June
16, 1952
My
Little Margie debuted on CBS-TV.
My
Little Margie premiered on CBS
as the summer replacement for I Love Lucy on
June 16, 1952, under the sponsorship of Philip Morris cigarettes (when the series moved to NBC for its
third season in the fall of 1953, Scott Paper Company became its sponsor). In an unusual move, the
series—with the same leads—aired original episodes on CBS Radio,
concurrently with the TV broadcasts, from December 1952 through August 1955.
Only 23 radio broadcasts are known to exist in recorded form.
June 16, 2002
The first episode
of The Dead Zone aired.
The Dead Zone, a.k.a. Stephen
King's Dead Zone (in USA) is an American/Canadian science
fiction drama television series starring Anthony Michael Hall as Johnny Smith, who discovers he has
developed psychic abilities
after a coma.
The show, credited as "based on characters" from Stephen
King's 1979 novel of the same name, first aired in 2002, and
was produced by Lionsgate Television and CBS Paramount Network Television (Paramount Network Television 2002-06) for
the USA
Network.
The show was originally commissioned for UPN, but the network later dropped the show and it was picked up instead by USA. 03nmThe series was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada for its first five seasons. The sixth and last season was billed as "The season that changes everything" and production was moved to Montreal.
The Dead Zone was expected to be renewed for a seventh season;
however, due to low ratings and high production costs the series was canceled
in December 2007, without a proper series finale.
Some rumors spread that Syfy would pick up the series after it was canceled by USA,
but it did not happen. Rumors of a made-for-TV movie have all but faded with
time.
June 18, 1942
Film critic Roger Ebert born.
Roger Ebert used his thumbs to pass judgment on Hollywood’s latest offerings on his long-running TV show, is born in Urbana, Illinois.While a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the
1960s, Ebert was the editor of the school newspaper, the Daily Illini.
He began his professional career in 1966, as a reporter and feature writer at
the Chicago Sun-Times, where his interest in movies led him to visit the
set of Camelot, the 1967 film starring Richard Harris as King Arthur and
Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Guinevere. In the spring of 1967, after the Sun-Times
movie critic Eleanor Keane left the paper, Ebert was given the job. Ebert’s
first review as critic was of the French New Wave film Galia (1966).
In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize. That
same year, he teamed with another critic, Gene Siskel, on a monthly show on
local television called Opening Soon at a Theater Near You. By the time
the show later moved to PBS (Public Broadcasting System), Siskel and Ebert had
established their now-famous format: two men sitting in theater seats
discussing the newest movies and giving each of them a positive--”thumbs
up”--or negative--”thumbs down”--review. In 1982, the show began a nationwide
syndicated broadcast as At the Movies; four years later, the title
changed to Siskel & Ebert, which it would keep for the next 20
years.
Siskel and Ebert’s colorful criticism--and their good-natured
disagreements--turned their show into a long-running hit, and made them
well-known personalities in their own right. Their run lasted until early 1999,
when Siskel died at the age of 53, from complications of surgery to remove a
brain tumor. Ebert co-hosted with a series of guests until mid-2000, when
Richard Roeper of the Sun-Times became his permanent co-host. Ebert
& Roeper aired through the summer of 2006, when Ebert underwent surgery
to remove cancer in his jaw. Ebert kept fans in the loop about his condition
and recovery with written updates on his Sun-Times Web site.
In July 2008, the show’s owner, Buena Vista, decided to pull the plug on Ebert
& Roeper, which Roeper had been continuing with guest critics. Ebert
had remained active behind the scenes, but had not been able to appear on air
because of his illness. In early 2002, Ebert was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer. In February of that year,
surgeons at Northwestern
Memorial Hospital were able to successfully remove the cancer with clean margins. He later underwent surgery
in 2003 for cancer in his salivary gland, and in December of that year,
underwent a four-week follow-up course of radiation to his salivary glands, which altered his voice
slightly. As he battled the illness, Ebert continued to be a dedicated critic
of film, not missing a single opening while undergoing treatment.
Ebert underwent further surgery on June 16, 2006, just
two days before his 64th birthday, to remove additional cancerous tissue near
his right jaw, which included removing a section of jaw bone. On July 1, Ebert
was hospitalized in serious condition after his carotid artery burst near the surgery site and he "came within
a breath of death". He later learned that the burst was likely a side
effect of his treatment, which involved neutron beam radiation. He was subsequently kept bedridden to prevent
further damage to the scarred vessels in his neck while he slowly recovered
from multiple surgeries and the rigorous treatment. At one point, his status
was so precarious that Ebert had a tracheotomy performed on his neck to reduce the effort of
breathing while he recovered.
Ebert had pre-taped enough TV programs with his
co-host Richard
Roeper to keep him on the air for a
few weeks; however, his extended convalescence necessitated a series of
"guest critics" to co-host with Roeper: Jay Leno (a good friend to both Ebert and Roeper), Kevin Smith, John Ridley, Toni Senecal, Christy Lemire, Michael Phillips, Aisha Tyler, Fred Willard, Anne
Thompson, A.O. Scott, Mario Van Peebles, George Pennacchio, Brad Silberling, and John Mellencamp. Michael Phillips later became Ebert's replacement
for the remainder of Roeper's time on At the Movies, until mid-2008,
when Roeper did not extend his contract with ABC.
In October 2006, Ebert confirmed his bleeding problems
had been resolved. He was undergoing rehabilitation at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago due to lost muscle mass, and later underwent further
rehabilitation at the Pritikin Center in Florida."[93] After a three-month absence, the first movie he
reviewed was The
Queen. Ebert made his first
public appearance since the summer of 2006 at Ebertfest on April 25, 2007. He
was unable to speak but communicated through his wife, Chaz, through the use of
written notes. His opening words to the crowd of devout fans at the festival
were a quote from the film he co-wrote with Russ Meyer, Beyond the Valley of
the Dolls: "It's my happening and it freaks me out."[94] Also in April 2007, in an interview with WLS-TV in
Chicago, he said, "I was told photos of me in this condition would attract
the gossip papers — so what?" On April 23, the Sun-Times
reported that, when asked about his decision to return to the limelight, Ebert
remarked, "We spend too much time hiding illness."
June
19, 1897
Moe Howard is born Moses Harry Horwitz.
He is best known as the de facto leader of the Three Stooges, the farce comedy team who starred in motion pictures and television for four decades. That group originally started out as Ted Healy and His Stooges, an act that toured the vaudeville circuit. Moe's distinctive hairstyle came about when he was a boy and cut off his curls with a pair of scissors, producing a ragged shape approximating a bowl cut.
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
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