Your Mental Sorbet: Monster Mash - Bruce Springsteen - Rochester, Oct. 31, 2012

 

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

This Week in Television History: November 2022 PART I

    

November 2, 1992

Hal Roach dies. 

Producer, director, and screenwriter Hal Roach dies at the age of 100. Roach is best remembered for his silent comedies featuring Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd, and the gaggle of mischievous kids who starred in the "Our Gang" comedies (who later became known as the Little Rascals).

The silent-film maker, born in Elmira, New York, had worked as a mule skinner, stunt man, truck driver, and Alaska gold prospector when he came to Hollywood in the early 1900s. He started out as a stunt man and bit-part actor, then formed his own production company with D. Whiting, called The Rolin Company, after he inherited $3,000 in 1915 (he later bought Whiting out and changed the studio's name to Hal Roach Studios).

Roach hired Harold Lloyd to play Willie Work in a series of comic shorts he hoped to produce. The series fell through until Roach changed Willie Work's name to Lonesome Luke, who became a much-beloved movie character known as "the man with the glasses." Regulars in the comic series, called "Phun-Philms," included Will Rogers, Edgar Kennedy, and Laurel and Hardy.

In the 1920s, Roach started making feature films and dramas along with the comedies and westerns that had occupied the bulk of his energy earlier in his career. He weeded out the least-popular shows and concentrated on his gems, including the Laurel and Hardy and Our Gang series. Actors who worked under Hal Roach contracts early in their careers included Jean Harlow, Mickey Rooney, and Zasu Pitts, along with directors Norman Z. McLeod, Leo McCarey, and George Stevens.

Roach won Oscars for two shorts, The Music Box in 1932 and Bored of Education in 1936. When he shifted his focus to feature-length movies (in partnership with his son, Hal Roach Jr.), he sold the Our Gang rights to MGM and produced the acclaimed film Of Mice and Men, an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about a sweet, developmentally disabled man named Lennie and his protector, George. In the 1940s, he turned his attention from the big screen to television production. A military colonel, Roach produced propaganda and training films for the armed forces during World War II, and when he returned to Hollywood after the war, he began working in television. His company collapsed in the 1950s, but in the 1960s he produced The Crazy World of Laurel and Hardy. The film proved to be his swan song: His studio was demolished in 1963 (a housing development is on Roach Ranch now). He received an honorary Academy Award in 1983 for his contributions to making movies. He died in 1992 at age 100.

November 4, 1937

Loretta Jane Swit is born. 

Stage and television actress known for her character roles. Swit is best known for her portrayal of Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on M*A*S*H.

November 5, 2007

Writers strike stalls production of TV shows, movies.

Members of the Writers Guild of America, East, and Writers Guild of America, West—labor organizations representing television, film and radio writers—go on strike in Los Angeles and New York after negotiations break down with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), a trade group that represents TV and film producers in the United States, including CBS, NBC Universal, Walt Disney Company, Paramount Pictures, News Corp., Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM and Warner Brothers. The strike caused production to shut down on more than 60 TV shows and resulted in a loss of $3 billion, by some estimates, to the Los Angeles economy alone.

The strike’s key issues included the writers’ demand for a larger share of DVD revenues and payment for films and TV shows distributed over the Internet and other forms of new media. Late-night talk shows, which used guild writers, were immediately affected by the strike and went into reruns. Production also shut down on many prime-time comedies and dramas; however, some had stockpiled completed programming and were able to avoid going straight into reruns.

After a series of stalemated discussions, leaders from both sides eventually reached a tentative agreement, and on February 12, 2008, WGA members voted to end the strike and go back to work. The strike officially ended on February 26, when WGA members overwhelmingly approved a new three-year contract with the AMPTP.

The impact of the writers’ walkout was felt across the entertainment industry, from actors to caterers to editors to set designers to animal wranglers. According to the Los Angeles Times, the chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation estimated the strike resulted in a loss to the local economy of more than $3 billion. The Times article stated: “Of that total, an estimated $772 million came from lost wages for writers and production workers, $981 million from various businesses that service the industry, including caterers and equipment rental houses, and $1.3 billion from the ripple effect of consumers not spending as much at retail shops, restaurants and car dealers.”

Previous multiple-month strikes launched by Writers Guild members in 1960 and 1988 had also greatly impacted the entertainment industry, bringing TV and movie production to a standstill and costing millions in revenue.

