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"
Here is another "Mental Sorbet"a little spark of madnessthat we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.
Originally aired Oct 8, 1966. This program features:
- Adam West sings "The Orange Colored Sky" & "The Summer Wind" - Ray Charles with the Rayettes: "Crying Time", "Tell the World About You" & "Alexander's Ragtime Band." - Roy Rogers and Dale Evans - Joey Heatherton (singer-dancer): "By Myself" - George Carlin (comedian): does a monologue about the American Indian - Fred Roby (ventriloquist) - Danny Sailor (high-pole performer) - Landon's Midgets (slapstick comedians) Stay Tuned
Author, musician and radio host Mick Martin and author/screenwriter Marvin J. Wolf will join us on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing May 27-June 1 at the following times and venues:
WROM Radio Detroit, MI Wednesday 5/27 8pm ET, 5pm PT 2am ET, 11pm PT Sunday 5/31 8pm ET, 5pm PT 2am ET, 11pm PT Click on the Listen Live button at WROMRadio.net
Share-a-Vision Radio San Francisco Bay Area Friday 5/29 7pm ET, 4pm PT 10pm ET, 7pm PT Click on the Listen Live button at KSAV.org Use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in KSAV or hear us on the KSAV channel on CX Radio Brazil
Indiana Talks Marion, IN Saturday 5/23 8pm ET, 5pm PT Sunday 5/24 6pm ET, 3pm PT Click on the player at IndianaTalks.com or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in Indiana Talks
KSCO-AM 1080 San Jose, Santa Cruz and Salinas, CA KOMY-AM 1340 La Selva Beach and Watsonville, CA Sunday 5/31 10am ET, 7am PT Also streaming at KSCO.com
KHMB-AM and FM Half Moon Bay, CA Sunday 5/31 9pm PT Monday 6/1 Midnight ET Click on the Listen Live button at KHMBRadio.com or use the Live365 app on your smartphone and type in KHMB
RadioSlot.com San Francisco, CA Monday 6/1 10pm ET, 7pm PT with replays Tuesday thru Friday at 10pm ET, 7pm PT Click on the Talk Slot button at RadioSlot.com
This week’s program will include a return visit from author, journalist and musician Mick Martin, a man who has enjoyed a long, interesting and successful career in two seemingly opposite fields. For many years, Mick was the film critic for such newspapers as The Sacramento Union. He was also the co-author of Video Movie Guide, the annual guide to movies and TV shows available on home video, as well as the collaborator on such books as Them Ornery Mitchum Boys, the memoirs of character actor John Mitchum. At the same time Mick has enjoyed a long career as a blues musician, having played alongside Bo Diddley, The Yardbirds, Jimmy Smith, and Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones. He currently hosts Mick Martin’s Blues Party, a weekend radio program heard on Capital Public Radio.
Mick has interviewed hundreds of actors and musicians throughout his career, including Clint Walker, Jack Kelly and Christopher Lee, plus he has a lifelong admiration for the work of many of the great film and TV character actors of the past sixty years. Mick Martin will join us in our first hour.
Marv is also a decorated U.S. Army veteran who did tours of duty in Korea and Vietnam, as well as statewide. As a matter of fact, while he was in the Army, Marv worked behind the scenes with John Wayne on the making of the movie The Green Berets. We’ll talk about that, and more, during our second hour.
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.
May 31,
1930
Clint Eastwood born. Best known to his many fans for one of his most memorable screen
incarnations--San Francisco Police Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan--the actor
and Oscar-winning filmmaker Clint Eastwood is born on this day in 1930, in San
Francisco, California.
With his father, Eastwood wandered the West Coast as a boy during the
Depression. Then, after four years in the Army Special Services, Eastwood went
to Hollywood, where he got his start in a string of B-movies. For eight years,
Eastwood played Rowdy Yates in the popular TV Western series Rawhide,
before emerging as a leading man in a string of low-budget “spaghetti” Westerns
directed by Sergio Leone: Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few
Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). All
three were successful, but Eastwood made his real breakthrough with 1971’s
smash hit Dirty Harry, directed by Don Siegel. Though he was not the
first choice to play the film’s title role--Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen and
Paul Newman all reportedly declined the part--Eastwood made it his own, turning
the blunt, cynical Dirty Harry into an iconic figure in American film.
Also in 1971, Eastwood moved behind the camera, making his directorial debut
with the thriller Play Misty for Me, the first offering from his
production company, Malpaso. Over the next two decades, he turned in solid
performances in films such as The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Every
Which Way But Loose (1978), Escape From Alcatraz (1979) and Honkytonk
Man (1982), but seemed to be losing his star power for lack of a truly
great film. By the end of the 1980s, after four Dirty Harry sequels,
released from 1973 to 1988, Eastwood was poised to escape the character’s
shadow and emerge as one of Hollywood’s most successful actor-turned-directors.
In 1992, he hit the jackpot when he starred in, directed and produced the
darkly unconventional Western Unforgiven. The film won four Oscars,
including Best Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman), Best Film Editing, Best
Director and Best Picture, both for Eastwood. He also found box-office success
as a late-in-life action and romantic hero, in In the Line of Fire (1993)
and The Bridges of Madison County (1995), respectively.
As a director, Eastwood worked steadily over the next decade, making such
films as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), Absolute
Power (1997) and, most notably, the crime drama Mystic River (2003),
for which he was again nominated for the Best Director Oscar. The following
year, he hit a grand slam with Million Dollar Baby, in which he also
starred as the curmudgeonly coach of a determined young female boxer (Hilary
Swank, in her second Oscar-winning performance). In addition to Swank’s Academy
Award for Best Actress, the film won Oscars for Best Supporting Actor (Morgan
Freeman) and Eastwood’s second set of statuettes for Best Director and Best
Picture.
In 2006, Eastwood became only the 31st filmmaker in 70 years to receive a
Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of America (DGA). That
year, he directed a pair of World War II-themed movies, Flags of Our Fathers
(2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006). The latter film, which
featured an almost exclusively Japanese cast, earned an Oscar nomination for
Best Picture and a fourth Best Director nomination for Eastwood (his 10th
nomination overall).
Off-screen, Eastwood has pursued an interest in politics, serving as mayor
of Carmel, California, from 1986 to 1988. He was married to Maggie Johnson in
1953, and the couple had two children, Kyle and Alison (who co-starred in Midnight
in the Garden of Good and Evil), before separating in 1978 and divorcing in
1984. Eastwood also had long-term relationships with the actresses Sondra Locke
and Frances Fisher (with whom he had a daughter, Francesca). He married his
second wife, Dina Ruiz Eastwood, in 1996. Their daughter, Morgan, was born that
same year.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
