This Week in Television History: September 2012 PART II

Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:

CLICK HERE for a list of Stations

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 11, 1942

Comedian Tom Dreesen is born.

Dreesen grew up in Harvey, Illinois, south of Chicago. His family was one of the few white families in a largely African American community. While working as an insurance salesman in 1968, he met Tim Reid through a local Jaycee chapter, and the two teamed up to form the first biracial stand-up comedy duo in the United States. Though their material is now considered cutting-edge for its time, the pair struggled to make a living together, and split up in the mid-1970s. However, each found individual success: while Reid landed a role on WKRP in Cincinnati, Dreesen became a regular on The Tonight Show and toured with Frank Sinatra as the crooner's opening act. In 1989, Dreesen released a comedy album through Flying Fish Records called That White Boy's Crazy. The album was recorded in front of an all-black audience in Harvey, Illinois.

Dreesen continues to perform today. He is also involved in philanthropic endeavors and hosts an annual celebrity golf tournament called the Tom Dreesen Celebrity Classic. In 2008, Dreesen, Reid, and former Chicago Sun-Times sportswriter Ron Rapoport completed the book Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White.

September 13, 1977

SOAP Priemered on ABC. The show was created as a parody of daytime soap operas, presented as a weekly half-hour prime time comedy. Similar to a soap opera, the show's story was presented in a serial format and included melodramatic plot elements such as amnesia, alien abduction, demonic possession, murder and kidnapping. In 2007 it was listed as one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME," and in 2010, the Tates and the Campbells ranked at number 17 in TV Guide's list of "TV's Top Families".

The show was created, written, and produced by Susan Harris. The show aired for four seasons and 85 episodes. The final four episodes of the series aired as one-hour episodes during the original run on ABC. These hour-long episodes were later split in two, yielding 93 half-hour episodes for syndication.

Writer Susan Harris developed a story arc for five seasons of Soap, but the series was canceled after its fourth season, due to declining ratings. Therefore the final episode, which originally aired on April 20, 1981, did not serve as a series finale and instead ended with several unresolved cliffhangers. These involve a suicidal Chester preparing to kill Danny and Annie after catching them in bed, Burt preparing to walk into an ambush orchestrated by his political enemies, and Jessica about to be executed by a Communist firing squad.

September 16, 1927

Peter Falk was born.

The actor is best known for his role as Lieutenant Columbo in the television series Columbo. He appeared in numerous films and television guest roles, and has been nominated for an Academy Award twice, and won the Emmy Award on five occasions and the Golden Globe award once. The Columbo character was originally played in a 1960 episode of the NBC anthology series The Chevy Mystery Show, where the detective was played by Bert Freed, and in a subsequent Broadway play by Thomas Mitchell. Falk first appeared as Columbo in Prescription: Murder , a 1968 TV movie, but the character was not the subject of a show of its own until 1971. Columbo aired regularly from 1971 to 1978 on NBC, and then more infrequently on ABC as TV movies beginning in 1989. The most recent episode was broadcast in 2003.

Despite his frazzled exterior, Columbo possesses a keen mind and invariably solves his cases by paying close attention to tiny inconsistencies in suspects' stories, hounding them until they confess; he merely puts on a good show of being dimwitted so that the criminals will be more at ease around him. Columbo's signature technique is to exit the scene of an interview, only to stop in the doorway to ask a suspect "just one more thing," which often brings to light the key inconsistency. Four of Columbo's cases gave Falk the chance to work with his longtime friend Patrick McGoohan, the latter playing the episodes' villain roles.

In May 2009, it was reported that Falk is suffering from dementia, and he no longer remembers his role in Columbo. In June 2009, a conservatorship was placed on him by a California court.

The 83-year-old Falk died at his longtime Roxbury Drive Beverly Hills home on the evening of June 23, 2011. The cause of death was later revealed as cardiorespiratory arrest, with pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease as underlying causes. Falk was survived by his wife and two daughters. His daughters said they would remember his "wisdom and humor". Falk is buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa