TV CONFIDENTIAL Archives: Show No. 205 with guest Mark Cohen

Show No. 205 with guest Mark Cohen
Original Airdate: Week of Oct. 23-29, 2013
 
First hour: Tony and Donna with an expanded edition of This Week in TV History that includes discussions of the upcoming miniseries on the life of Johnny Carson, the network history of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and the impact of Miami Vice on television.  
Second hour: Ed welcomes Mark Cohen, author of Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman, a comprehensive biography of the groundbreaking comedian and song parodist that not only provides the back story of such songs as “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah,” but discusses Sherman’s fractured upbringing, his often fractious relationship with network television, and how his impact on popular culture extends beyond his work as a satirist.

Your Halloween Mental Sorbet: Sabrina the Teenage Witch - High School Drop-Ins

Here is a Halloween "Mental Sorbet" that we could use to get the taste of Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog out of our mouths.

The Groovie Goolies decide to enroll at Riverdale High.



Stay Tuned and Happy Halloween

Tony Figueroa

The Films of Vincent Price and Stanley Kramer: Next on TVC

Singer/actress Kat Kramer and author Joel Eisner will join us on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing Oct. 30-Nov. 5 at the following times and venues:

WROM Radio
Detroit, MI
Wednesday 10/30
8pm ET, 5pm PT
2am ET, 11pm PT
Sunday 11/3
8pm ET, 5pm PT
2am ET, 11pm PT
Click on the Listen Live button at WROMRadio.net

WYYR: Yesteryear Radio
Vero Beach, FL
Wednesday 10/30
9pm ET, 6pm PT
Click the On Air button at WYYR.com

Indiana Talks
Marion, IN
Wednesday 10/30
11pm ET, 8pm PT
with replays at various times throughout the week
Click on the player at IndianaTalks.com
or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in Indiana Talks

Talktainment Radio
Columbus, OH
Thursday 10/31
2am ET, 11pm PT
Friday 11/1
3am ET, Midnight PT
Noon ET, 9am PT
Click on the Listen Live button at TalktainmentRadio.com

Share-a-Vision Radio
San Francisco Bay Area
Friday 11/1
7pm ET, 4pm PT
10pm ET, 7pm PT
Click on the Listen Live button at KSAV.org
or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in KSAV

KHMB Radio 1710 AM
Half Moon Bay, CA
Sunday 11/3
9pm PT
Monday 11/4
Midnight ET
Click on the Listen Live button at KHMBRadio.com
or use the Live365 app on your smartphone and type in KHMB

The Radio Slot Network
San Francisco, CA
Monday 11/4
9pm ET, 6pm PT
with replays at various times throughout the week
Click on the Talk Slot button at RadioSlot.com

Passionate World Radio
Ann Arbor, MI
Tuesday 11/5
9:30pm ET, 6:30pm PT
with replays at various times throughout the week at PWRTalkonDemand.com
Click on the Listen Now button at PWRTalk.com

The undisputed King of Horror Movies from the late 1950s through the early 1970s, Vincent Price was also a fixture on television throughout his career, including hundreds of appearances on Hollywood Squares, plus memorable guest roles on such classic series as Get Smart, The Brady Bunch, F Troop, Columbo and Batman.

Best known for playing heinous characters on-screen, off camera Vincent Price was a gentile, cultured man known for his passion for art, gourmet food, the theatre, and a sardonic sense of humor. These attributes, and more, come alive throughout the pages of The Price of Fear: The Film Career of Vincent Price, In His Words, a wonderful new biography by Joel Eisner.

The only authorized biography of Price, Joel’s book features a foreword by Peter Cushing, remembrances by the likes of Roger Corman, Richard Matheson and Jack Nicholson, and a wealth of stories on just about every stage, film and television production in which Vincent appeared — all told in the actor’s own words. Joel Eisner will join us in our second hour.

















Kat Kramer will join us in our first hour as we continue our coverage of the centennial celebration of the career of Stanley Kramer. Kat is founder of Kat Kramer’s Films That Change the World, a series of motion picture screenings that raise awareness about important social issues. The fifth anniversary screening of Kat’s series will be a showing of the documentary Fallout at the Sunset Gower Studios in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Nov. 13. Fallout is about the making of On the Beach, the 1959 film directed by Stanley Kramer, which was based on the novel by Nevil Shute. The Nov. 13 screening will mark the U.S. premiere of the documentary.

We’ll talk to Kat about Fallout, but we’ll also ask about the first annual Stanley Kramer Film Festival, which will take place Nov. 15-17 at the Camelot Theatres in Palm Springs, California. The lineup will include screenings of The Defiant Ones, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Wild One, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Caine Mutiny and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, plus panel discussions, live performances and more. For tickets and more information, call (888) 718-4253 or go to camelottickets.com.






TV CONFIDENTIAL: A radio talk show about television
Wed and Sun 8pm ET, 5pm PT on WROM Radio
Wed 9pm ET, 6pm PT on WYYR: Yesteryear Radio
Wed 11pm ET, 8pm PT on IndianaTalks.com
Fri 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org
Fri Noon ET, 9am PT on Talktainment Radio
Sun 9pm PT, Mon Midnight ET on KHMB Radio 1710 AM (Half Moon Bay, Calif.)
Mon 9pm ET, 6pm PT on The Radio Slot Network
Tue 9:30pm ET, 6:30pm PT on Passionate World Radio
Tape us now, listen to us later, using DAR.fm/tvconfidential
Also available as a podcast via iTunes, FeedBurner
and now on your mobile phone via www.stitcher.com/TVConfidential
Follow us online at www.tvconfidential.net
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This Week in Television History: October 2013 PART V

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.

