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"
that we could use to momentarily forget about those
things that leave a bad taste in our mouths
"Take on Me" is a song by the Norwegian synthpop band a-ha. Written by the band members, the song was produced by Alan Tarney for the group's debut studio album Hunting High and Low. The video features the band in a pencil-sketch animation method called rotoscoping, combined with live action.
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 27, 1973
Marlon Brando declines Best
Actor Oscar.
Marlon Brando declines
the Academy Award for Best Actor for The Godfather. The Native American actress Sacheen Littlefeather attended the ceremony
in Brando’s place, stating that the actor “very regretfully” could not accept
the award, as he was protesting Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans in film.
Now revered by many as the greatest actor of his
generation, Brando earned his first Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the
brutish Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). The role
was a reprisal of Brando’s incendiary performance in the 1947 stage production
of Tennessee Williams’ play, which first brought him to the public’s attention.
Nominated again for roles in Viva Zapata! (1952) and Julius Caesar (1953),
he won his first Academy Award for On the Waterfront (1954).
Brando’s career went into decline in the 1960s, with expensive
flops such as One-Eyed Jacks (1961), which he also directed, and Mutiny
on the Bounty (1962). Aside from his preternatural talent, the actor had
become notorious for his moodiness and demanding on-set behavior, as well as
his tumultuous off-screen life. Francis Ford Coppola, the young director of The
Godfather, had to fight to get him cast in the coveted role of Vito
Corleone. Brando won the role only after undergoing a screen test and cutting
his fee to $250,000--far less than what he had commanded a decade earlier. With
one of the most memorable screen performances of all time, Brando rejuvenated
his career, and The Godfather became an almost-immediate classic.
On the eve of the 1972 Oscars, Brando announced that
he would boycott the ceremony, and would send Littlefeather in his place. After
Brando’s name was announced as Best Actor, the presenter Roger Moore (star of
several James Bond films) attempted to hand the Oscar to Littlefeather, but she
brushed it aside, saying that Brando could not accept the award. Littlefeather
read a portion of a lengthy statement Brando had written, the entirety of which
was later published in the press, including The New York Times. “The
motion picture community has been as responsible as any,” Brando wrote, “for
degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing his as
savage, hostile and evil.”
Brando had been involved in social causes for years,
speaking publicly in support of the formation of a Jewish state in the 1940s,
as well as for African-American civil rights and the Black Panther Party. His
Oscar statement expressed support for the American Indian Movement (AIM) and
referenced the ongoing situation at Wounded Knee, the South Dakota town that
had been seized by AIM members the previous month and was currently under siege
by U.S. military forces. Wounded Knee had also been the site of a massacre of
Native Americans by U.S. government forces in 1890.
Brando was the second performer to turn down a Best
Actor Oscar; the first was George C. Scott, who politely declined to accept his
award for Patton in 1971 and reportedly said of the Academy Awards
hoopla: “I don’t want any part of it.” Scott had previously declined a Best
Supporting Actor nomination for The Hustler (1961).
The series originally aired
on Discovery Channel beginning in March 2003.
In December 2007, the series moved to Discovery's sister channel TLC,
starting off with an 18-hour marathon. Its first TLC season premiered in
January 2008. Season 6 began in April 2009 but the series was canceled by TLC
in February 2010. In July 2010, TLC announced that the Teutuls would return in
a new series, American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior. Senior
vs. Junior premiered on TLC but was soon moved to Discovery halfway through the
first season. Discovery Channel announced that the show would end with
"The Chopper Live: The Revenge" show on December 11, 2012 after 10
seasons.
April 1, 1949
The first TV variety show starring an African-American
cast debuts. The show, Happy
Pappy, starred Ray Grant as master of ceremonies. It first aired on local
television in Chicago.
April 1,
1963
Soap operas General Hospital and The Doctors premiere. The ABC television network airs the premiere episode
of General Hospital, the daytime drama that will become the network’s
most enduring soap opera and the longest-running serial program produced in
Hollywood. On the same day, rival network NBC debuts its own medical-themed
soap opera, TheDoctors.
By setting their new shows in a hospital, both networks were attempting to
capitalize on the popularity of prime-time medical dramas such as Dr.
Kildare and Ben Casey. Set in the fictional upstate New York town of
Port Charles, General Hospital focused on the lives of the doctors,
nurses and patients of the town’s General Hospital, including Dr. Steve Hardy
(John Beradino) and Nurse Audrey March (Rachel Ames). The central character of The
Doctors was Dr. Matthew Powers (James Pritchett), chief of staff of Hope
Memorial Hospital, located in the fictional New England town of Madison. In contrast to General Hospital, The Doctors first ran as an
anthology series, with each episode focusing on a single plotline. It later ran
as a weekly serial and became a full-fledged daily soap in March 1964. For most
of its run, the show was largely sponsored by the Colgate-Palmolive Company,
makers of Fab detergent, Palmolive dish liquid and Irish Spring soap, among
many other products. The tagline of The Doctors, announced at the
beginning of each episode, was “a daytime drama series dedicated to the
brotherhood of healing.” The Doctors won numerous Emmy Awards, including
Best Daytime Drama in 1972 and 1974, Best Actress for Elizabeth Hubbard (who
played Dr. Althea Davis) in 1974 and Best Actor for Pritchett in 1978. Some of
the notable actors that have appeared on The Doctors include Ellen
Burstyn, Alec Baldwin, Kathleen Turner and Armand Assante. With ratings declining
steadily after 1975, The Doctors was canceled in 1982, just months
before its 30th anniversary.
For its part, General Hospital has remained on the air for more than
four decades, making it ABC’s longest-running soap opera. Though falling
ratings in the late 1970s threatened the show’s existence, it turned things
around and become a hit with younger audiences in the early 1980s. Some of its
more popular ongoing storylines involved the “super couple” Luke Spencer
(Anthony Geary) and Laura Webber (Genie Francis), whose 1981 wedding was the
most-watched event in daytime television history. In June 2008, the show won a
record-breaking 10th Emmy Award for Best Daytime Drama. To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
that we could use to momentarily forget about those
things that leave a bad taste in our mouths
Jimmy turned 50 recently so Katie Couric asked if she could accompany him for his first colonoscopy. While that seemed to be a very unusual request Jimmy knows that this is something Katie is passionate about and it’s an important thing to do when you’re of a certain age. So with that said, let’s watch a camera go where no camera has gone before. #StandUpToCancer
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 19, 1953
First
Academy Awards program on network TV (NBC).
The first network broadcast of the Academy Awards takes place on this
day in 1953. Some 174 stations across the country carried the awards. Gary
Cooper won Best Actor for his performance in High Noon, and Shirley
Booth won Best Actress for her role in Come Back, Little Sheba. The
Greatest Show on Earth won Best Picture. for the first time, audiences are
able to sit in their living rooms and watch as the movie world’s most
prestigious honors, the Academy Awards, are given out at the RKO Pantages
Theatre in Hollywood, California.
Organized in May 1927, the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences was envisioned as a non-profit organization dedicated to the
advancement of the film industry. The first Academy Awards were handed out in
May 1929, in a ceremony and banquet held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood
Roosevelt Hotel. The level of suspense was nonexistent, however, as the winners
had already been announced several months earlier. For the next 10 years, the
Academy gave the names of the winners to the newspapers for publication at 11
p.m. on the night of the awards ceremony; this changed after one paper broke
the tacit agreement and published the results in the evening edition, available
before the ceremony began. A sealed envelope system began the next year, and
endures to this day, making Oscar night Hollywood’s most anticipated event of
the year.
Public interest in the Oscars was high from the
beginning, and from the second year on the ceremony was covered in a live radio
broadcast. The year 1953 marked the first time that the Academy Awards were
broadcast on the fledgling medium of television. The National Broadcasting
Company (NBC) TV network carried the 25th annual awards ceremony live from
Hollywood’s RKO Pantages Theatre. Bob Hope was the master of ceremonies, while
Fredric March, a two-time Academy Award winner for Best Actor (for 1932’s Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives), presented the
awards. The statuette for Best Picture went to Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show
on Earth, while John Ford won Best Director for The Quiet Man. Winners in the
top two acting categories were Gary Cooper (High Noon) and Shirley Booth (Come
Back, Little Sheba).
Hope, a star of stage and screen who tirelessly
performed in United Service Organization (USO) shows for American troops during
World War II, would become a mainstay of the new TV medium. He was also the
most venerated Academy Awards host, playing MC no fewer than 18 times between
1939 and 1977. NBC broadcast the Oscars until 1961, when the American
Broadcasting Company (ABC) took over for the next decade, including the first
awards broadcast in color in 1966. Although NBC briefly regained the show in
the early 1970s, ABC came out on top again in 1976 and has broadcast every Academy
Awards show since. The network is under contract to continue showing the Oscars
until 2014.
Ratings for the Academy Awards have been notoriously
uneven, with larger audiences tending to tune in when box-office hits are
nominated for high-profile awards such as Best Picture. When Titanic won big in
1998, for example, the Oscar telecast drew 55 million viewers; the triumph of
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2004 drew 44 million. The 80th
Academy Awards ceremony, held in February 2008, drew the lowest ratings since
1953, with a total of about 32 million viewers--just 18.7 percent of America’s
homes--tuned in to the telecast. Analysts blamed the relative obscurity of the
Best Picture nominees--the winner, No Country For Old Men, made a relatively
puny $64 million at the box office--and the lingering effects of a Hollywood
writers’ strike for the poor viewer turnout.
March
19, 1983
Diff'rent
Strokes - The Reporter (Season 5: Episode 22).
Determined to prove he didn't fabricate a story about
drug abuse in his grade school just to win a journalism contest, Arnold takes
his article to the New York City newspaper sponsoring the competition, and when they run his story on the front
page, Arnold receives some unexpected more support from First Lady Nancy
Reagan.
March
20, 1928
Fred
McFeely Rogers is born.
Mr. Rogers was most famous for
creating and hosting Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (1968–2001), which featured
his gentle, soft-spoken personality and directness to his audiences. Initially
educated to be a minister, Rogers was displeased with the way television
addressed children and made an effort to change this when he began to write for
and perform on local Pittsburgh-area shows dedicated to
youth. WQED developed his own show in 1968 and it was distributed nationwide by
Eastern Educational Television Network. Over the course of three decades on
television, Fred Rogers became an indelible American icon of children's
entertainment and education, as well as a symbol of compassion, patience, and
morality. He was also known for his advocacy of various public causes. His testimony
before a lower court in favor of fair use recording of television shows to play
at another time (now known as time shifting) was cited in a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Betamax case, and he gave now-famous
testimony to a U.S. Senate committee, advocating government funding for children's television.
March 21, 1983
The last episode of the long-running TV series Little House on the Prairie aired. The
series, based on the children's book by Laura Ingalls Wilder, premiered
in 1974. The show was one of
television's 25 most highly rated shows for seven of its nine seasons. When
series star and executive producer Michael
Landon decided to leave the show in
1982, the show's title changed to Little House: A New Beginning and focused on
character Laura Ingalls Wilder (Melissa Gilbert)
and her family. The show lasted only one more season. Three made-for-television
movie sequels followed: Little House:
Look Back to Yesterday (1983), Little
House: Bless All the Dear Children (1983), and Little House: The Last Farewell (1984).
March
25, 1983
Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever aired.
Technically, the 25th anniversary of Motown Records
should have been celebrated nine months later, in January 1984, but that was
only one of several details glossed over in staging the landmark television
special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever. Filmed before a rapturous
live audience on March 25, 1983, the Motown 25 special is perhaps best
remembered for Michael Jackson's performance of "Billie Jean," which
brought the house down and introduced much of the world to the
"moonwalk." There were other great performances that night, too, but
there were also moments that revealed cracks in the joyous-reunion image that
Motown chief Berry Gordy sought to portray.
The most glaring breakdown in
decorum came during what could have been the evening's greatest triumph: the
reunion of Diana Ross and the Supremes. When Ross, Mary Wilson and Cindy
Birdsong performed together that night for the first time in 13 years, they
took to the stage with something closer to 20 years' worth of unresolved
resentment among them. Early in their performance of "Someday We'll Be
Together," as Diana slowly moved upstage, Mary and Cindy had the audacity
to keep stride alongside her. Diana turned around and angrily pushed Mary
back—a move that was carefully edited out of the later broadcast but which
prompted Smokey Robinson and others to take the stage and form an impromptu
chorus/demilitarized zone between the warring Supremes.
The "Battle of the Bands" medley between the
Temptations and the Four Tops was a much bigger creative success, though the
biggest individual names in the Temptations—Eddie Kendricks and David
Ruffin—were absent due to squabbling within the group, leaving Melvin Franklin
and Otis Williams as the only original Temptations on stage that night. Also
missing from the stage that night was a man whose name was then unfamiliar to
all but the most obsessive Motown fans, but whose contribution to the label's
success was monumental. The late James Jamerson, whose bass guitar formed the
foundation of almost every great Motown record of the 1960s,
was in the building that night, but as a paying member of the audience seated
in the back rows. His own troubles with alcohol abuse played a part in his
estrangement from the Motown "family," but so did a decades-long
history of what he and fellow members of the Funk Brothers—the Motown backing
band—felt was a lack of appreciation and respect for their role in creating the
famous Motown sound.
that we could use to momentarily forget about those
things that leave a bad taste in our mouths
"Descent" is the 26th episode of the sixth season and the first episodeStar Trek: The Next Generation, the 152nd and 153rd episodes overall. Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the crew of the Federation starship Enterprise. The episode features a guest appearance by Stephen Hawking, making it the only episode to feature a guest star appearing as themselves on any Trek series.
