This Week in Television History: August 2017 PART II

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.

August 15, 1912
Julia Child was born Julia Carolyn McWilliams. 

Chef, author and television personality, who introduced French cuisine and cooking techniques to the American mainstream, through her many cookbooks and television programs. 

Her most famous works are the 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and the television series The French Chef, which premiered in 1963 and showcased her sui generis persona.

August 16, 1977

Elvis Presley the King of Rock n' Roll is found dead at Graceland, his mansion in Memphis. 

While congestive heart failure was cited as the official cause of death, drug abuse was suspected as a contributing factor.

Elvis was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, on Jan. 8, 1935, and moved with his family to Memphis, Tennessee, as a teenager. He worked as a movie theater usher and a truck driver while learning the guitar.

In 1954, he paid $4 to record two songs at a recording studio for his mother's birthday. The office assistant was so impressed that she brought a copy of the recording to studio executive Sam Phillips, who asked Presley to audition for him. Presley started the audition with country-and-western standards, but when he felt Phillips' interest wane, he belted out a rhythm-and-blues song called "That's All Right." Impressed, Phillips recorded the song, and a week later it became No. 4 on the country-and-western charts in Memphis.

That summer, Phillips brought Presley together with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, both country-and-western artists, and one of their songs was played on a Memphis radio station. The audience went wild, and Presley gave his first radio interview. He made his one and only appearance at the Grand Ole Opry on September 25 and soon began appearing regularly on the radio. He made his television debut on a Memphis show in March 1955 and that September scored his first No. 1 country record: a rendition of Junior Parker's "Mystery Train."

RCA purchased Presley's contract from Sun Records for an unprecedented $35,000, plus a $5,000 advance for Presley, which he used to buy a pink Cadillac for his mother. He made his first records in Nashville in 1956, including "I Got a Woman," "Heartbreak Hotel," and "I Was the One."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcwcS54aSFM

On January 28, 1956, television audiences met Presley on the Dorsey Brothers' Stage Show. He performed on several variety shows before he began filming his first movie, Love Me Tender, which took just three days to earn back the $1 million it cost to make. All his singles released that year went gold. Parents, preachers, and other performers denounced the seductive hip gyrations that made teen girls swoon; on his last appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, cameras showed him only from the waist up. In 1967, Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu, who had moved into Presley's family home, Graceland, as a teenager six years earlier. The couple divorced in 1973. As his popularity continued to skyrocket, the King of Rock and Roll turned to drugs. He gave his final live performance on June 25, 1977. Six weeks later, on August 16, 1977, his girlfriend found him dead in a bathroom at Graceland. He was buried at Graceland and his estate was passed on to his daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. Nine years after his death, he was one of the first 10 people inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He had earned 94 gold singles and more than 40 gold LPs.

August 17, 1997

The first episode of VH-1's Behind the Music aired. 

Each show focuses on a musician or musical group, documenting both the successes of the musicians and the problems they faced during their careers. Except for the first two episodes (which focused on Milli Vanilli and M.C. Hammer), all programs are narrated by Jim Forbes. Forbes was later used to narrate the Milli Vanilli episode when it was modified to include the death of Rob Pilatus. The UK airings of the episodes focusing on Thin Lizzy, Aerosmith and Genesis were narrated by Mary Anne Hobbs while Forbes narrated the US airings.

August 18, 1977

Comedian Grouch Marx died. 

Marx was born in New York in 1890. His mother encouraged him and his brothers Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo to enter show business at an early age. They worked the vaudeville circuit, then moved to Broadway in the early 1920s, writing their own musical comedies. One of their Broadway comedies, Cocoanuts, became their first film, in 1929. After the brothers stopped making films, Groucho continued to have a successful performing career. He hosted a popular radio quiz show called You Bet Your Life from 1947 to 1956, which became a TV show and ran until 1961. 

The show was revived briefly in 1980 with Bill Cosby as host. Groucho was still performing late in life: At the age of 82, he gave a one-man show at Carnegie Hall.

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

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Tony Figueroa