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"
I believe the gift of acting is a gift from God, my oath to God, and I want to make sure on a daily basis that it is honed and deeply spiritual... I want to believe that the audience believes that my acting comes from this special place.
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| Louis Cameron Gossett Jr. May 27, 1936 – March 29, 2024 |
)
March 27, 1974
The Rockford Files premier episode.
The show was created by Roy Huggins and Stephen J.
Cannell. Huggins had created the
television show Maverick (1957–1962), which had also starred Garner, and he
wanted to try to recapture that magic in a "modern day" detective
setting. He teamed with Cannell, who had written for Jack Webb productions such as Adam-12 and Chase (1973–1974, NBC), to create Rockford.
The show was credited as "A Public Arts/Roy
Huggins Production" along with Universal Studios and in association with Cherokee Productions.
Cherokee was the name of Garner's company, which he ran with partners Meta Rosenberg and Juanita Bartlett, who doubled as story editor during most of Rockford's
run.
The series theme by composers Mike Post and Pete Carpenter was released as a single and went to #10 on the Billboard Hot 100, remaining on the chart for 16 weeks. and won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement for 1975.
In 2002, The Rockford Files was ranked #39 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.
Producers Roy Huggins and Stephen J. Cannell devised
the main character to be a rather significant departure from typical television
detectives of the time, essentially Maverick as a modern detective. Rockford had served time in
California's San
Quentin Prison in the 1960s due to a
wrongful conviction. After five years, he received a pardon. His infrequent
jobs as a private investigator barely allow him to maintain his dilapidated mobile home (which doubles as his office) in a parking lot on the
beaches of Malibu,
California.
The show's title sequence began with someone leaving a
message on Rockford's answering machine, which were still novel in 1974. A
different message was heard in each episode. These frequently had to do with
creditors to whom Rockford owed money, or deadbeat clients who owed money to
him. They were usually unrelated to the rest of the plot. As the series went
on, this gimmick became a burden for the show's writers, who had to come up
with a different joke every week. Suggestions from staffers and crew were often
used.
In contrast to most television private eyes of the
time, Rockford wears low-budget "off the rack" clothing and does his
best to avoid fights. He rarely carries his Colt
Detective Special revolver, for which
he does not have a permit, preferring to talk his way out of trouble. He works
on cold
cases, missing persons
investigations, and low-budget insurance scams, and he repeatedly states in the
series that he does not handle "open cases" to avoid trouble with the
police.
In early episodes of the show's first season,
Rockford's trailer is located in a parking lot alongside the highway (address
2354 Pacific Coast Highway) and near the ocean; for the rest of the series, the
trailer is at Paradise Cove (address 29 Cove Road), adjacent to a pier and a
restaurant ("The Sand Castle", now known as the "Paradise Cove
Beach Cafe").
In the series of television movies from 1994 to 1999,
Rockford is still living in a trailer, but it has been extensively enlarged and
remodeled.
In an interesting piece of homage, the trailer serving
as a home for Mel Gibson's "Martin Riggs" character and his
girlfriend, shown near the beginning of Lethal Weapon IV, appears to be located
at nearly the exact same spot.
The show went into hiatus late in 1979 when Garner was
told by his doctors to take time off because of his bad knees and back, as well
as an ulcer. He sustained the former conditions largely because of his
insistence on performing most of his own stunts, especially those involving
fist fights or car chases. Because of his excruciating physical pain, Garner
eventually opted not to continue with the show a number of months later, and
NBC cancelled the program in mid-season. It was also alleged that Rockford became
extremely expensive to produce, mainly due to the extensive location filming
and frequent use of high-end actors as guest stars. According to some sources,
NBC and Universal claimed the show was generating a deficit of several million
dollars, a staggering amount for a nighttime show in those days, although
Garner and his production team Cherokee Productions claimed the show always
turned a profit.