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 14, 1948
Billy Crystal is born in Long Beach, California.
Crystal began performing in comedy clubs as a
teenager; after graduating from New York University's film school, he formed
his own comedy troupe, 3's Company. As a young stand-up comic, Crystal opened
for acts like the singer Barry Manilow and was particularly known for his
impression of the sportscaster Howard Cosell interviewing Muhammad Ali. After
setting off for Hollywood, Crystal landed the role of Jodie Dallas, one of the
first openly gay characters on television, on Soap (1977-81). Though his
first film, Rabbit Test (1978)--in which he played the world's first
pregnant man--flopped, Crystal's star kept rising. His popular live performances
and regular appearances on TV's Saturday Night Live landed him roles in
a string of movies, including Rob Reiner's This is Spinal Tap (1984), Running
Scared (1986) and The Princess Bride (1987), and Throw Momma From
the Train (1987). In 1989, he made his highest-profile star turn yet,
playing opposite Meg Ryan in the hit romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally...,
also directed by Reiner.
March 14, 1968
The original Batman series
concluded its short run.
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, 1988
Writers
Guild of America strike begins.
After
rejecting what the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP)
said was a final offer, representatives of the Writers Guild of America (WGA)
called a strike for all the union’s members to begin at 9 a.m. Pacific Time on
this day in 1988.
The origins of the strike went back to late 1987, when
producers began demanding that writers accept a sliding scale on
residuals--payment received when work is re-broadcast after its original
airing--from domestic syndicated reruns of one-hour shows, claiming that
syndication prices had dropped. Writers balked at this restriction; they also
wanted a bigger share of foreign rights and more creative control over the
scripts they were writing. With negotiations stalled, the current contract
between the AMPTP and the WGA expired at midnight on March 1, and the strike
began a week later.
Some companies got around the strike by signing
interim deals with the WGA, including Carsey-Werner Co., producers of The
Cosby Show, who were able to continue production on a new sitcom, Roseanne,
which shot to No. 2 in the ratings that season. Near the end of July, after the
writers rejected a settlement, the entertainment lawyer Ken Ziffren stepped in
to run interference between the two sides of the conflict. Along with the
producers’ chief negotiator, Nick Counter, Ziffren got both producers and
writers to modify their positions in time for a meeting in early August at the
headquarters of the AMPTP in Sherman Oaks, California. Sixteen hours
later, the strike was over, after the two sides struck a deal by which
producers upped the payment for foreign rights and writers agreed to the
sliding scale on syndication residuals.
Though it came at a relatively opportune time, as the
networks were winding down TV production for the summer, the five-month walkout
still had an effect. Overall network ratings dropped 4.6 percent that fall from
a year earlier, and many viewers began watching cable channels, which were not
affected by the strike because they showed little original programming.
Overall, the walkout was estimated to have cost Hollywood some $500 million.
One enduring effect of the strike was the increasing ubiquity of so-called
“reality” programming. As networks scrambled to fill the holes in their
schedules, they relied on such programs as Unsolved Mysteries, which
began as an NBC special but was expanded to a regular series by the network
during the strike. Fox’s unscripted police reality series COPS made its
debut the following year, and such shows would become increasingly popular
during the 1990s.
Mach 8, 1993
The first episode of the animated series Beavis and
Butthead airs.
Beavis and Butthead offered
audiences rude and crude buddy humor in the tradition of The Three Stooges, Cheech and Chong, and Wayne and Garth of Saturday
Night Live and the Wayne’s World movies. The titular main characters
were two teenage boys living in the fictional town of Highland; they attended
Highland High (based on a real school in creator Mike Judge’s hometown of
Albuquerque, New Mexico) but spent most of their time eating junk food, talking
about girls and--most importantly--watching music videos. Beavis and
Butthead alternated between animated storylines and clips of actual music
videos, which Beavis and Butthead commented on in their signature bone-headed style,
punctuated by sarcastic comments and grunt-like laughter.
Judge first drew his two main characters for an animation festival, where an
MTV producer spotted them and picked up an episode for its animated showcase Liquid
Television. After signing Judge on for 65 episodes, the network began
airing the show on weeknights at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. Critics were divided in
their response: Some praised Judge and MTV for effectively skewering a big part
of the network’s own core demographic--young men who watch music videos--while
others cited Beavis and Butthead’s lowest-common-denominator humoras
evidence of an overall decline in the quality of television. Despite the mixed critical response, the show earned MTV’s highest
ratings. It also sparked a heated controversy over the influence of TV
programs on impressionable young children, especially after an incident in
1993, when a mother blamed Beavis and Butthead’s well-documented pyromaniac
tendencies for inspiring her five-year-old son to set a fire that killed his
two-year-old sister. In response to the uproar over this tragedy, MTV pulled
four episodes off the air, cut all references to fire and moved Beavis and
Butthead to the 10:30 p.m.-11:30 p.m. time slot, claiming they were simply
targeting an older audience.
Regardless of its dubious influence on young audiences, the success of Beavis
and Butthead prompted MTV to launch a spin-off program featuring the boys’
nerdy female classmate, Daria Morgendorffer. Daria firstaired in
March 1997, eight months before Beavis and Butthead ended its run. Judge
later created the Emmy-winning animated series King of the Hill for Fox
and directed films for the big screen, including a feature-film version of
Beavis and Butthead, Beavis and Butthead Do America (1996) and the cult
hits Office Space (1999) and Idiocracy (2006).
In the TV series, Dr. David Banner, a widowed
physician and scientist, who is presumed dead, travels across America under assumed
names (his false surnames always begin with the
letter "B", but he keeps his first name), and finds himself in positions
where he helps others in need despite his terrible secret: in times of extreme
anger or stress, he transforms into a huge, incredibly strong green creature,
who has been named "The Hulk". In his travels, Banner earns money by
working temporary jobs while searching for a way to either control or cure his
condition. All the while, he is obsessively pursued by a tabloid newspaper
reporter, Jack McGee, who is convinced that the Hulk is a deadly menace whose
exposure would enhance his career.
The series' two-hour pilot movie, which established
the Hulk's origins, aired on November 4, 1977. The series' 82 episodes was
originally broadcast by CBS over five seasons from 1978 to 1982. It was
developed and produced by Kenneth Johnson,
who also wrote or directed some
episodes. The series ends with David Banner continuing to search for a cure.
For
the generation that grew up on the big bands of the 30s and 40s, The
Lawrence Welk Show was a blessed island of calm in a world gone mad for
rock and roll, and it aired like clockwork every Saturday night from 1955 to
1982. But for the children and grandchildren watching along with them, it
seemed more like the "television show that time forgot." The man at
this generational flash point was an accordion-playing, Alsatian-accented
bandleader who kicked off each number with "A vun and a two" and
ended with a cheery "Wunnerful, wunnerful." Although he delighted the
older crowd, youngsters were usually not so enamored. As polarizing in his own
folksy way as Elvis Presley was in his, the inimitable Lawrence Welk—creator
and King of "Champagne Music"—was born in rural North Dakota on March 11, 1903.
Welk's
parents were immigrants from Alsace-Lorraine who spoke only German to the nine
children they raised on their farm outside Strasburg, North Dakota. In fact,
Lawrence Welk did not learn English until his early 20s, which explains the
accent that became his trademark. A dutiful son, Welk dropped out of school in
the fourth grade to work full time on the family farm, but he decided early on
that he wished to pursue a career in music. He learned to play the accordion
from his father, who carried his own antique instrument with him when he
immigrated to America. Lawrence wore out the inexpensive, mail-order accordion
bought for him as a boy, so he made a deal with his parents: In exchange for a
$400 loan to purchase a professional accordion, he would stay and work on the
family farm through the age of 21. Playing small professional gigs in the
surrounding area, Welk honed his musical skills and earned enough money to pay
his parents back when he left home for good in 1924.
By
the early 1930s, Lawrence Welk had earned
a degree in music and made a name for himself as the leader of a traveling
orchestra. He had also failed in a restaurant venture selling
"squeezeburgers" cooked on an accordion-shaped grill, but he had
succeeded in developing a unique brand as the proponent of a pleasing pop style
dubbed "Champagne Music" for its light and bubbly quality. After two
decades of success in the Midwest, Welk made his way to Los Angeles in 1951, taking
up residence with his orchestra at the Aragon Ballroom in Pacific Ocean Park.
He made his first appearance on local television the following year, and his
show was picked up by ABC in 1955. When ABC dropped The Lawrence Welk Show in
1971, Welk independently arranged a syndication deal that kept him on the air
for another 11 years and made him one of the richest entertainers in America.
Born on this day in 1903, Lawrence Welk died at the age of 89 on May 17, 1992.