November 6, 1967

Phil Donahue began a TV talk show in Dayton, OH. 

The show, "Donahue," was on the air for 29 years. In 1967, Phil Donahue left his positions as news reporter and interviewer at WHIO radio and television in Dayton and became the host of a new television program, Phil Donahue Show on WLWD (now WDTN), also in Dayton. His new program replaced The Johnny Gilbert Show, when Gilbert left on short notice for Los Angelesfor a hosting job. On November 6, 1967, Donahue hosted his first guest, atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Though he would later call her message of atheism "very important", he also stated she was rather unpleasant and that, off-camera, she mocked him for being Catholic.

Initially, the program was shown only on other stations owned by the Crosley Broadcasting Corporation (which would later take the name of its parent Avco Company), which also owned WLWD. But, on January 5, 1970, The Donahue Show entered nationwide syndication.

Donahue relocated the show's home base to Chicago in 1974, first housing it at then-independent station WGN-TV. Around this time the show's popularity increased, and in the process it became a national phenomenon. When the Avco Company divested their broadcasting properties in 1976, Multimedia Inc.assumed production and syndication of the program, which was now known as simply Donahue. In 1982, Donahue moved the show to CBS-owned WBBM-TV for its final years based in Chicago and the Midwest.

In 1984, Donahue introduced many viewers to hip-hop culture, as a program featured breakdancing for the first time on national television, accompanied by a performance from the hip hop group UTFO. In 1985, Donahue left Chicago for New York City and began recording in Studio 8-G at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the home of his New York affiliate WNBC-TV. Prior to the move, a month-long series of commercials heralded the move, and NBC's late-night talk host David Letterman would use portions of his national program counting down the days to Donahue's move with a huge calendar in his studio. One of the most talked-about incidents in Donahue's history came on January 21, 1985, soon after the show moved to New York. On this day's program, seven members of the audience appeared to faint during the broadcast, which was seen live in New York. Donahue, fearing the fainting was caused by both anxiety at being on television and an overheated studio, eventually cleared the studio of audience members and then resumed the show. It turned out the fainting "spell" was cooked up by media hoaxer Alan Abel in what Abel said was a protest against what he termed as poor-quality television.

In 1992, Donahue celebrated the 25th anniversary of his long-running television program with a NBC special produced at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, in which he was lauded by his talk-show peers. Ironically, in many corners, he was seen as having been bypassed both by Oprah Winfrey, whose own hugely successful national show was based in Donahue's former Chicago home base; and Sally Jessy Raphael, whose own talk show was distributed by Do The talk show field became increasingly saturated as the 1990s progressed, leading to a decline in ratings. The show also lost support after Donahue expressed his feelings regarding the first Gulf War. In the fall of 1995, ABC-owned KGO-TV in San Francisco dropped Donahue after carrying it for several years and, weeks later, New York's WNBC-TV also canceled it. Donahue was also evicted from its Rockefeller Plaza home, and relocated to new studios in Manhattan. Many other stations, such as KTRK-TV (another ABC O&O) in Houston, and KYW-TV in Philadelphia either began dropping Donahue or moving it to late-night and early-morning time slots, causing a further loss of viewers. Donahue never aired on another station in New York or San Francisco, two of the largest U.S. television markets.

After 29 years (26 of which in syndication) and nearly 7,000 shows, the final episode aired on September 13, 1996, culminating in what continues to be the longest continuous run of any syndicated talk show in U.S. television history.

 nahue's syndicator, Multimedia.

The end of Donahue. The talk show field became increasingly saturated as the 1990s progressed, leading to a decline in ratings. The show also lost support after Donahue expressed his feelings regarding the first Gulf War. In the fall of 1995, ABC-owned KGO-TV in San Francisco dropped Donahue after carrying it for several years and, weeks later, New York's WNBC-TV also canceled it. Donahue was also evicted from its Rockefeller Plaza home, and relocated to new studios in Manhattan. Many other stations, such as KTRK-TV (another ABC O&O) in Houston, and KYW-TV in Philadelphia either began dropping Donahue or moving it to late-night and early-morning time slots, causing a further loss of viewers. Donahue never aired on another station in New York or San Francisco, two of the largest U.S. television markets.

