Monday, February 25, 2019

This Week in Television History: February 2019 PART IV

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

March 1, 1954

Ronald William "Ron" Howard is born.

Film director, producer and actor.

He came to prominence playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years. He appeared in the films The Music Man in 1962, American Graffiti in 1973, and The Shootist in 1976, the latter during his run on Happy Days.

Howard made his directorial debut with the 1977 comedy Grand Theft Auto, and left Happy Days in 1980 to focus on directing. His films include Cocoon, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Beautiful Mind, which earned Howard the Academy Award for Best Director. In 2002, Howard conceived the idea for the Fox/Netflix series Arrested Development, on which he also serves as producer and narrator, and plays a semi-fictionalized version of himself.

March 2, 1904

Dr. Seuss born.

Theodor Geisel, better known to the world as Dr. Seuss, the author and illustrator of such beloved children's books as "The Cat in the Hat" and "Green Eggs and Ham," is born in Springfield, Massachusetts. Geisel, who used his middle name (which was also his mother's maiden name) as his pen name, wrote 48 books--including some for adults--that have sold well over 200 million copies and been translated into multiple languages. Dr. Seuss books are known for their whimsical rhymes and quirky characters, which have names like the Lorax and the Sneetches and live in places like Whoville.

Geisel, who was born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts, graduated from Dartmouth College, where he was editor of the school's humor magazine, and studied at Oxford University. There he met Helen Palmer, his first wife and the person who encouraged him to become a professional illustrator. Back in America, Geisel worked as a cartoonist for a variety of magazines and in advertising.

The first children's book that Geisel wrote and illustrated, "And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street," was rejected by over two dozen publishers before making it into print in 1937. Geisel's first bestseller, "The Cat in the Hat," was published in 1957. The story of a mischievous cat in a tall striped hat came about after his publisher asked him to produce a book using 220 new-reader vocabulary words that could serve as an entertaining alternative to the school reading primers children found boring.

Other Dr. Seuss classics include "Yertle the Turtle," "If I Ran the Circus," "Fox in Socks" and "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish."

Some Dr. Seuss books tackled serious themes. "The Butter Battle Book" (1984) was about the arms buildup and nuclear war threat during Ronald Reagan's presidency. "Lorax" (1971) dealt with the environment.

Many Dr. Seuss books have been adapted for television and film, including "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" and "Horton Hears a Who!" In 1990, Geisel published a book for adults titled "Oh, the Places You'll Go" that became a hugely popular graduation gift for high school and college students.

Geisel, who lived and worked in an old observatory in La Jolla, California, known as "The Tower," died September 24, 1991, at age 87.

March 2, 1944

For the first time, the Academy Awards are presented as part of a televised variety show.

Jack Benny served as master of ceremonies for the event, which was held at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. Due to lack of network interest, the show was only broadcast locally, on two Los Angeles TV stations. Winners included Best Film Going My Way, whose male lead, Bing Crosby, won Best Actor. Ingrid Bergman won Best Actress for her performance in Gaslight.

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

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Friday, February 22, 2019

Your Mental Sorbet: The Monkees - One Man Shy and Fairy Tale

Peter Halsten Thorkelson
February 13, 1942 – February 21, 2019

Here is another "Mental Sorbet"

A little spark of madness

that we could use to momentarily forget about those

things that leave a bad taste in our mouths

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Thursday, February 21, 2019

Peter Tork

I did as well as I knew how
and have nothing to be ashamed of.

Peter Tork

Peter Halsten Thorkelson
February 13, 1942 – February 21, 2019

He began studying piano at the age of nine, showing an aptitude for music by learning to play several different instruments, including the banjo and both acoustic bass and guitars. Tork attended Windham High School in Willimantic, Connecticut, and was a member of the first graduating class at E.O. Smith High School in Storrs, Connecticut. He attended Carleton College before he moved to New York City, where he became part of the folk music scene in Greenwich Village during the first half of the 1960s. While there, he befriended other up-and-coming musicians such as Stephen Stills.

Stephen Stills had auditioned for the new television series about four pop-rock musicians but was turned down because the show's producers felt his hair and teeth would not photograph well on camera. They asked Stills if he knew of someone with a similar "open, Nordic look," and Stills suggested Tork audition for the part. Tork got the job and became one of the four members of the Monkees, a fictitious pop band in the mid-1960s, created for a television sitcom written about the fictitious band. Tork was the oldest member of the group.

Tork was a proficient musician, and though the group was not allowed to play their own instruments on their first two albums, he was an exception, playing what he described as "third chair guitar" on Mike Nesmith's song, "Papa Gene's Blues," from their first album. He subsequently played keyboards, bass guitar, banjo, harpsichord, and other instruments on their recordings. He also co-wrote, along with Joey Richards, the closing theme song of the second season of The Monkees, "For Pete's Sake". On the television show, he was relegated to playing the "lovable dummy," a persona Tork had developed as a folk singer in New York's Greenwich Village. The DVD release of the first season of the show contained commentary from the various bandmates. In it, Nesmith stated that Tork was better at playing guitar than bass. In Tork's commentary, he stated that Jones was a good drummer and had the live performance lineups been based solely on playing ability, it should have been Tork on guitar, Nesmith on bass, and Jones on drums, with Dolenz taking the fronting role, rather than as it was done (with Nesmith on guitar, Tork on bass, and Dolenz on drums). Jones filled in briefly for Tork on bass when he played keyboards.

Recording and producing as a group was Tork's major interest, and he hoped that the four members would continue working together as a band on future recordings. However, the four did not have enough in common regarding their musical interests. In commentary for the DVD release of the second season of the show, Tork said that Dolenz was "incapable of repeating a triumph". Dolenz felt that once he had accomplished something and became a success at it, there was no artistic sense in repeating a formula.

Tork, once free from Don Kirshner's restrictions, in 1967, contributed some of the most memorable and catchy instrumental flourishes, such as the piano introduction to "Daydream Believer" and the banjo part on "You Told Me", as well as exploring occasional songwriting with the likes of "For Pete's Sake" and "Lady's Baby".

Tork was close to his grandmother, staying with her sometimes in his Greenwich Village days, and after he became a Monkee. "Grams" was one of his most ardent supporters and managed his fan club, often writing personal letters to members, and visiting music stores to make sure they carried Monkees records.

Six albums were produced with the original Monkees lineup, four of which went to No. 1 on the Billboard chart. This success was supplemented by two years of the TV show, a series of successful concert tours both across America and abroad, and a trippy-psychedelic movie, Head, a bit ahead of its time. However, tensions, both musical and personal, were increasing within the group. The band finished a Far East tour in December 1968 (where his copy of Naked Lunch was confiscated by Australian Customs) and then filmed an NBC television special, 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee, which rehashed many of the ideas from Head, only with the Monkees playing a strangely second-string role.

No longer getting the group dynamic he wanted, and pleading "exhaustion" from the grueling schedule, Tork bought out the remaining four years of his contract after filming was complete on December 20, 1968, at a default of $150,000/year. In the DVD commentary for the 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee TV special—originally broadcast April 14, 1969 – Dolenz noted that Nesmith gave Tork a gold watch as a going-away present, engraved "From the guys down at work". Tork kept the back, but replaced the watch several times in later years.

During a trip to London in December 1967, Tork contributed banjo to George Harrison's soundtrack to the 1968 film Wonderwall. His playing was featured in the movie, but not on the official Wonderwall Music soundtrack album released in November 1968.^[15] Tork's brief five-string banjo piece can be heard 16 minutes into the film, as Professor Collins is caught by his mother while spying on his neighbour Penny Lane.

Striking out on his own, he formed a group called 'Peter Tork And/Or Release' with girlfriend Reine Stewart on drums (she had played drums on part of 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee), Riley "Wyldflower" Cummings (ex The Gentle Soul) on bass and – sometimes – singer/keyboard player Judy Mayhan. Tork said in April 1969, "We sometimes have four. We're thinking of having a rotating fourth. Right now, the fourth is that girl I'm promoting named Judy Mayhan." "We're like Peter's back-up band", added Stewart, "except we happen to be a group instead of a back-up band." Release hoped to have a record out immediately, and Tork has said that they did record some demos, which he may still have stored away somewhere. According to Stewart the band were supposed to go to Muscle Shoals as the backing band for Mayhan's Atlantic Records solo album Moments (1970) but they were ultimately replaced. They mainly played parties for their "in" friends and one of their songs was considered for the soundtrack to Easy Rider, but the producers – who had also produced Head – eventually decided not to include it. Release could not secure a record contract, and by 1970 Tork was once again a solo artist, as he later recalled, "I didn't know how to stick to it. I ran out of money and told the band members, 'I can't support us as a crew any more, you'll just have to find your own way'."

Tork's record and movie production entity, the Breakthrough Influence Company (BRINCO), also failed to launch, despite such talent as future Little Feat guitarist, Lowell George. He was forced to sell his house in 1970, and he and a pregnant Reine Stewart moved into the basement of David Crosby's home. Tork was credited with co-arranging a Micky Dolenz solo single on MGM Records in 1971 ("Easy on You", b/w "Oh Someone"). An arrest and conviction for possession of hashish resulted in three months in an Oklahoma penitentiary in 1972. He moved to Fairfax in Marin County, California, in the early 1970s, where he joined the 35-voice Fairfax Street Choir and played guitar for a shuffle blues band called Osceola. Tork returned to Southern California in the mid-1970s, where he married and had a son and took a job teaching at Pacific Hills School in Santa Monica for a year and a half. He spent a total of three years as a teacher of music, social studies, math, French and history and coaching baseball at a number of schools, but enjoyed some more than others.

Peter Tork joined Dolenz, Jones, Boyce, & Hart onstage for a guest appearance on their concert tour on July 4, 1976 in Disneyland. Later that year he reunited with Jones and Dolenz in the studio for the recording of the single "Christmas Is My Time of Year" b/w "White Christmas", which saw a limited release for fan club members that holiday season. Tork also made several appearances as Topanga Lawrence's father on Boy Meets World.

Tork returned to the film world in 2017 in the horror movie I Filmed Your Death, written and directed by Sam Bahre.

A chance meeting with Sire Records executive Pat Horgan at the Bottom Line in New York City led to Tork recording a six-song demo, his first recording in many years. Recorded in summer 1980, it featured Tork, who sang, played rhythm guitar, keyboards, and banjo; it was backed by Southern rock band Cottonmouth, led by guitarist/singer/songwriter Johnny Pontiff, featuring Gerard Trahan on guitar/keyboards/vocals, Gene Pyle on bass guitar/vocals, and Gary Hille on drums/percussion.

Horgan produced the six tracks (which included two Monkees covers, "Shades of Gray" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday"), with George Dispigno as engineer. The four other tracks were "Good Looker," "Since You Went Away" (which appeared on the Monkees 1987 album Pool It!), "Higher and Higher" and "Hi Hi Babe." Also present at the sessions were Joan Jett, Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders, and Tommy Ramone of the Ramones. The tracks were recorded at Blue Horizon House, 165 West 74th Street, home of Sire Records, but Seymour Stein, president of Sire, rejected the demo, stating "there's nothing there." Tork recorded a second set of demos in New York City, but little is known about these (other than the fact that one track was a yet another version of "Pleasant Valley Sunday" with an unknown rock band, and featured a violin solo).

During this time, Tork appeared regularly on The Uncle Floyd Show broadcast on U-68 out of New Jersey. He performed comedy bits and lip-synced the Sire recordings. Floyd claimed Tork was the "first real star" to appear on the show. (Later, Davy Jones, the Ramones, Shrapnel, and others would follow in his footsteps.)

In 1981, he released the 45 rpm single "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" (b/w "Higher And Higher") with "The New Monks". He also did some club performances and live television appearances, including taking part in a "Win A Date With Peter Tork" bit on Late Night with David Letterman in July 1982.

In 1986, after a 1985 tour with Jones in Australia, Tork rejoined fellow Monkees Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz for a highly successful 20th anniversary reunion tour. Three new songs were recorded by Tork and Dolenz for a greatest-hits release. The three Monkees recorded Pool It!. A decade later, all four group members recorded Justus, the first recording with all four members since 1968. The quartet performed live in the United Kingdom in 1997, but for the next several years only the trio of Tork, Dolenz and Jones toured together. The trio of Monkees parted ways in 2001 with a public feud but reunited in 2011 for a series of 45th anniversary concerts in England and the United States.

Since 1986, Tork had intermittently toured with his former bandmates and also played with his own bands The Peter Tork Project and Shoe Suede Blues. In 1991, Tork formed a band called the Dashboard Saints and played at a pizza restaurant in Guerneville, California. In 1994, he released his first album length solo project, Stranger Things Have Happened, which featured brief appearances by Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith. In 1996, Tork collaborated on an album called Two Man Band with James Lee Stanley. The duo followed up in 2001 with a second release, Once Again.

In 2001, Tork took time out from touring to appear in a leading role in the short film Mixed Signals, written and directed by John Graziano.

In 2002, Tork resumed working with his band Shoe Suede Blues. The band performed original blues music, Monkees' covers (blues versions of some), and covers of classic blues hits by greats such as Muddy Waters and has shared the stage with bands such as Captain Zig. The band toured extensively in 2006-2007 following the release of the album "Cambria Hotel".

Tork also had a pair of appearances in the role of Topanga Lawrence's father "Jedidiah Lawrence" on the sitcom Boy Meets World. In his second appearance, in 1995, he joined Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz in episode eight of the 3rd season (titled "Rave On"), although they did not play the Monkees (Tork is again cast as "Jedidiah Lawrence", while Davy Jones is "Reginald Fairfield" and Dolenz' character is "Gordy". But at the program's climax the three take the stage together to perform the classic Buddy Holly song Not Fade Away, and the Temptations' My Girl. As in inside joke, actor Dave Madden who'd played the manager on "The Partridge Family" cameoed as a manager who suddenly appeared wanting to handle the "new" group, telling them that they "could be bigger than the Beatles". Purportedly both ex-Monkee Mike Nesmith and Pattie Boyd ex-wife of Beatle George Harrison attended the taping. (per IMDB entry "Boy Meets World" episode "Rave On").

Tork was also a guest character on 7th Heaven. In 1995, he appeared as himself on the show Wings, bidding against Crystal Bernard's character for the Monkeemobile. In 1999, he appeared as the leader of a wedding band in season 1 episode 13, "Best Man", of The King of Queens.

In early 2008, Tork added "advice columnist" to his extensive resume by authoring an online advice and info column called "Ask Peter Tork" at the webzine The Daily Panic.

In 2011, he joined Dolenz and Jones for the 2011 tour, An Evening with The Monkees: The 45th Anniversary Tour.

In 2012, Peter joined Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith with a Monkees tour in honor of the album Headquarters 45th anniversary, as well as in tribute to the late Davy Jones. The trio would tour again in 2013 and 2014.

On March 3, 2009, Tork reported on his website that he had been diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare, slow-growing form of head and neck cancer. A preliminary biopsy discovered that the cancer had not spread beyond the initial site. "It's a bad news / good news situation," explained Tork. "It's so rare a combination (on the tongue) that there isn't a lot of experience among the medical community about this particular combination. On the other hand, the type of cancer it is, never mind the location, is somewhat well known, and the prognosis, I'm told, is good." Tork underwent radiation treatment to prevent the cancer from returning.

On March 4, 2009, Tork underwent extensive surgery in New York City, which was successful.

On June 11, 2009, a spokesman for Tork reported that his cancer had returned. Tork was reportedly "shaken but not stirred" by the news, and said that the doctors had given him an 80% chance of containing and shrinking the new tumor.

In July 2009, while undergoing radiation therapy, he was interviewed by the Washington Post: "I recovered very quickly after my surgery, and I've been hoping that my better-than-average constitution will keep the worst effects of radiation at bay. My voice and energy still seem to be in decent shape, so maybe I can pull these gigs off after all." He continued to tour and perform while receiving his treatments.

On September 15, 2009, Tork received an "all clear" from his doctor.

Tork documented his cancer experience on Facebook and encouraged his fans to support research efforts of the Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma Research Foundation.