Spelling, who died in 2006 at the age of 83, was one of the most prolific producers in the history of television. Spelling’s credits include The Mod Squad, Charlie’s Angels, Dynasty, Starsky and Hutch, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island and 7th Heaven.
The final episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 aired on May 17, 2000. A new version of the show, titled 90210, premiered on September 2, 2008. The show follows a Kansas family who moves to Beverly Hills. Of the original Beverly Hills, 90210, cast, Jennie Garth reprises her role as Kelly, now a guidance counselor at West Beverly Hills High, while Shannon Doherty has guest starred as Brenda, who has become an actress.
October 5, 1950
The game show You Bet Your Life, starring host Groucho Marx, airs its first TV episode.
The show had debuted on radio in 1947. Thanks to Marx's sarcastic humor and improvised wisecracks, the show became a hit first on radio and then on television. The show ran until 1961.
October 9, 1953
Anthony Marcus "Tony" Shalhoub was born.
The actor of Lebanese origin is best known for his role as manic-obsessive sleuth Adrian Monk on the TV series Monk. By 1991, one of his first television roles was as the Italian cabdriver Antonio Scarpacci in the sitcom Wings. Shalhoub was pleasantly surprised to land the role after having a recurring role in the second season. In the same time period, Shalhoub played physicist Dr. Chester Ray Banton in the X-Files second-season episode Soft Light. He later returned to series television in 1999, this time in a lead role on Stark Raving Mad opposite Neil Patrick Harris. The show did not attract much of an audience, and NBC cancelled the series in July 2000.
After a two-year absence from the small screen, Shalhoub starred in Monk, in which he plays a San Francisco detective diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, for USA Network. Michael Richards had been offered the role when the show was being considered for broadcast on ABC, a network which would later rerun the first season in 2003, but he eventually turned it down. Shalhoub was nominated for Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series seven times consecutively, from 2003-2009, and won in 2003, 2005, and 2006.
October 9, 1954
Scott Stewart Bakula is born.
His most prominent roles have been as Sam Beckett in the science fiction television series Quantum Leap, and as Captain Jonathan Archer in Star Trek: Enterprise. He also co-starred with Maria Bello in the short-lived CBS television series Mr. & Mrs. Smith and had a recurring role in the sitcom Murphy Brown.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
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