This Week in Television History: May 2021 PART IV

 

June 1, 1926

Andy Samuel Griffith is born. 

Griffith was born in Mount Airy, North Carolina, the only child of Geneva (née Nunn) and Carl Lee Griffith. At a very young age, Griffith had to live with relatives until his parents could afford to get a home of their own. Without a crib or a bed, he slept in drawers for a few months. In 1929, when Griffith was three years old, his father took a job working as a carpenter and was finally able to purchase a home in Mount Airy's "blue-collar" southside.

Like his mother, Griffith grew up listening to music. His father instilled a sense of humor from old family stories. By the time he entered school he was well aware that he was from what many considered the "wrong side of the tracks". He was a shy student, but once he found a way to make his peers laugh, he began to come out of his shell and come into his own.

As a student at Mount Airy High School, Griffith cultivated an interest in the arts, and he participated in the school's drama program. A growing love of music, particularly swing, would change his life. Griffith was raised Baptist and looked up to Ed Mickey, a minister at Grace Moravian Church, who led the brass band and taught him to sing and play the trombone. Mickey nurtured Griffith's talent throughout high school until graduation in 1944. Griffith was delighted when he was offered a role in The Lost Colony, a play still performed today on Roanoke Island. He performed as a cast member of the play for several years, playing a variety of roles, until he finally landed the role of Sir Walter Raleigh, the namesake of North Carolina's capital.

He began college studying to be a Moravian preacher, but he changed his major to music and became a part of the school's Carolina Play Makers. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and graduated with a bachelor of music degree in 1949. At UNC he was president of the UNC Men's Glee Club and a member of the Alpha Rho Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, America's oldest fraternity for men in music. He also played roles in several student operettas, including The Chimes of Normandy (1946), and Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers (1945), The Mikado (1948) and H.M.S. Pinafore (1949).

After graduation, he taught English for a few years at Goldsboro High School in Goldsboro, North Carolina, where he taught, among others, Carl Kasell. He also began to write.

Griffith's early career was as a monologist, delivering long stories such as What it Was, Was Football, which is told from the point of view of a rural backwoodsman trying to figure out what was going on in a football game. Released as a single in 1953 on the Colonial label, the monologue was a hit for Griffith, reaching number nine on the charts in 1954.

Griffith starred in a one-hour teleplay version of No Time for Sergeants (March 1955)—a story about a country boy in the US Air Force—on The United States Steel Hour, a television anthology series. He expanded that role in a full-length theatrical version of the same name (October 1955) on Broadway in New York City, New York. His Broadway career also included the title role in the 1957 musical, Destry Rides Again, co-starring Delores Gray. The show, with a score by Harold Rome, ran for more than a year.

Griffith later reprised his role for the film version (1958) of No Time for Sergeants; the film also featured Don Knotts, as a corporal in charge of manual-dexterity tests, marking the beginning of a life-long association between Griffith and Knotts. No Time for Sergeants is considered the direct inspiration for the later television situation comedy Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.

He also portrayed a US Coast Guard sailor in the feature film Onionhead (1958); it was neither a critical nor a commercial success.

In 1957 Griffith made his film début, starring in the film A Face in the Crowd. Although he plays a "country boy", this country boy is manipulative and power-hungry, a drifter who becomes a television host and uses his show as a gateway to political power. Co-starring Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau, Tony Franciosa, and Lee Remick (in her film début as well), this now-classic film, directed by Elia Kazan, showcases Griffith's powerful talents. Written by Budd Schulberg, and partly based on the on-stage phoniness of Arthur Godfrey, the film demonstrated, quite early on, the power that television can have upon the masses. This prescient film was seldom run on television until the 1990s.

A 2005 DVD reissue of A Face in the Crowd includes a mini-documentary on the film, with comments from Schulberg and surviving cast members Griffith, Franciosa, and Neal. In his interview, Griffith, revered for his wholesome image for decades, reveals a more complex side of himself. He recalls Kazan prepping him to shoot his first scene with Remick's teenaged baton twirler, who captivates Griffith's character on a trip to Arkansas. Griffith also expresses his belief that the film was far more popular and respected in more recent decades than it was when originally released.

Griffith's first appearance on television had been in 1955 in the one-hour teleplay of No Time for Sergeants on The United States Steel Hour. That was the first of two appearances on that series.

In 1960, Griffith appeared as a county sheriff (who was also a justice of the peace and the editor of the local newspaper) in an episode of Make Room for Daddy, starring Danny Thomas. This episode, in which Thomas' character is stopped for speeding in a little town, served as a backdoor pilot for The Andy Griffith Show. Both shows were produced by Sheldon Leonard.

Beginning in 1960, Griffith starred as Sheriff Andy Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show for the CBS television network. The show took place in the fictional town of Mayberry, North Carolina, where Taylor, a widower, was the sheriff and town sage. The show was filmed at Desilu Studios, with exteriors filmed at Forty Acres in Culver City, CA.

From 1960 to 1965, the show co-starred character actor and comedian—and Griffith's longtime friend—Don Knotts in the role of Deputy Barney Fife, Taylor's best friend and partner. He was also Taylor's cousin in the show. In the series première episode, in a conversation between the two, Fife calls Taylor "Cousin Andy", and Taylor calls Fife "Cousin Barney". The show also starred child actor Ron Howard (then known as Ronny Howard), who played Taylor's only child, Opie Taylor.

It was an immediate hit. Although Griffith never received a writing credit for the show, he worked on the development of every script. While Knotts was frequently lauded and won multiple Emmy Awards for his comedic performances (as did Frances Bavier in 1967), Griffith was never nominated for an Emmy Award during the show's run.

In 1967, Griffith was under contract with CBS to do one more season of the show. However, he decided to quit the show to pursue a movie career and other projects. The series continued as Mayberry R.F.D., with Ken Berry starring as a widower farmer and many of the regular characters recurring, some regularly and some as guest appearances. Griffith served as executive producer (according to Griffith, he came in once a week to review the week's scripts and give input) and guest starred in five episodes (the pilot episode involved his marriage to Helen Crump). He made final appearances as Taylor in the 1986 reunion television film, Return to Mayberry, and in two reunion specials in 1993 and 2003.

After leaving his still-popular show in 1968, and starting his own production company (Andy Griffith Enterprises) in 1972, Griffith starred in less-successful television series such as Headmaster (1970), The New Andy Griffith Show (1971), Adams of Eagle Lake (1975) Salvage 1 (1979), and The Yeagers (1980).

After spending time in rehabilitation for leg paralysis from Guillain–Barré syndrome in 1986, Griffith returned to television as the title character, Ben Matlock, in the legal drama Matlock (1986–1995) on NBC and ABC. Matlock was a country lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia, who was known for his Southern drawl and for always winning his cases. Matlock also starred unfamiliar actors (both of whom were childhood fans of Andy Griffith) Nancy Stafford as Michelle Thomas (1987–1992) and Clarence Gilyard Jr. as Conrad McMasters (1989–1993). By the end of its first season it was a ratings powerhouse on Tuesday nights. Although the show was nominated for four Emmy Awards, Griffith once again was never nominated. He did, however, win a People's Choice Award in 1987 for his work as Matlock.

This show is mentioned on TV's longest animated show The Simpsons and is noted as Grandpa Simpson's favorite show as well as Marge Simpson's mother Jacqueline Bouvier's as well.

Griffith has also made other character appearances through the years on Playhouse 90, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., The Mod Squad, Hawaii Five-O, The Doris Day Show, Here's Lucy, The Bionic Woman, Fantasy Island, among many others. He also reprised his role as Ben Matlock on Diagnosis: Murder in 1997, and his most recent guest-starring role was in 2001 in an episode of Dawson's Creek.

For most of the 1970s, Griffith starred or appeared in many television films including The Strangers In 7A (1972), Go Ask Alice (1973), Winter Kill (1974), and Pray for the Wildcats (1974), which marked his first villainous role. Griffith appeared again as a villain in Savages (1974), a television film based on the novel Deathwatch (1972) by Robb White. Griffith received his only Primetime Emmy Award nomination as Outstanding Supporting Actor – Miniseries or a Movie for his role as the father of a murder victim in the television film Murder In Texas (1981) and won further acclaim for his role as a homicidal villain in the television film Murder in Coweta County (1983), co-starring music legend Johnny Cash as the sheriff. He also proved to be a good character actor and appeared in several television mini-series, including the television version of From Here to Eternity (1979), Roots: The Next Generations (1979), Centennial (1978), and the Watergate scandal-inspired Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977), playing a former president loosely based on Lyndon B. Johnson.

Most of the TV movies Griffith starred in were also attempts to launch a new series. 1974's Winter Kill launched the short lived Adams of Eagle Lake which was canceled after only two episodes in 1975. A year later, he starred as a New York City attorney for the DA's office in Street Killing which also failed to launch a new series. Two television films for NBC in 1977, The Girl in The Empty Grave and Deadly Game, were attempts for Griffith to launch a new series featuring him as Police Chief Abel Marsh, a more hard-edged version of Andy Taylor; despite strong ratings for both films, both were unsuccessful.

While appearing in television films and guest roles on television series over the next 10 years, Griffith also appeared in two feature films, both of which flopped at the box office. He co-starred with Jeff Bridges as a crusty old 1930s western actor in the comedy Hearts of the West (1975), and he appeared alongside Tom Berenger as a gay villainous colonel and cattle baron in the western comedy spoof Rustlers' Rhapsody (1985).

He also appeared as an attorney in the NBC mini-series Fatal Vision in 1984, which is considered a precursor to his role in Matlock.

Griffith stunned many unfamiliar with his A Face in the Crowd work in the television film Crime of Innocence (1985), where he portrayed a callous judge who routinely sentenced juveniles to hard prison time. He further stunned audiences with his role as a dangerous and mysterious grandfather in 1995's Gramps, co-starring the late John Ritter. He also appeared as a comical villain in the spy movie spoof Spy Hard (1996) starring Leslie Nielsen. In the television film A Holiday Romance (1999), Griffith played the role of "Jake Peterson." In the film Daddy and Them (2001), Griffith portrayed a patriarch of a dysfunctional southern family.

In the feature film Waitress (2007), Griffith played a crusty diner owner who takes a shine to Keri Russell's character. His latest appearance was the leading role in the romantic comedy, independent film Play The Game (2009) as a lonely, widowed grandfather re-entering the dating world after a 60-year hiatus. The cast of Play The Game also included Rance Howard, Ron Howard's real-life father, who made appearances in various supporting roles on The Andy Griffith Show, and Clint Howard, Ron's younger brother, who had the recurring role of Leon (the kid offering the ice cream cone or peanut butter sandwich) on TAGS.

Griffith sang as part of some of his acting roles, most notably in A Face In The Crowd and in many episodes of both The Andy Griffith Show and Matlock. In addition to his recordings of comic monologues in the 1950s, he made an album of upbeat country and gospel tunes during the run of The Andy Griffith Show, which included a version of the show's theme sung by Griffith under the title "The Fishin' Hole". In recent years, he has recorded successful albums of classic Christian hymns for Sparrow Records. His most successful was the 1996 release I Love to Tell the Story: 25 Timeless Hymns, which was certified platinum by the RIAA.

Griffith appeared in country singer Brad Paisley's music video "Waitin' on a Woman" (2008). 

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: May 2021 PART IIl

 

May 23, 1994

"All Good Things..." comprises the 25th and 26th episodes of the seventh season and the series finale of the syndicated Americanscience fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

It is the 177th and 178th episodes of the series overall. The title is derived from the expression "All good things must come to an end", a phrase used by the character "Q" during the episode itself. Capt. Jean-Luc Picard inexplicably finds his mind jumping between the present (stardate 47988) and the past just prior to the USSEnterprise-D's first mission six years earlier at Farpoint Station and over twenty-five years into the future, where an aged Picard has retired to the family vineyard in Labarre, France. These jumps occur without warning, and the resulting discontinuity in Picard's behavior frequently leaves him and those around him confused.

In the present, Picard is ordered to take the Enterprise to the edge of the Romulan Neutral Zone to investigate a spatial anomaly.

In the future, he gains passage on the USS Pasteur, which is under the command of his now ex-wife, Dr. Beverly Picard, whom he convinces to find the anomaly.

In the past, despite having the Enterprise's mission to Farpoint Station cancelled by Starfleet to investigate the anomaly, Picard insists on continuing, believing the impending encounter with Q to be more important. After reaching the place where he had first encountered the Q in the form of a net near Farpoint Station and finding nothing there, Picard enters his ready room, only to find himself once again in Q's courtroom. Q reveals that the trial started seven years ago never concluded, and the current situation is humanity's last chance to prove themselves to the Q Continuum, but secretly reveals that he himself is the cause of Picard's time jumping. Q challenges Picard to solve the mystery of the anomaly, cryptically stating that Picard will destroy humanity.

As Jean-Luc Picard arrives at the anomaly in all three time periods, he discovers that the anomaly is much larger in the past, but does not exist at all in the future. As the past and present Enterprises scan the anomaly with tachyon beams, the USS Pasteur is attacked by Klingon ships, but the crew is saved due to the timely arrival of the future Enterpriseunder the command of Admiral William Riker. He fires on several of the attacking Klingon warships, which causes them to flee the neutral zone. It is revealed that Riker and Worf are in a feud over the late Enterprise counselor Deanna Troi, with whom both had a serious relationship and who had died years earlier. Q once again appears to Picard and takes him to billions of years in the past on Earth, where the anomaly, growing larger as it moves backwards in time, has taken over the whole of the Alpha Quadrant and has prevented the formation of life on Earth. When Picard returns to the future, he discovers the anomaly has appeared, created as a result of his orders, and the tachyon pulses from the three eras are sustaining it. Data and Geordi determine that they can stop the anomaly by having all three Enterprises fly into the centre of it and create static warp shells. Picard relays the orders to each Enterprise. Each ship suffers warp core breaches, with Q telling the future Picard that "all good things must come to an end" just before the future Enterpriseexplodes.

Picard finds himself facing Q in the courtroom as before. Q congratulates Picard for being able to think in multiple timelines simultaneously to solve the puzzle, which is proof that humanity can still evolve, much to the surprise of the Q Continuum. Q admits to helping Picard to solve it with the time jumping since he was the one that put them in this situation, and then goes on to explain that the anomaly never actually existed and that his past and present have been restored. He then withdraws from the courtroom and bids farewell to Picard by saying "See you ... out there". Picard then returns to the Enterprise of the present and no longer jumping through time.

As the senior staff plays their regular poker game, they reflect on the future the captain told them, to prevent them from drifting apart. For the first time ever, Picard decides to join the game, expressing regret he had not done so before, saying "...and the sky's the limit," suggesting more adventures lay ahead for the crew.

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Tony Figueroa

Norman Lloyd

I imagine I was supposed to become a lawyer or something. But this was the Depression; the lawyers I saw were all driving cabs. So I thought, 'Well, if I'm going to be badly off anyway, I might as well be badly off in the theater, where you get used to it.' 

Norman Lloyd

Norman Lloyd

November 8, 1914 – May 11, 2021

Norman Lloyd was born Norman Perlmutter on November 8, 1914, in Jersey City, New Jersey. His family was Jewish and lived in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Max Perlmutter (1890–1945), was an accountant who later became a salesman and proprietor of a furniture store. His mother, Sadie Horowitz Perlmutter (1892–1987), was a bookkeeper and housewife. She had a good voice and a lifelong interest in the theatre, and she took her young son to singing and dancing lessons. He had two sisters, Ruth (1918–1962) and Janice (b. 1923). Lloyd became a child performer, appearing at vaudeville benefits and women's clubs, and was a professional by the age of nine.

Lloyd graduated from high school when he was 15 and began studies at New York University, but left at the end of his sophomore year. "All around me I could see the way the Depression was affecting everyone; for my family, for people in business like my father, it was a terrible time," he wrote. "I just wasn't going to stay in college, paying tuition to get a degree to be a lawyer, when I could see lawyers that had become taxi drivers." Lloyd's father died in 1945, at age 55, "broken by the world that he was living in."

In 1932, at age 17, Lloyd auditioned and became the youngest of the apprentices under the direction of May Sarton at Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre in New York City. He then joined Sarton's Apprentice Theatre in New Hampshire, continuing his studies with her and her associate, Eleanor Flexner. The group rehearsed a total of ten modern European plays and performed at The New School for Social Research and in Boston. Members of the Harvard Dramatic Club saw Lloyd on stage and offered him the lead in a play directed by Joseph Losey. He rejoined Sarton's group, for whom Losey directed a Boston production of Gods of the Lightning. When Sarton was forced to give up her company, Losey suggested that Lloyd audition for a production of André Obey's Noah (1935). It was Lloyd's first Broadway show.

Through Losey, Lloyd became involved in the social theatre of the 1930s, beginning with an acting collective called The Theatre of Action. The group was preparing a production of Michael Blankfort's The Crime (1936), directed by Elia Kazan. One of the company members was actress Peggy Craven, who became Lloyd's wife.

Losey brought Lloyd into the Federal Theatre Project — which Lloyd called "one of the great theaters of all time"^]— and its Living Newspapers, which dramatized contemporary events. They initially prepared Ethiopia, about the Italian invasion, which was deemed too controversial and was terminated. The first completed presentation was Triple-A Plowed Under (1936), followed by Injunction Granted (1936) and Power (1937).

When Orson Welles and John Houseman left the Federal Theatre Project to form their own independent repertory theatre company, the Mercury Theatre, Lloyd was invited to become a charter member. He played a memorable role in its first stage production, Caesar (1937), Welles's modern-dress adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar — streamlined into an anti-fascist tour- de-force. In a scene that became the fulcrum of the show, Cinna the Poet (Lloyd) dies at the hands not of a mob but of a secret police force. Lloyd called it "an extraordinary scene [that] gripped the audience in a way that the show stopped for about three minutes. The audience stopped it with applause. It showed the audience what fascism was; rather than an intellectual approach, you saw a physical one."

The Mercury prepared The Shoemaker's Holiday to go into repertory with Caesar beginning in January 1938. During the December 25 performance of Caesar — when the sets, lighting, and costumes for Shoemaker were ready but no previews had taken place — Welles asked the cast if they cared to present a surprise preview immediately after the show. He invited the audience to stay and watch the set changes, and the curtain rose at 1:15 a.m. Lloyd recalled it as "the wildest triumph imaginable. The show was a smash during its run — but never again did we have a performance like that one."

Lloyd played the role of Johnny Appleseed in Everywhere I Roam (1938), a play by Arnold Sundgaard that was developed by the Federal Theatre Project and staged on Broadway by Marc Connelly. "It was a lovely experience, although the play failed," Lloyd recalled. "For me, it was a success; in those days, before the Tony Awards, the critics' Ten Best Performers list at the end of the year was the greatest recognition. For my performance, I was selected to be on the list by the critics." Lloyd performed on the first of four releases in the Mercury Text Records series, phonographic recordings of Shakespeare plays adapted for educators by Welles and Roger Hill. The Merchant of Venice features Lloyd in the roles of Salanio and Launcelot Gobbo. Released on Columbia Masterworks Records in 1939, the recording was reissued on CD in 1998.

In late summer 1939, Lloyd was invited to Hollywood, to join Welles and other Mercury Theatre members in the first film being prepared for RKO Pictures — Heart of Darkness. Given a six-week guarantee at $500 a week, he took part in a reading for the film, which was to be presented entirely through a first-person camera. After elaborate pre-production the project never reached production because Welles was unable to trim $50,000 from its budget, something RKO insisted upon as its revenue was declining sharply in Europe by autumn 1939. Welles asked the actors to stay a few more weeks as he put together another film project, but Lloyd was ill-advised by a member of the radio company and impulsively returned to New York. "Those who stayed did Citizen Kane," Lloyd wrote. "I have always regretted it.

"Lloyd later returned to Hollywood to play a Nazi spy in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), beginning a long friendship and professional association with Hitchcock. Three years later he was cast by French director Jean Renoir to portray the malicious, dull-witted character Finley in The Southerner, which was the fourth film of six productions that Renoir directed in the 1940s while living in the United States. After a few more villainous screen roles, Lloyd then worked behind the camera as an assistant on Lewis Milestone's Arch of Triumph (1948). A friend of John Garfield, Lloyd performed with him in the 1951 film noir crime drama He Ran All the Way, Garfield's last film before the Hollywood blacklist ended his film career.

A marginal victim of the Hollywood blacklist, Lloyd was rescued professionally by Hitchcock, who had previously cast the actor in Saboteur and Spellbound (1945). Hitchcock hired Lloyd as an associate producer and a director on his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1958. Previously, Lloyd directed the sponsored film A Word to the Wives (1955) with Marsha Hunt and Darren McGavin. He continued directing and producing episodic television throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He took an unusual role in the Night Gallery episode "A Feast of Blood" as the bearer of a cursed brooch, which he inflicts upon a hapless woman, played by Sondra Locke, who had spurned his romantic advances. In FM (1978), Lloyd has a small but pivotal role as the owner of a Los Angeles radio station that is undergoing a mutiny of sorts, due to a battle over advertising. Lloyd's character (Carl Billings) ends up playing the white hat role and keeping the station as is, to the delight of staff and fans.

In the 1980s, Lloyd played Dr. Daniel Auschlander in the television drama St. Elsewhere over its six-season run (1982–88). Originally scheduled for only four episodes, Lloyd became a regular for the rest of the series. In addition to Ed Flanders and William Daniels, St. Elsewhere included a roster of relative unknowns, including Ed Begley, Jr., Denzel Washington, Stephen Furst, Eric Laneuville, David Morse, and Howie Mandel.

Lloyd's first film role in nearly a decade was in Dead Poets Society (1989), playing Mr. Nolan, the authoritative headmaster of Welton Academy, opposite Robin Williams. Initially, Lloyd was hesitant when asked to audition, because he thought the director and producers could judge whether or not he was right for the part by watching his acting on St. Elsewhere. Director Peter Weir was living in Australia and had not seen St. Elsewhere. Lloyd agreed to audition for him after winning his daily tennis match.

From 1998 to 2001, he played Dr. Isaac Mentnor in the UPN science fiction drama Seven Days. His numerous television guest-star appearances include The Joseph Cotten Show; Murder, She Wrote; The Twilight Zone; Wiseguy; Star Trek: The Next Generation; Wings; The Practice; and Civil Wars.

He played in various radio plays for Peggy Webber's California Artists Radio Theater and Yuri Rasovsky's Hollywood Theater of the Ear. His last film role was in Trainwreck (2015) which he acted in at the age of 99, although he admitted he was slightly put off by the film's raunchy content. He is the subject of the documentary Who Is Norman Lloyd?, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on September 1, 2007. In 2010, he guest-starred in an episode of ABC's Modern Family. On December 5, 2010, he presented An Evening with Norman Lloyd at the Colony Theatre in Burbank, California, where he spoke about his career and answered questions from the audience.

Good Night Mr. Lloyd

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Tony Figueroa