Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:
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.
January 5, 1961
Mr. Ed debuted.
The show would run for six years.
Mister
Ed is
an American television situation comedy produced by Filmways that first aired
in syndication from January 5 to July 2, 1961, and then on CBS from October 1, 1961, to February 6,
1966. The show's title character is a talking horse, originally appearing
in short stories by Walter R. Brooks.
Mister
Ed is
one of the few series to debut in syndication and be picked up by a major
network for prime time.
January 5, 1971
ABC's Alias Smith and Jones aired for the first time.
Alias
Smith and Jones began with a made-for-TV movie of the previous year called The
Young Country, about con artists in the Old West. It was produced, written and
directed by Roy Huggins, who served as executive producer of AS&J and,
under the pseudonym of John Thomas James, at least shared the writing credit on
most episodes.
Roger
Davis starred as Stephen Foster Moody, and Pete Duel had the secondary but
significant role of Honest John Smith. Joan Hackett played a character called
Clementine Hale; a character with the same name appeared in two AS&J
episodes, played by Sally Field. This pilot was rejected, but Huggins was given
a second chance and, with Glen A. Larson, developed Alias Smith and Jones. Both
The Young Country and the series pilot movie originally aired as ABC Movies of
the Week.
Alias
Smith and Jones was made in the same spirit as many other American TV series,
from Huggins' own The Fugitive to Renegade, about fugitives on the run across
America who get involved in the personal lives of the people they meet. The
major difference was that Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry were guilty of the
crimes that they were accused of committing, but were trying to begin a
non-criminal life.
The
series was modeled on the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford (Universal contract player Ben Murphy
was offered to the producers because he was considered a Paul Newman
lookalike.) There were a number of similarities between the film and the TV
series: One of the lead characters in the film was called Harvey Logan (played
by Ted Cassidy). In real life Harvey Logan was also known by the nickname of
"Kid Curry", Harvey Logan was an associate of the real Butch Cassidy
and unlike the TV version, the real Kid Curry was a cold-blooded killer.
The
TV series also featured a group of robbers called the Devil's Hole Gang, loosely
based on the Hole in the Wall Gang from which Cassidy recruited most of his
outlaws. In order to lend them an element of audience sympathy, Heyes and Curry
were presented as men who avoided bloodshed (though Curry did once kill in
self-defense) and were always attempting to reform and seek redemption for
their "prior ways".
The
names "Smith" and "Jones" originated from a comment in the
1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when, prior to one of their final
hold-ups, the characters are outside a bank in Bolivia and Sundance turns to
Butch and says: "I'm Smith and you're Jones."
January 6, 1936
Porky Pig makes his world debut in a Warner Brothers
cartoon, Gold Diggers of '49.
When Mel Blanc joined Warner Brothers the following
year, he became the famous voice behind Porky as well as the Warner Brothers
characters Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester, and Tweety.
January 8, 1966
The final episode of "Shindig!" was
broadcast on ABC-TV.
The show
featured the Kinks and the Who. Shindig! is
an American musical variety series which aired on ABC from September 16, 1964-January
8, 1966. The show was hosted by Jimmy O'Neill, a disc
jockey in Los Angeles at the time who also created the show along
with his wife Sharon Sheeleyand production executive Art Stolnitz.
The original pilot was rejected by ABC and David Sontag, then Executive
Producer of ABC, redeveloped and completely redesigned the show. A new pilot
with a new cast of artists was shot starring Sam Cooke.
That pilot aired as the premiere episode.
Shindig! was conceived as a short-notice replacement for Hootenanny, a series that had
specialized in folk revival music. The folk
revival had fizzled in 1964 as the result of the British
Invasion, which damaged the ratings for Hootenanny and
prompted that show's cancellation.
Shindig! focused on a broader variety of popular music
than its predecessor and first aired for a half-hour every Wednesday evening,
but was expanded to an hour in January 1965. In the fall of 1965, the show
split into two half-hour telecasts, on Thursday and Saturday nights.
Shindig!'s premiere episode was actually the second pilot, and
featured Sam Cooke, The Everly Brothers and The Righteous Brothers. Later shows were
taped in Britain with The Beatles as the guests. The series featured
other "British invasion" bands and performers
including The
Who, The Rolling Stones and Cilla
Black. Shindig continued to broadcast episodes from London
throughout its run.
Many popular performers of
the day played on Shindig! including Lesley
Gore, Bo Diddley, and Sonny
and Cher, The Beach Boys, James
Brown, Jackie Wilson, The
Supremes and The Ronettes.
Shindig!'s success prompted NBC to air the
similar series Hullabaloo starting in January 1965
and other producers to launch syndicated rock music shows like Shivaree and Hollywood
A Go-Go.
In March 1965, Little Eva performed
her hit song "The Loco-Motion" in a live but short version
of the song. This is the only known video clip of her singing the song.
Shindig! is one of the few rock music shows of the era to
still have all of the episodes available to watch.
January 9, 1996
The first episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun aired on NBC.
The premise of the show revolves around an
extraterrestrial research expedition attempting to live as a normal human
family in the fictional city of Rutherford, Ohio, said to be 52 miles
(84 km) outside of Cleveland, where they live in an attic apartment. Humor was
principally derived from the aliens' attempts to study human society and,
because of their living as humans themselves while on Earth, to understand the
human condition. This show reflects human life from the perspective of aliens
and many sources of humour are from the learning experiences the alien
characters have. Most of the episodes are named after the protagonist
"Dick". In later episodes, they became more accustomed to Earth and
often became more interested in their human lives than in their mission.
Dick Solomon (John Lithgow), the High Commander and leader of the expedition, is
the family provider, and takes a position as a physics professor at Pendelton
State University. Information officer Tommy (Joseph
Gordon-Levitt) has been given the body of a teenager and is
forced to enroll in high school (later college), leaving security officer Sally (Kristen Johnston) and communications officer Harry (French Stewart) to spend their lives as twenty somethings hanging
out at home and bouncing through short-term jobs. The show also revolves around
their relationships with humans, mostly their love interests.
January 10, 1971
Masterpiece
Theatre debuts.
Among
the show's many presentations are Upstairs Downstairs (1974-1977), I,
Claudius (1978), and A Tale of Two Cities (1989). Program hosts
included Alistair Cooke and Russell Baker.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
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