A pilot for a remake of the series was written and
produced for NBC by David Shore in 2010, with Dermot Mulroney playing the title character, but was not picked up by
the network due to complaints that it was not written well and the lead was
miscast. NBC then gave it to Peter Berg to rewrite and produce. As of January 2011, the
project is still in development at NBC.
March 30, 1964
Jeopardy debuted on NBC-TV.
March 30, 1994
First episode of Ellen (originally titled These Friends of Mine for season one).
March 21, 1983
The last episode of the long-running TV series Little House on the Prairie aired. The series, based on the children's book by Laura Ingalls Wilder, premiered in 1974.
The show was one of television's 25 most highly rated shows for seven of its nine seasons. When series star and executive producer Michael Landon decided to leave the show in 1982, the show's title changed to Little House: A New Beginning and focused on character Laura Ingalls Wilder (Melissa Gilbert) and her family. The show lasted only one more season. Three made-for-television movie sequels followed: Little House: Look Back to Yesterday (1983), Little House: Bless All the Dear Children (1983), and Little House: The Last Farewell (1984). March 11, 1989
COPS debuts on Fox.
The hit reality-based television show COPS premieres on the Fox television network, and audiences hear the reggae beat of its distinctive theme song, Inner Circle's "Bad Boys," for the very first time.Created by the producing team of John Langley and
Malcolm Barbour, COPS placed cameras and production crews in the car
with real patrol officers around the country as they went on raids and did
whatever was necessary to catch the perpetrators of various drug-related
crimes. The pilot episode, like the rest of that debut season, was based in
Broward County, Florida, and followed members of the Broward County Sheriff's Office. The
actor Burt Lancaster provided the voice-over for the pilot episode, but the
rest of the show, shot documentary-style, was not accompanied by any narration.
At the time, Fox was only a fledgling television
network, having launched in October 1986. The network took a chance on COPS
after other major networks passed on it, leaping on Langley and Barbour's idea
in the middle of a five-month-long strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA)
during the summer of 1988. A reality-based show was ideal for the network at
the time, as it would require no writers and was relatively inexpensive to
produce.
COPS
surprised the industry by becoming a hit; it is now one of the longest-running
TV shows in history, with more than 700 episodes airing between 1989 and 2008.
Its success spawned an entire new genre of reality programming that would gain
traction during the 1990s and become a major cultural phenomenon by the next
decade. Like any touchstone of popular culture, COPS has inspired
numerous imitators--including the John Langley-produced series Jail and Street
Patrol--and has been parodied extensively, most notably by the Comedy
Central series Reno 911!
In February 2008, producers released a special
two-disc DVD set to celebrate the 20th anniversary of COPS.
March 12, 1974
Wonder Woman debuted on
ABC-TV. The show later went to CBS-TV.
Wonder Woman's first broadcast appearance in live-action television was a television movie made in 1974 for ABC. Written by John D. F. Black, the TV movie resembles the Wonder Woman of the "I Ching" period. Wonder Woman (Cathy Lee Crosby) did not wear the comic-book uniform, demonstrated no apparent super-human powers, had a "secret identity" of Diana Prince that was not all that secret, and she was also depicted as blonde (differing from the brunette image established in the comic books). This 1974 film follows Wonder Woman, assistant to government agent Steve Trevor (Kaz Garas) as she pursues a villain named Abner Smith (Ricardo Montalban) who has stolen a set of code books containing classified information about U.S. government field agents. Along the way, she has to outwit Smith's chief assistants: the handsome yet dangerous George (Andrew Prine) and a rogue Amazon, Angela (Anitra Ford), who Smith has taken on as a bodyguard; a brief duel between Wonder Woman and Angela is the film's only significant action sequence, which occurs during the final third of the story.
March 16, 1949
Henry Enrique "Erik" Estrada is born.
Actor and reserve police officer, known for his co-starring lead role in the 1977–1983 United States police television series CHiPs. He later became known for his work in Spanish language telenovelas, and in more recent years, his appearances in reality television shows and infomercials and as a regular voice on the Adult Swim series Sealab 2021.You will never see a portrait of my love, for miracles are never seen.