After 29 years (26 of which in syndication) and nearly 7,000 shows, the final episode aired on September 13, 1996, culminating in what continues to be the longest continuous run of any syndicated talk show in U.S. television history.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Your Mental Sorbet: Donny & Marie Osmond - "The Time Warp"

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

10/30/1998. From the Donny & Marie talk show

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Leslie Jordan

I fell out of the womb and landed in my mother's high heels.

-Leslie Jordan.

Leslie Allen Jordan

April 29, 1955 – October 24, 2022

Leslie Jordan died after his car hit the side of a building at Cahuenga Boulevard and Romaine Street in Hollywood. He was believed to have experienced a medical episode which led to the crash. Jordan was pronounced dead at the scene.

His television roles included Lonnie Garr on Hearts Afire (1993–1995), Beverly Leslie on Will & Grace (2001–2006, 2017–2020), for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series in 2006, several characters in the American Horror Story franchise (2011–present), Sid on The Cool Kids (2018–2019), and Phil on Call Me Kat (2021–2023). 

In theater, he played Earl "Brother Boy" Ingram from Sordid Lives, and also portrayed the character in the popular cult film of the same name. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Jordan became an Instagram sensation, amassing 5.8M followers. In April 2021, he published his autobiography How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived.

Good Night Mr. Jordan

Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: October 2022 PART IV

   

October 25, 1982

Newhart first aired. 

Starring comedian Bob Newhart and actress Mary Frann as an author and wife who owned and operated an inn located in a small, rural Vermont town that was home to many eccentric characters. TV Guide, TV Land, and A&E named its series finale as one of the most memorable in television history.

October 27, 1947

The first episode of You Bet Your Life premiered on ABC Radio. 

The show was later shown on NBC TV. 

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Your Mental Sorbet: Ron Masak in The Monkees Monstrous Monkee Mash

Ronald Alan Masak
July 1, 1936 – October 20, 2022


Good Night Mr. Masak
 

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: October 2022 PART III

  

October 21, 1962

Chubby Checker sings his 1960 No. 1 hit, "The Twist," on Ed Sullivan's variety show.

His appearance boosted sales of the record, which became increasingly popular until January, when the song hit No. 1 again, making "The Twist" the only record ever to top the charts twice. The song is still considered one of the most successful singles of all time, having stayed in the Top 100 charts for 39 weeks.

October 22, 1942

Annette Funicello is born in Utica, New York. Funicello became a featured Mouseketeer on Disney's Mickey Mouse Club and later starred in several Disney features, including The Shaggy Dog (1959). 

Her popularity continued into her teenage years. She starred in a series of beach movies with singer Frankie Avalon, including Beach Party in 1963 and Muscle Beach Party in 1964. Decades later, the pair reunited in Back to the Beach (1987).

October 22, 1952

Jeff Goldblum born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

Goldblum began performing in stage productions in New York City in the 1970s. His big-screen debut came with a tiny part in 1974’s Death Wish, which starred Charles Bronson as an architect turned vigilante. Goldblum then went on to roles in director Robert Altman’s California Split (1974) and Nashville (1975), which was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. In 1977, he had a small role in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, which won four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress (Diane Keaton). The following year, he appeared in the hit sci-fi movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Goldblum’s movie career heated up in the 1980s. In 1983, he played a tabloid magazine reporter in director Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill, about a group of college friends from the 1960s who reunite in the 1980s following the death of a friend. The Big Chill, which featured an ensemble cast also including Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, Tom Berenger, William Hurt, Mary Kay Place, JoBeth Williams and Meg Tilly, was nominated for three Oscars, including Best Picture.  In 1985, Goldblum co-starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in director John Landis’s Into the Night and teamed with Kevin Costner, Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn and Danny Glover in the Western Silverado. The following year, Goldblum starred in David Cronenberg’s The Fly as Seth Brundle, a scientist who turns into a giant bug-like creature after an experiment goes wrong. The Fly, which featured the now-famous line, “Be afraid…Be very afraid,” was a critical and commercial success, and Goldblum received strong reviews for his performance. The film, which won an Oscar for Best Makeup, co-starred Geena Davis, to whom Goldblum was married from 1987 to 1990. Goldblum and Davis also co-starred in the 1988 comedy Earth Girls Are Easy.

In 1993, Goldblum played a mathematician in Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi blockbuster Jurassic Park, about a fictional island filled with cloned dinosaurs created by scientists. Based on a Michael Crichton novel, Jurassic Park became one of the highest-grossing movies in history. The film, which co-starred Sam Neill and Laura Dern (to whom Goldblum was engaged for a time), won Oscars for Best Sound, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Effects Editing. In 1996, Goldblum appeared with Will Smith, Bill Pullman and Mary McDonnell in another sci-fi blockbuster, Independence Day, about an alien attack on Earth. The following year, Goldblum reprised his role as Dr. Ian Malcolm in Spielberg’s Jurassic Park sequel The Lost World, also featuring Julianne Moore and Vince Vaughan.

Goldblum went on to appear in such movies as 2002’s Igby Goes Down, with Kieran Culkin and Claire Danes; director Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), co-starring Bill Murray and Owen Wilson; and director Barry Levinson’s Man of the Year (2006).

October 23, 2002

A Michigan appeals court reversed the 1999 decision against the Jenny Jones Show. 

The court ruled that the program had no legal duty to protect a guest who was murdered after revealing a gay crush. Scott Amedure was shot to death by Jonathan Schmitz in 1995, three days after Amedure revealed an attraction to Schmitz during a taping of the show in Chicago. The segment was never aired. 

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Your Mental Sorbet: Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies

 

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

Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies is a 1972 animated one-hour TV-movie (with a live-action segment near the end) that was aired on December 16 as an episode of the anthology series The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie.^[1] In this Filmation-produced movie, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and other Looney Tunes characters interact with the characters from the Filmation series Groovie Goolies.

This movie is notable for being the one and only time that Warner Bros. "loaned out" their famous Looney Tunes characters to appear in a Filmation production (otherwise they were a silent partner). Warner Bros. had shut down their animation studio in 1969. While Warner Bros. had outsourced production to other companies since the 1960s, it was usually to studios run by former Warner Bros. alumni (such as Friz Freleng and later Chuck Jones), something that was not the case with Filmation.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

Angela Lansbury

Bringing humor and bringing happiness and joy to an audience is a wonderful opportunity in life, believe me.

-Angela Lansbury

Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury

16 October 1925 – 11 October 2022

Angela Lansbury was an Irish-British and American actress and singer who played various roles across film, stage, and television. Her career, one of the longest in the entertainment industry, spanned eight decades, much of it in the United States; her work also received much international attention. She was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema at the time of her death.

Lansbury was born to an upper-middle-class family in central London, the daughter of Irish actress Moyna Macgill and English politician Edgar Lansbury. To escape the Blitz, she moved to the United States in 1940, studying acting in New York City. Proceeding to Hollywood in 1942, she signed to MGM and obtained her first film roles, in Gaslight (1944), National Velvet in 1944, and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), earning her two Academy Award nominations and a Golden Globe Award. She appeared in eleven further MGM films, mostly in minor roles, and after her contract ended in 1952 she began supplementing her cinematic work with theatrical appearances. Although largely seen as a B-list star during this period, her role in the film The Manchurian Candidate (1962) received widespread acclaim and is often cited as one of her career-best performances, earning her a third Academy Award nomination. Moving into musical theatre, Lansbury finally gained stardom for playing the leading role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966), which won her her first Tony Award and established her as a gay icon.

Amidst difficulties in her personal life, Lansbury moved from California to County Cork, Ireland in 1970, and continued with a variety of theatrical and cinematic appearances throughout that decade. These included leading roles in the stage musicals Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, and The King and I, as well as in the hit Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). Moving into television in 1984, she achieved worldwide fame as fictional writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the American whodunit series Murder, She Wrote, which ran for twelve seasons until 1996, becoming one of the longest-running and most popular detective drama series in television history. Through Corymore Productions, a company that she co-owned with her husband Peter Shaw, Lansbury assumed ownership of the series and was its executive producer for the final four seasons. She also moved into voice work, contributing to animated films like Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Don Bluth's Anastasia (1997). She toured in a variety of international productions and continued to make occasional film appearances such as Nanny McPhee (2005) and Mary Poppins Returns (2018).

Lansbury received an Honorary Academy Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the BAFTA, a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award and five additional Tony Awards, six Golden Globes, and an Olivier Award. She also was nominated for numerous other industry awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on three occasions, and various Primetime Emmy Awards on 18 occasions, and a Grammy Award. In 2014, Lansbury was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. She was the subject of three biographies.

Good Night Dame Angela

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa