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"
Raymond Burr starred in a TV movie titled
"Ironside."
The movie was later turned into a television series. The show revolved around former San
Francisco Police Department (SFPD)
Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside (Raymond Burr),
a veteran of more than 20 years of police service who was forced to retire from
the department after a sniper's
bullet, to the spine, paralyzed him from the waist down, resulting in him
having to use a wheelchair. In the pilot episode, a TV movie, Ironside shows his
strength of character and gets himself appointed a "special department
consultant" by his good friend, Police Commissioner Dennis Randall. He does this by calling a press
conference and then tricking Commissioner Randall into meeting his terms. In
the pilot, Ironside eventually solves the mystery of the ambush. He
requests Ed Brown and Eve
Whitfield be assigned to him.
March 30, 1962
Jack Paar films his final episode of The Tonight
Show.
Paar had hosted the show
since July 1957, six months after Steve Allen stepped down. Paar was known for
his emotional outbursts, which included walking off the set of The Tonight
Show on February 11, 1960, to protest network censorship of his jokes. The
unflappable Johnny Carson took over as host starting in October 1962.
March 31, 1992
Dateline NBC premieres.
NBC had long attempted to catch up with popular
newsmagazines on CBS and ABC, which consistently drew top ratings, but failed
until the debut of Dateline NBC. In November 1992, the show caused a
scandal when it was revealed that an expose on General Motors trucks was rigged
to show a dramatic explosion.
Dateline NBC aired an investigative report on Tuesday, November
17th, 1992, titled “Waiting to Explode.” The 60 minute program was about General
Motorspickup trucks
allegedly exploding upon impact during accidents due to the poor design of fuel
tanks. Dateline's film showed a sample of a low speed accident with the fuel
tank exploding. In reality, Dateline NBC producers had rigged the
truck’s fuel tank with remotely controlled explosives. The program did not
disclose the fact that the accident was staged. GM investigators studied the
film, and discovered that smoke actually came out of the fuel tank 6 frames before
impact. GM subsequently filed an anti-defamation/libel lawsuit against NBC
after conducting an extensive investigation. On Monday, February 8, 1993 GM
conducted a highly publicized point-by-point rebuttal in the Product Exhibit
Hall of the General Motors Building in Detroit that lasted nearly two hours
after announcing the lawsuit. The lawsuit was settled the same week by NBC, and
Jane Pauley
read a 3 minute 30 second on-air apology to viewers.
April
3, 1982
John Chancellor stepped down as anchor of the The NBC Nightly News. Roger Mudd and Tom
Brokaw became the co-anchors of the show.
Chancellor
anchored the Nightly News through April 2, 1982, when he was succeeded by a
co-anchor team of Tom Brokaw and Roger Mudd.
Brokaw became sole anchor a year and a half later. Chancellor remained on the
program, providing editorial commentaries before retiring from NBC on July 9,
1993.
In
1992, 4 years prior to his death, Chancellor was inducted into the Television Hall
of Fame.
J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), the
character millions loved to hate on TV’s popular nighttime drama Dallas, was shot.
The shooting made the season finale, titled A House Divided, one of television’s
most famous cliffhangers and left America wondering “Who shot J.R.?” Dallas fans waited for the next eight
months to have that question answered because the season premiere of Dallas was delayed due to a Screen
Actors Guild strike. That summer, the question “Who Shot J.R.?” entered the national
lexicon. Fan’s wore T-shirts printed with "Who Shot J.R.?" and "I
Shot J.R.". A session of the Turkish parliament was suspended to allow legislators a chance to get
home in time to view the Dallas
episode. Betting parlors worldwide took bets as to which one of the 10 or so
principal characters had actually pulled the trigger. J.R. had many enemies and
audiences were hard-pressed to guess who was responsible for the shooting.
The person who pulled the
trigger was revealed to be J.R.’s sister in law/mistress Kristin Shepard (Mary
Crosby) in the "Who
Done It?"
episode which aired on November 21, 1980. It was, at the time, the highest rated television episode in US history. It had a Nielsen
rating of 53.3 and a 76% share, and
it was estimated that 83,000,000 people watched the episode. The previous
record for a TV episode, not counting the final installment of the miniseries Roots, had been the 1967 finale for The Fugitive. "Who Shot J.R.?" now sits second on the
list, being beaten in 1983 by the final episode of M*A*S*H but still remains the highest rated non-finale
episode of a TV series.
The
show, a comedy of errors, chronicles the escapades
and hijinks of the trio's constant misunderstandings, social lives, and
financial struggles, such as keeping the rent current, living arrangements
and breakout characters. A top ten hit from 1977
to 1983, the series has remained popular in syndication and through DVD releases.
After
crashing a party and finding himself passed out in the bathtub, cooking school
student Jack Tripper meets Janet Wood, a florist, and Chrissy Snow, a
secretary, in need of a new roommate to replace their departing roommate
Eleanor. Having only been able to afford to live at the YMCA,
Jack quickly accepts the offer to move in with the duo.
However,
due to overbearing landlord Stanley Roper's intolerance for co-ed living
situations, even in a multi-bedroom apartment, Jack is allowed to move in only
after Janet tells Mr. Roper that Jack is gay. Although Mrs. Roper figures out
Jack's true sexuality in the second episode, she does not tell her husband, who
tolerates but mocks him. Frequently siding with the three roommates instead of
her husband, Mrs. Roper's bond with the roommates grows until the
eventual spinoffThe Ropers.
Jack
continues the charade when new landlord Ralph Furley takes over the apartment
complex because Mr. Furley insists that his hard-nosed brother Bart (the
building's new owner) would also never tolerate such living situations.
March 15, 1977
Eight Is Enough First Aired.
The
show was modeled on the life of syndicated newspaper columnist Thomas Braden, a real-life parent with eight children, who wrote
a book by the same title. The show centers on a Sacramento,
California,
family with eight children (from oldest to youngest: David, Mary, Joanie,
Susan, Nancy, Elizabeth, Tommy, and Nicholas). The father, Tom Bradford, was a
newspaper columnist for the fictional Sacramento Register. His wife
Joan (Diana Hyland) took care of the
children. Hyland was only in four episodes before falling ill; she was written
out for the remainder of the first season and died five days after the second
episode aired.
The
second season began in the fall of 1977 with the revelation that Tom had become
a widower. Tom fell in love with Sandra Sue "Abby" Abbott, (Betty Buckley) a schoolteacher who came to the house to tutor
Tommy who had broken his leg in a football game. They were married in one of the
series' TV movie broadcasts on
November 9, 1977. The role went to Buckley after being approved by network
chief Brandon Tartikoff, who felt the character of
the sympathetic teacher she had played in the 1976 film Carrie would also be great
for the series. In another TV movie event in September 1979, David and
Susan were both married in a double wedding. As the series progressed, Abby got
her Ph.D. in education and started a job counseling students at the local high
school, oldest sister Mary became a doctor, while second-youngest son Tommy
became a singer in a rock-and-roll band.
March 19, 1977
The Last Show (The Mary Tyler Moore Show)
The
168th
episode and series finale of the television sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and was written by Allan
Burns, James L.
Brooks, Ed
Weinberger, Stan Daniels, David Lloyd and Bob Ellison. It was first broadcast on CBS on March 19, 1977. The
episode won an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series."
In executive producer Allan Burns' "Outstanding Comedy Series" acceptance
speech at the 29th annual prime time Emmy Awards, he stated, "We kept putting off writing that last show; we frankly didn't want to
do it. I think it said what we wanted it to say. It was poignant, and I believe
The Mary Tyler Moore Show was, in the long run, important for many women."
Plot
summary
The new owner of WJM-TV
is firing people left and right, and wants to do something about the Six
O'Clock News' low ratings. Surprisingly, Lou, Mary, Murray, and Sue Ann are
fired, but the person widely perceived as the cause of the Six O'Clock News'
low ratings, Ted, is retained.
Mary takes the news
particularly hard. To cheer her up, Lou arranges for old friends Rhoda and
Phyllis to fly to Minneapolis for a surprise visit at Mary's apartment.
After their final news
broadcast together, in which Ted gives a sincere but comical sendoff to his
colleagues on the air, the Six O'Clock News' staff, along with Georgette,
gather in the newsroom to say goodbye to each other. The memorable and oft
parodied scene culminates in an emotional huddle, during which nobody wants to
let go, and, needing some tissues, the group shuffles en masse toward a
box on Mary's desk. After final goodbyes, everyone exits the newsroom singing
"It's a Long Way to Tipperary." Finally, a very
emotional Mary looks back, then bucks up and smiles before turning off the
lights and closing the door.
Sure, there is ABC and 1-2-3, but it goes way beyond that. Sesame Street shows what love and acceptance is between people. It’s inclusive of everyone. It’s good for kids to see that there are kids who are different, who think differently.
-Te extrañaremos, Emilio Delgado.
Emilio Delgado
May 8, 1940 – March 10, 2022
Delgado was born in Calexico, California to Emilio Delgado and Carmen Rodriguez Delgado on May 8, 1940.
He was raised in his grandparents' house in Mexicali, Mexico, with his poor extended family. As a citizen of the United States, he would walk daily to attend a public school in Calexico.He began working odd jobs as a ten year old, and at his uncle's bicycle shop at age 12. His family moved to Glendale, California when he was a teenager. During high school, three years of which he attended Glendale High School, he became president of the Thespian Club, played trombone both in their orchestra and a jazz band, and was a drum major in the marching band.
Delgado was "adamantly and morally opposed" to theVietnam War, but enlisted in theCalifornia National Guardfor six years, serving domestically.A supply corporal, Delgado was deployed to theWatts riotsin Los Angeles, in 1965, where he was "astonished to see weekend warriors being issued live ammunition to use against other Americans."
Delgado began acting professionally in 1968, after nine years of "trying to knock doors down in Los Angeles to get in." That year, he received his first Equity job in a summer stock play starring Martha Raye, and later was cast in the first Mexican-American soap opera, Cancion de la Raza.
Befriending actor Sergei Tschernisch at Los Angeles theatre company Inner City Repertory, Delgado learned of the new theatre program at CalArts, led by Provost Herb Blau. While already a professional actor as of his 1970 enrollment, Delgado praised Blau's methods, suggesting his avant-garde method was "amazing."
As of 1970, he was the artistic director of the new Mexican-American Centre of Creative Arts, which taught Chicano high school and college students from the basement of the Euclid Heights Community Centre in East Los Angeles. Delgado told the Los Angeles Times: "We are 100% positive in our approach, and we are uncompromising in our belief that our kids will come away thinking of themselves as artists. Nothing is going to stop us from attaining our identification in American society."
Delgado had a guest role in an October 1970 episode Storefront Lawyers, before being cast as a series regular in Angie's Garage, in November 1970. The new children's series focused on serving Mexican-American children. He was billed as a singer-guitarist. He speculated that Sesame Street producers discovered him through the series.
Delgado was able to do voice over work, both with and without an accent.
The enormous popularity of Sesame Street created a barrage of groups providing input on the curriculum in its second season. During the season, the program attempted to teach Spanish to children whose mother tongue was English. Producer Jon Stone told The Pittsburgh Press that their attempts were "a disaster. It was tokenism at best, and condescension at worst." For the third season, the show rebooted their efforts, adding Puerto Ricans and Chicanos, and creating new Spanish segments. Seven new cast members were added at the start of the season, including Delgado, Panchito Gómez, Raul Julia, and Sonia Manzano. Delgado was still enrolled at CalArts, as of casting. Delgado's character, Luis, ran "The Fix-It Shop," a repair service on Sesame Street, alongside Julia's Rafael. The character has been described as the "antithesis" of the Mexican and Latino stereotypes that proliferated television at the time, as he was "an honest, upstanding, hard-working, affable person."Delgado expected the role to last one or two seasons.
Delgado joined the series' live events by at least 1972, when he performed with the Jackson Symphony Orchestra.
Delgado was named the coordinator of the Children's Television Workshop's Bilingual Task Force, and sent across the country to meet with groups. The efforts were to lead to further updates to content in season 4. He would comment in 1972 that the series didn't "teach Spanish, we teach in Spanish."
Delgado is believed to have played "the same role on U.S. television longer than any other Mexican-American actor," according to CalArts.
During Sesame Street's 19th season, first aired in 1988, Delgado's character Luis became engaged to and married Maria, played by Sonia Manzano. According to Delgado, "to this day, there are fans out there who want to believe that the Luis and Maria wedding episode in 1988 was real, "but the fact of the matter is, it was just terrific acting."
Delgado later appeared at various pop culture conventions, often under the brand "Humans of Sesame Street". Delgaldo also reprised the role of Luis in the TV special Sesame Street's 50th Anniversary Celebration.
Delgado also performed in live shows throughout his Sesame Street career, singing the songs of Sesame Street and entertaining thousands of children and their families.
On Sesame Street, his character, Luis along with Raul Julia as Rafael, were the first human additions to the original cast. Luis was a handyman and an aspiring writer, who debuted on the show in 1971 simultaneously with Raul Julia as Rafael. Together they ran the L&R Fix-It Shop until Julia left the show after one season, and Luis ran the Fix-It Shop alone from then on. In season 19, Luis fell in love with Maria, performed by Sonia Manzano, and married her. The characters Luis and Maria taught viewers about Hispanic culture and language throughout their shared run of the show.
Delgado would take guest roles on other series, while Sesame Street wasn't taping. Notably, he had a recurring role as national news editor Rubin Castillo on the television series Lou Grant.
In Los Angeles, he was a company member of Inner City Rep, The Group Repertory, and LA Repertory. Some of his New York City theatre credits include Floating Home (HExTC), Boxing 2000 (Richard Maxwell NYC Players), Dismiss All the Poets (New York Fringe Festival 2002), Nilo Cruz's adaptation of A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey), Dinosaurios (IATI), Night Over Taos (INTAR Theatre) an adaptation of How the GarcÃa Girls Lost Their Accents (Round House Theatre), and Emilio appeared in the role of King Claudius in Asolo Repertory Theatre production of Hamlet, Prince of Cuba, with alternating performances in English and Spanish, where one reviewer wrote that Delgado "is equally brilliant as King Claudius".