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| Steve Lawrence born Sidney Liebowitz July 8, 1935 – March 7, 2024 |
When he was 18 years old, Steve Lawrence was hired by Steve Allen to be one of the singers on Allen's local New York City late night show on WNBC-TV in 1953, along with Eydie Gormé and Andy Williams. When the show got picked up by NBC to be seen on the national network, becoming The Tonight Show, Lawrence, Gormé and Williams stayed on until the program's end in 1957.
In the late 1950s, Lawrence was drafted into the U.S. Army and served as the official vocal soloist with the United States Army Band "Pershing's Own" in Washington, D.C.
Lawrence had success on the record charts in the late 1950s and early 1960s with such hits as "Go Away Little Girl" (U.S. No. 1), "Pretty Blue Eyes" (U.S. No. 9), "Footsteps" (U.S. No. 7), "Portrait of My Love" (U.S. No. 9), and "Party Doll" (U.S. No. 5). "Go Away Little Girl" sold over one million copies and was awarded a Gold record.[6] However, much of Lawrence's musical career was centered on nightclubs and the musical stage.
Lawrence was also an actor, appearing in guest roles on television shows in every decade since the 1950s. After getting his start with Steve Allen's late night show, he was seen in programs such as The Danny Kaye Show; The Judy Garland Show; The Julie Andrews Hour; Night Gallery; The Flip Wilson Show; Police Story; Murder, She Wrote; and CSI.Lawrence and Gormé starred in the 1958 summer replacement series on NBC, The Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé Show. Lawrence made many appearances on The Carol Burnett Show (1967–78), with and without Eydie. The Steve Lawrence Show, with supporting actor Charles Nelson Reilly, ran for 13 weeks in 1965, a variety show that was one of the last CBS television shows to only air in black and white. Lawrence also served as a panelist on What's My Line? (1950–67).
In 1964, Lawrence starred in the Broadway musical What Makes Sammy Run?. It centered on an ambitious young man clawing his way to the top in Hollywood. It ran for 504 performances at the 54th Street Theater.
Lawrence and Gormé appeared together in the Broadway musical Golden Rainbow, which ran from February 1968 to January 1969. Although the show was not a huge success (a summary of this experience is chronicled in unflattering detail in William Goldman's 1968 book The Season), the show contained the memorable song "I've Gotta Be Me". This song was originally sung by Lawrence at the end of the first act of the musical. Sammy Davis, Jr. later recorded a version of the song that hit number 11 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in 1969.In 1984, Lawrence and comedian Don Rickles hosted ABC's Foul-Ups, Bleeps & Blunders.
In 1985, Lawrence and Gormé played Tweedledee (Gormé) and Tweedledum (Lawrence) in Irwin Allen's film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.Lawrence played Mark McCormick's father, Sonny Daye, in two episodes of Hardcastle and McCormick. He appeared on The Nanny several times — first as himself in season 2, episode 14, and then as the much-talked about, but never really seen, Morty Fine, father of Fran Fine in a few of the final episodes of the show. In 2011, he portrayed Jack, a wealthy love interest of Betty White's character, Elka Ostrovsky, on Hot in Cleveland. In 2014, he guest-starred in an episode of Two and a Half Men on CBS, and sang the theme song to the parody miniseries The Spoils of Babylon.
Lawrence and Gormé married on December 29, 1957, at the El Rancho Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada. They had two sons together; David Nessim Lawrence (b. 1960) is an ASCAP Award-winning composer, who wrote the score for High School Musical, and Michael Robert Lawrence (1962–1986), who died suddenly from ventricular fibrillation resulting from an undiagnosed heart condition at the age of 23. Michael was an assistant editor for a television show at the time of his death and was apparently healthy despite a previous diagnosis of slight arrhythmia.
Gormé and Lawrence were in Atlanta, Georgia, at the time of Michael's death, having performed at the Fox Theater the night before. Upon learning of the death, family friend Frank Sinatra sent his private plane to fly the couple to New York to meet David, who was attending school at the time. Following their son's death, Gormé and Lawrence took a year off before touring again.
Eydie Gormé died on August 10, 2013, at age 84, after a brief, undisclosed illness.
In June 2019, following public speculation about his health, Lawrence announced that he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and that treatment to slow its progression had so far been successful.
Lawrence died from complications due to Alzheimer's disease in Los Angeles, on March 7, 2024, at the age of 88.
| Good Night Steve |
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| Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
March 4, 1994
John Candy dies.
Born in 1950, Candy's first professional acting work was in children's
theater in his native Canada. In 1972, he was accepted into the prestigious
Second City comedy troupe in Toronto, where he would become a regular writer
and performer for the group's television program, SCTV, alongside other
rising comics like Eugene Levy (later Candy's co-star in Splash) and
Harold Ramis (Ghostbusters). When SCTV moved to network
television in 1981, Candy moved with it; that year and the next, he won Emmy
Awards for writing for the show. Candy's recurring (and most famous) SCTV persona
was Yosh Shmenge, a clarinet player in a polka band. He would reprise the
character in a mock documentary, The Last Polka, on HBO in 1985 and
would also play a polka musician in the smash hit Home Alone (1990).
Candy made his big break into movies with Splash (1984), in which he
stole most of his scenes as the idle, high-living brother of the main
character, played by Tom Hanks. The film, directed by Ron Howard, was a smash
hit, jump-starting the careers of Candy, Hanks, Darryl Hannah and Levy. In one
particularly memorable scene, Candy throws himself with abandon around a
racquetball court, using his hefty frame to full comedic effect. Six-foot-three
and weighing as much as 275 pounds, he struggled with dieting over the years,
but his heft undoubtedly contributed to his success as a comic performer.
After Splash, Candy was in high demand as a lovable oaf. He starred
in a number of box-office hits over the next 10 years, including Spaceballs
(1987), and collaborations with the writer, producer and director John Hughes
in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), The Great Outdoors (1988)
and Uncle Buck (1989). A devoted sports fan and co-owner of the Toronto
Argonauts of the Canadian Football League, he was also part owner of House of
Blues, with the actors Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi. In 1993, Candy won praise
for his role as the sensitive coach of an unlikely Jamaican bobsled team in Cool
Runnings (1993).
At the time of his death, Candy had just completed his directorial debut,
the Fox Television movie comedy Hostage for a Day. He had performed
two-thirds of his scenes in Wagons East, which was finished after the
filmmakers' insurance company paid a reported $15 million settlement. Another
recently wrapped movie, Canadian Bacon, was released in 1995. Candy was
survived by his wife, Rosemary, and their two children, Jennifer and
Christopher.
March 8th, 1974
The last episode The Brady Bunch aired
"The Hair-Brained Scheme"
March 9,
1954
Edward R. Murrow See it Now
"A Report on
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy"
Edward R. Murrow may not have scored the first blow against Joseph McCarthy, but he landed a decisive one. For that, he always will be linked inextricably with the Wisconsin senator, and remembered by Americans as a champion of liberty and democracy. As early as 1950, Murrow observed on the air that "the weight of the public testimony has tended to show that so far, Senator McCarthy's charges [againstsuspected communist subversives] are unproven." On March 9, 1954, Murrow, then the most respected journalist in America, engaged in a tough exposé of the senator and his tactics; the last paragraphs of his presentation are indelibly etched into our history as is the rhetoric of McCarthy himself. In the interest of the “fairness doctrine,” McCarthy was given an equal amount of time for a rebuttal, which he delivered in his classic acerbic style on April 6, 1954. This was the beginning of McCarthy’s downfall.
March 9, 1959
The International Toy Fair in New York premiered Barbie.
That event was followed by 50 years of Barbie commercials during Saturday morning cartoons.
