Monday, March 28, 2022

This Week in Television History: March 2022 PART V

March 28, 1967

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 Motors pickup 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.

Chancellor was the narrator of Baseball, an award winning documentary by Ken Burns. He also wrote a book, Peril and Promise, which was published in 1991. The John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism was established in 1995 and administered by the Annenberg Public Policy Center until 2004. It is now awarded by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.


Stay Tuned


Tony Figueroa

Monday, March 21, 2022

This Week in Television History: March 2022 PART IV

 

March 21, 1980

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.


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Tony Figueroa

Monday, March 14, 2022

This Week in Television History: March 2022 PART III

March 15, 1977

Three's Company first aired.  

It is based on the British sitcom Man About the House.

The story revolves around three single roommates: Janet Wood (Joyce DeWitt), Chrissy Snow (Suzanne Somers), and Jack Tripper (John Ritter), who all platonically live together in a Santa Monica, California apartment building owned by Stanley Roper (Norman Fell) and Helen Roper (Audra Lindley). Following Somers' departure in late 1981, Jenilee Harrison joined the cast as Cindy Snow, who was soon replaced by Priscilla Barnes as Terri Alden. After Norman Fell and Audra Lindley left the series for their own sitcomDon Knotts joined the cast as the roommates' new landlord Ralph Furley.

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 spinoff The 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.


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Tony Figueroa

Friday, March 11, 2022

Emilio Delgado

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 the Vietnam War, but enlisted in the California National Guard for six years, serving domestically. A supply corporal, Delgado was deployed to the Watts riots in 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 GómezRaul 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.

Delgado starred in the Alley Theatre production of Octavio SolisQuixote Nuevo (2020), a modern Chicano adaptation of Don Quixote.

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 García 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".

His other television appearances include House of CardsLaw & OrderLaw & Order: Criminal Intent, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He was a regular cast member of Lou Grant and the short-lived Born to the Wind. He also appeared in episodes of Police StoryHawaii Five-O; and Quincy, M.E.

Delgado's other creative endeavor was to sing and record with the band Pink Martini. He performed with the band at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall in New York City, The Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, in Woodinville, Washington at the Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery, and in Portland, Oregon at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert HallCrystal Ballroom and the Oregon Zoo. He appears on their album Splendor in the Grass, in which he recorded the song "Sing", a duet with China Forbes.


Buenas Noches Sr. Delgado


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Tony Figueroa