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.
March 7, 1986
The final episode of Different Strokes was aired.
Arnold's feature story about his high school football team threatens to turn into a controversial expose for the school newspaper when he witnesses team members buying steroids.
March 9, 1976
ABC premiered Family,
a weekly prime-time drama about a Pasadena California suburban family. The show was created by novelist and screenwriter Jay
Presson Allen, directed by film director Mark Rydell, and produced by film
director Mike Nichols, as well as
television moguls Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg.
The show featured James
Broderick and Sada
Thompson as Doug and Kate Lawrence.
Doug was an independent lawyer, and
Kate was a housewife. They had three children: Nancy (portrayed by Elayne
Heilveil in the original mini-series and later by Meredith
Baxter Birney), Willie (Gary
Frank), Letitia, nicknamed
"Buddy" (Kristy McNichol)
and the family later adopted a girl named Annie Cooper (Quinn
Cummings). The show attempted to
depict the "average" family, warts and all. Storylines were very
topical, and the show was one of the first to feature shows to be termed as
"very special episodes." In the first episode, Nancy, who was pregnant
with her second child, walked in on her husband Jeff (John
Rubinstein) making love to one of her
friends. Other topical storylines included Kate having to deal with the
possibility that she had breast cancer. In the later seasons, there were
instances in which Buddy had to decide whether or not to have sex (She always
chose to wait, most notably in an episode with guest star/teen idol Leif Garrett). One episode featured guest-star Henry Fonda as a visiting elderly relative who was beginning to
experience senility.
During its five seasons Family received fourteen Emmy Award
nominations, three of them for Outstanding Drama Series. The show won four
awards all in acting categories: Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series
(Sada Thompson in 1977), Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
(Kristy McNichol in 1976 and 1978) and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama
Series (Gary Frank in 1976).
March 9, 1996
Comedian George Burns dies at age 100.
Born Nathan Birnbaum in New
York City, Burns was one of 12 children. As a young child, he sang for pennies
on street corners and in saloons, and at age 13, he started a dance academy
with a friend. In 1922, Burns was performing the latest in a string of
song-and-dance acts in Newark, New Jersey, when he teamed up with a fellow
performer, Gracie Allen. Though Allen began as the straight one in their
partnership, her natural comedic ability prompted Burns to rewrite their
material to give her most of the punch lines. From then on, Burns played the
straight man to Allen’s ditz, with hilarious results.
By the time Burns and Allen married in 1926 (his brief first marriage, to
the dancer Hannah Siegel, ended in divorce), they had already become known on
the vaudeville circuit. The 1920s were a golden era for vaudeville performers,
and Burns and Allen were only two of a number of greats--their peers included
Milton Berle, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Bert Lahr and Jack Benny (Burns’ close
friend)--who successfully made the transition to other forms of entertainment.
After making their radio debut in 1929, the pair landed a regular show, The
George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, which aired from 1932 to 1950 on the
NBC network. In the late 1930s, the program’s audience numbered more than 40
million people and NBC paid Burns and Allen $10,000 per week, an enormous sum
for the time. The couple also played themselves on the big screen in a number
of films, including International House (1933), Many Happy Returns (1934),
A Damsel in Distress (1937) and College Swing (1938).
In 1950, The George Burns
and Gracie Allen Show made a seamless transition to television, airing on
CBS and becoming one of the top-ranked programs for the duration of the decade.
The Burns-Allen team remained in the public eye until Allen’s retirement in
1959. She died of a heart attack in 1964, at the age of 58. Though Allen was a
Roman Catholic, Burns buried her with Episcopal rites, explaining that as a
Jewish man he couldn’t be buried in Catholic-consecrated ground, and he wanted
to be buried beside her.
After Burns underwent major heart surgery in 1975 at the age of 79, his
career got a second wind. That year, he played a retired vaudevillian in the
film adaptation of Neil Simon’s play The Sunshine Boys, co-starring
Walter Matthau and Richard Benjamin. Burns won an Academy Award for Best
Supporting Actor for the role. After that, there was no shortage of movie parts
for the octogenarian actor, who played God in Oh God! (1977) and its
sequels, Oh God! Book II (1980) and Oh God! You Devil (1984), in
which Burns was featured as both God and the Devil. He also starred in Just
You and Me, Kid (1979), Going in Style (1979) and Eighteen Again (1988).
In 1988, Burns won an award for lifetime achievement from the John F.
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He wrote two best-selling
autobiographical works, including Gracie: A Love Story (1988) and All
My Best Friends (1989), along with eight other books that earned him his
well-deserved reputation as an invaluable first-hand observer of the history of
20th century entertainment.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
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