October 28, 1950

Popular radio personality Jack Benny moves to television with The Jack Benny Program. The TV version of the show ran for the next 15 years.

Jack Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky in 1894. His father, a Lithuanian immigrant, ran a saloon in Waukegan, Illinois, near Chicago. Benny began playing violin at age six and continued through high school. He began touring on the vaudeville circuit in 1917. In 1918, he joined the navy and was assigned to entertain the troops with his music but soon discovered a flair for comedy as well. After World War I, Benny returned to vaudeville as a comedian and became a top act in the 1920s. In 1927, he married an actress named Sadye Marks; the couple stayed together until Benny's death in 1974.

Benny's success in vaudeville soon won him attention from Hollywood, where he made his film debut in Hollywood Revue of 1929. Over the years, he won larger roles, notably in Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). Movies were only a sideline for Benny, though, who found his natural medium in radio in 1932.

In March 1932, then-newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan, dabbling in radio, asked Benny to do an on-air interview. Benny reluctantly agreed. His comedy, though, was so successful that Benny was offered his own show almost immediately, which debuted just a few months later. At first a mostly musical show with a few minutes of Benny's comedy during interludes, the show evolved to become mostly comedy, incorporating well-developed skits and regular characters. In many of these skits, Benny portrayed himself as a vain egomaniac and notorious pinchpenny who refused to replace his (very noisy) antique car and who kept his money in a closely guarded vault. His regulars included his wife, whose character, Mary Livingstone, deflated Benny's ego at every opportunity; Mel Blanc, who used his famous voice to play Benny's noisy car, his exasperated French violin teacher, and other characters; and Eddie Andersen, one of radio's first African American stars, who played Benny's long-suffering valet, Rochester Van Jones. The program ran until 1955.

In the 1950s, Benny began experimenting with television, making specials in 1950, 1951, and 1952. Starting in 1952, The Jack Benny Show aired regularly, at first once every four weeks, then every other week, then finally every week from 1960 to 1965. Benny was as big a hit on TV as on the radio. Despite the stingy skinflint image he cultivated on the air, Benny was known for his generosity and modesty in real life. He died of cancer in Beverly Hills in 1974.

October 29, 1948

Kate Jackson was born. 

Perhaps best known for her role as Sabrina Duncan in the popular 1970s television series Charlie's Angels. Jackson is a three-time Emmy Award nominee in the Best Actress category, has been nominated for several Golden Globe Awards, and has won the titles of Favorite Television Actress in the UK, and Favorite Television Star in Germany—several times—for her work in the television series Scarecrow and Mrs. King. She co-produced that series through her production company, Shoot the Moon Enterprises Ltd., with Warner Brothers Television. Jackson has starred in a number of theatrical and TV films, and played the lead role on the short-lived television adaptation of the film Baby Boom.  

November 3, 1933
Ken Berry is born.  
Sitcom actor, dancer and singer. Berry has had success in multiple television shows, one being with his friend and mentor, Andy Griffith. Berry starred in the successful comedies F Troop, The Andy Griffith Show spin-off Mayberry R.F.D., and The Carol Burnett Show spin-off Mama's Family. He also appeared on Broadway in The Billy Barnes Revue, has headlined as George M. Cohan in the musical George M! and provided comic relief for the medical drama Dr. Kildare, with Richard Chamberlain in the 1960s. 

November 3, 1978 - The first episode of Different Strokes was aired on NBC.

The series stars Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges as Arnold and Willis Jackson, two African American boys from Harlem who are taken in by a rich white Park Avenue businessman named Phillip Drummond (Conrad Bain) and his daughter Kimberly (Dana Plato), for whom their deceased mother previously worked. During the first season and first half of the second season, Charlotte Rae also starred as the Drummonds' housekeeper, Mrs. Garrett (who ultimately spun-off into her own successful show, The Facts of Life).

The series made stars out of child actors Gary Coleman, Todd Bridges, and Dana Plato, and became known for the "very special episodes" in which serious issues such as racism, illegal drug use, and child sexual abuse were dramatically explored. The lives of these stars were later plagued by legal troubles and drug addiction, as the stardom and success they achieved while on the show eluded them after the series was cancelled, with both Plato and Coleman having early deaths.

November 3, 1993 - The first episode of The Nanny was aired by CBS.

Fran Drescher starred as Fran Fine, a Jewish Queens native who becomes the nanny of three children from the New York/British high society.
Created and executive produced by Drescher and her then-husband Peter Marc Jacobson, The Nanny took much of its inspiration from Drescher's personal life growing up in Queens, involving names and characteristics based on her relatives and friends. The show earned a Rose d'Or and one Emmy Award, out of a total of thirteen nominations, and Drescher was twice nominated for a Golden Globe and an Emmy. The sitcom has also spawned several foreign adaptations, loosely inspired by the original scripts.

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

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa