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"
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.
Donna Allen-Figueroa
 |
August 29, 1958
The King of
Pop Michael Jackson is born in Gary, Indiana.
Jackson began performing with his four brothers in the pop group the
Jackson 5 when he was a child. The group scored its first No. 1 single in 1969,
with "I Want You Back." By age 11, Jackson was appearing on TV, and
by age 14 he had released his first solo album. A Jackson 5 TV cartoon series
appeared in the early '70s, and in 1976 the Jackson family, including sister
Janet Jackson, launched a TV variety show called The Jacksons that ran
for one season. Throughout the 70s, media attention focused on Michael, who
piped vocals in his high voice for "ABC," "I'll Be There,"
and many other Top 20 hits.
Jackson released several solo albums in the '70s, but
his great breakthrough came in 1979 with Off the Wall. He became the
first solo artist to score four Top 10 hits from one album, including
"She's Out of My Life" and "Rock with You." His next album,
Thriller (1983), became the biggest selling album up to that time,
selling some 45 million copies around the world. This time, he scored seven Top
10 singles, and the album won eight Grammies. Although his next album, Bad
(1987), sold only about half as many copies as Thriller, it was still a
tremendous best-seller. In 1991, Jackson signed an unprecedented $65 million
record deal with Sony. That year, he released Dangerous.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jackson developed a
reputation as an eccentric recluse. He moved to a 2,700-acre ranch called
Neverland, which he outfitted with wild animals and a Ferris wheel. He
underwent a facelift and nose job and was rumored to have lightened his skin
through chemical treatment, though he claimed his increasing pallor was due to
a skin disease. In 1993, scandal broke when Jackson was publicly accused of
child molestation and underwent investigation. The case settled out of court.
In 1994, Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley; the couple later divorced. Jackson
married Deborah Rowe in 1996, and the couple had two sons, Prince and Paris,
before divorcing in 1999. On
June 13, 2005, Jackson was acquitted of sexual molestation of a young boy,
Gavin Arvizo, in criminal court.
Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, in Los Angeles,
California, just weeks before a planned concert tour billed as his
"comeback." He was 50 years old.
August 30, 1898
Shirley Booth was born.
Primarily a theatre actress, Booth's Broadway career began in 1925. Her most significant success was as Lola Delaney, in the drama Come Back, Little Sheba, for which she received a Tony Award in 1950. She made her film debut, reprising her role in the 1952 film version, and won both the Academy Award for Best Actress and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance. Despite her successful entry into films, she preferred stage acting, and made only four more films.
From 1961 until 1966, she
played the title role in the sitcom Hazel,
for which she won two Emmy Awards, and was acclaimed for her
performance in the 1966 television production of The Glass Menagerie.
She retired in 1974.
Booth was born as Marjory
Ford, the daughter of Albert James Ford and Virginia Martha Wright, Her
childhood was spent in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn where she attended P.S.
152. By the time of the 1910 census in April 1910, aged 11, she was known as
Thelma by her family. She had only one sibling, a younger sister, Jean
Valentine Ford, who died January 23, 2010.
She began her career
onstage as a teenager, acting in stock company productions, and was
briefly known as Thelma Booth Ford. She was a prominent actress in Pittsburgh theatre
for a time, performing with the Sharp Company. Her debut on Broadway
was in the play, Hell's Bells,
opposite Humphrey Bogart on January 26, 1925
Booth first attracted
major notice as the female lead in the comedy hit Three Men on a Horse
which ran almost two years in 1935 to 1937. During the 1930s and 1940s, she
achieved popularity in dramas, comedies and, later, musicals. She acted with Katharine Hepburn
in The Philadelphia
Story (1939), originated the role of Ruth Sherwood in
the 1940 Broadway production of My Sister Eileen
and performed with Ralph Bellamy in Tomorrow the World
(1943). She was a prolific Broadway performer for over three decades.
Booth also starred on the
popular radio series Duffy's Tavern,
playing the lighthearted, wisecracking, man-crazy daughter of the unseen tavern
owner on CBS radio from 1941 to
1942 and on NBC-Blue
Radio from 1942 to 1943. Her husband, Ed Gardner, created and wrote the show
as well as playing its lead character, Archie, the malapropping manager of the
tavern; Booth left the show not long after the couple divorced.
Booth auditioned
unsuccessfully for the title role of Our Miss Brooks in 1948; she'd
been recommended by Harry Ackerman, who was to produce the
show, but Ackerman told radio historian Gerald Nachman that he felt Booth was
too conscious of a high school teacher's struggles to have full fun with the
character's comic possibilities. Our Miss Brooks became a radio and
television hit when the title role went to Eve Arden, making her a major star.
Booth received her first Tony, for
Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Dramatic), for her performance as Grace
Woods in Goodbye, My Fancy (1948). Her second Tony was for Best Actress
in a Play, which she received for her widely acclaimed performance as the
tortured wife, Lola Delaney, in the poignant drama Come Back,
Little Sheba (1950). Her leading man, Sidney Blackmer,
received the Tony for Best Actor in a Play for his performance as her husband,
Doc.
Her success in Come Back,
Little Sheba was immediately followed by the musical A Tree
Grows in Brooklyn (1951), (based on the popular
novel) in which she played the feisty but lovable Aunt Sissy, which proved to
be another major hit. Her popularity was such that, at the time, the story was
skewed from the original so that Aunt Sissy was the leading role (rather than
Francie).
She then went to Hollywood
and recreated her stage role in the motion
picture version of Come Back,
Little Sheba (1952), with Burt Lancaster playing Doc. After that
movie, her first of only five films in her career, was completed, she returned
to New York and played Leona Samish in The Time of the Cuckoo
(1952) on Broadway.
In 1953, Booth received
the Oscar for Best Actress in
a Leading Role for her performance in Come Back,
Little Sheba, becoming the first actress ever to win
both a Tony and an Oscar for the same role. The film also earned Booth Best
Actress awards from The Cannes Film Festival,
the Golden Globe Awards,
The New York
Film Critics Circle Awards, and National Board of
Review. She also received her third Tony, which was her
second in the Best Actress in a Play category, for her performance in the
Broadway production of Arthur Laurents' play The Time of the Cuckoo.
So prolific was Booth as
an award winner at that time, that during her May 3, 1953, appearance on the TV
game show What's My Line?, John Charles Daly
said, "I might say, if I may, without causing you too much embarrassment,
that it's a great honor for us to have the young lady who got the Oscar Award
and the Antoinette Perry Award
and just won the award in Cannes, in fact I think one of our New York
columnists, Mrs. Lyon, said the only thing that you hadn't won so far was the Kentucky Derby."
Booth jokingly replied, "Well, I almost won it yesterday, but I drew the
wrong ticket in the lottery."
Booth was 54 years old
when she made her first movie, although she had successfully shaved almost a
decade off her real age, with her publicity stating 1907 as the year of her
birth. The correct year of birth was known by only her closest associates until
her actual age was announced at the time of her death. Her second starring
film, a romantic drama About Mrs. Leslie (1954) opposite Robert Ryan,
was released in 1954 to good reviews. In 1953, Booth had made a cameo
appearance as herself in the all-star comedy/drama movie Main Street to
Broadway.
She spent the next few
years commuting between New York and Southern California.
On the Broadway stage, she scored personal successes in the musical By the Beautiful Sea
(1954) and the comedy Desk Set (1955). Although Booth had become well
known to moviegoers during this period, the movie roles for both The Time of the Cuckoo
(re-titled as Summertime
for the film in 1955), and Desk Set (1957), both went to Katharine Hepburn.
She returned to motion
pictures to star in two more films for Paramount Pictures,
playing Dolly Gallagher Levi in the 1958 film adaptation of Thornton Wilder's
romance/comedy The Matchmaker
(the source text for the musical Hello, Dolly!),
and to play Alma Duval in the drama Hot Spell
(1958). She was named runner-up to Susan Hayward in I Want to Live!
as the year's Best Actress by the New York Film
Critics Circle for her two 1958 films.
In 1957, she won the Sarah Siddons Award
for her work on the stage in Chicago. She returned to the Broadway
stage in 1959, starring as the long-suffering title character in Marc Blitzstein's
musical Juno, an adaptation of Sean O'Casey's
1924 classic play, Juno and the Paycock.
Director Frank Capra unsuccessfully attempted
to bring Booth back to the screen with Pocketful of Miracles
in 1961, but after viewing Capra's original version, Lady for a Day
(1933), Booth informed him there was no way she could match May Robson's
moving, Oscar-nominated performance in the original film. So Frank Capra
instead cast Bette Davis -- and, indeed, Davis was
unfavorably compared to May Robson by most reviewers when the film was
released.
In 1961, Booth began
starring in the television situation comedy Hazel,
based on Ted Key's popular comic strip
from the Saturday Evening Post
about the domineering yet endearing housemaid,
Hazel Burke. The show reunited her with Harry Ackerman who produced the show,
and she won two Emmys for her role in the series, in
1962 and 1963, making her one of the few performers to win all three major entertainment awards
(Oscar, Tony, Emmy), and new stardom with a younger
audience. Booth received another Emmy nomination for her third season as
"Hazel" in 1964, and in 1966 was also Emmy-nominated for her
performance as Amanda in a television adaptation of The Glass Menagerie.
Booth owned Hazel
and personally hired Lynn Borden, a former Miss Arizona,
to play the role of Barbara Baxter in the final season, when the series aired
on CBS. Borden replaced Whitney Blake, and Ray Fulmer,
as Steve Baxter, followed Don DeFore as George Baxter. Hazel
ended not because of low ratings in its fifth season but because of Booth's
health problems.[5]
In 1963, Booth told the Associated Press,
at the height of Hazel's popularity, "I liked playing Hazel the
first time I read one of the scripts, and I could see all the
possibilities of the character—the comedy would take care of itself. My job was
to give her heart. Hazel never bores me. Besides, she's my insurance
policy." She proved prescient with the last comment; the show was seen
in syndicated reruns for many years after it ceased first-run production in
1966.
Her last Broadway
appearances were in a revival of Noël Coward's play Hay Fever
and the musical Look to the Lilies,
both in 1970. In 1971, she returned to Chicago to star opposite Gig Young in
"Harvey" at the Blackstone Theater. After appearing as Grace Simpson
in the TV series A Touch of Grace (1973), which was directed by Carl Reiner,
she did voice work for The Year
Without a Santa Claus (1974), an animated special, playing
"Mrs. Santa", after which she retired.
September 2, 1963
The CBS Evening News was lengthened from 15 to 30 minutes.
On September 2, 1963, CBS
Evening News became network television’s first half-hour weeknight news
broadcast, lengthened from its original 15 minutes, and telecast at 6:30 PM.
The Huntley-Brinkley Report expanded to 30 minutes on September 9, 1963,
exactly a week after CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite did so.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
 Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
 |
| Marvin Neil Simon1927 – 2018 |
 |
| Robin Douglas Leach 1941 – 2018 |
Good Night Mr. Leach
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.
Donna Allen-Figueroa
 |
August 22, 1958
TV series Life
of Riley airs its last episode on this day in 1958.
Launched as a radio series in the 1940s, the show
moved to TV in 1949, starring young comedian Jackie Gleason in his first TV
role, as bullheaded family man Chester Riley. The radio version ran until 1951,
starring actor William Bendix as Riley. In 1953, Bendix replaced Gleason in the
Riley role on TV and stayed with the show until it was cancelled in 1958.
August
25, 1958
Concentration first aired
The American television game show based
on the children's memory game of the same name.
Matching cards represented prizes that contestants could win. As matching pairs
of cards were gradually removed from the board, it would slowly reveal elements
of a rebus puzzle
that contestants had to solve to win a match.
The show was broadcast on and off from 1958 to
1991, presented by various hosts, and has been made in several different
versions. The original network daytime series, Concentration, appeared
on NBC for
14 years, 7 months, and 3,770 telecasts (August 25, 1958 – March 23, 1973), the
longest run of any game show on that network (Wheel of Fortune was a
month shy of tying that record when the initial NBC run ended on June 30,
1989). This series was hosted by Hugh Downs and later
by Bob
Clayton, but for a six-month period in 1969, Ed McMahon hosted
the series. The series began at 11:30 AM Eastern, then moved to 11:00 and
finally to 10:30. Nearly all episodes of the NBC daytime version were produced
at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New
York City.
A weekly nighttime version appeared in two separate
broadcast runs: the first aired from October 30 to November 20, 1958,
with Jack Barry as host, while the second
ran from April 24 to September 18, 1961, with Downs as host.
The second version of Concentration,
the first to be made in Southern California, ran in syndication from September 10, 1973
to September 8, 1978, with Jack Narz as
host.
A pilot for a third version was attempted in 1985,
hosted by Orson Bean, but did not sell. After some reformatting, a
remake called Classic Concentration, hosted by Alex
Trebek, ran on NBC from
May 4, 1987 to September 20, 1991 (with reruns broadcast to January 14, 1994).
Despite numerous attempts to develop a new version
in recent years, NBCUniversal, owners of the Concentration copyright,
have not yet authorized a new version of the program.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
