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"
Here is another "Mental Sorbet"A little spark of madnessthat we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.
Jaime is sent to a remote island to impersonate the niece of the Carstairs family. When the family is sent on a scavenger hunt to find their dead brother's fortune, it's up to Jaime to locate it first and obtain the formula for a top-secret alloy. Guest Cast Vincent Price (Manfred Carstairs and Cyrus Carstairs) William Windom (Warfield) Hermione Baddeley (Aunt Tess) Julie Newmar (Claudette) and Abe Vigoda (Barlow)
Television writer, producer and director Joseph Dougherty leads a roundtable discussion on the career of Jack Webb on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, premiering Jan. 27-Feb. 1 at the following times and venues:
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Emmy Award-winning writer, producer and director Joseph Dougherty (thirtysomething, Saving Grace, Pretty Little Liars) returns this week as we take a fresh look at Dragnet, the iconic television series created by Jack Webb that, unfortunately, has often been derided in recent decades. After recently rediscovering the original Dragnet series on radio, Joe went back to the original 1950s television version of Dragnet and, as he explained to us, “what I found there was nothing short of culture shock. I'd experienced Jack Webb at the end of his career, and the late 1960s incarnation of Dragnet. I had no idea of what was really going on in the 1950s series. I'd like to sit down and talk about my own revelations about how Webb essentially invented the procedural drama and how bold some of those early shows were.”
That’s exactly what we’ll do in the second hour of this week’s program. Joining Joe in our roundtable discussion will be writer, producer and TV scholar Dan Farren (Story Salon) and Tony Figueroa. We hope you’ll join us as well.
The first hour of this week’s show will feature Part 2 of our look at 2015: The Year in Television, with a particular focus on notable passings in the world of entertainment.
While living in Los Angeles, I'd jog three to five miles a day. One morning jogging, my agent calls about a new series called Barney Miller, saying, "Go there at once." — Abe Vigoda
Abraham Charles "Abe" VigodaFebruary 24, 1921 – January 26, 2016
Abe Vigoda died today at the age of 94.
Vigoda was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1921, a son of Samuel and Lena (Moses) Vigoda, Jewishimmigrants from Russia. His father was a tailor who had three sons: Abe, Hy and Bill —a comic book artist who drew for the Archie comics franchise and others in the 1940s. The name "Vigoda" in Russian ("выгода") means benefit/advantage/profit/gain.
Vigoda began acting while in his teens, working with the American Theatre Wing. His career as a professional actor began in 1947.
Vigoda gained acting notability in the 1960s with his work in Broadway productions, including Marat/Sade (1967) playing "Mad Animal", The Man in the Glass Booth (1968) playing "Landau", Inquest (1970), and Tough to Get Help (1972). His best-known film role is that of elder mobster Salvatore Tessio in The Godfather (1972). He also appeared briefly in The Godfather Part II in a flashback sequence at the end of the film.According to director Francis Ford Coppola's commentary on the DVD's widescreen edition, Vigoda landed the role of Tessio in an "open call," in which actors who don't have agents can come in for an audition.
He gained further fame playing Detective Sgt. Phil Fish on Barney Miller, a character known for his world-weary demeanor and persistent hemorrhoids. Vigoda landed the role after an unusual audition in which he unwittingly displayed his perfection for the role.
Vigoda starred alongside Florence Stanley and Todd Bridges (before Diff'rent Strokes fame) in a brief spinoff of Barney Miller that centered on his character, eponymously called Fish, until it was canceled in June 1978. According to Bridges, just 12 during the show's second season, Fish was scrubbed after Vigoda demanded more money for a third season than the producers were willing to pay.
Before Barney Miller, he made a few appearances on the ABC TV soap Dark Shadows as Ezra Braithwaite and Otis Greene.
In 1982 People magazine mistakenly referred to Vigoda as dead. At the time, Vigoda was performing in a stage play in Calgary. He took the mistake with good humor, posing for a photograph published in Variety in which he was sitting up in a coffin, holding the erroneous issue of People. Jeff Jarvis, a People employee at the time, said that the magazine's editors were known for "messing up" stories, and one of them repeatedly inserted the phrase "the late" in reference to Vigoda, even after a researcher correctly removed it. The edited (erroneous) version was what went to print.
The same mistake was made in 1987 when a reporter for television station WWOR, Channel 9 in Secaucus, New Jersey, mistakenly referred to him as "the late Abe Vigoda". She realized and corrected her mistake the next day.
Vigoda has been the subject of many running gags pertaining to the mistaken reports of his death. In 1997, Vigoda appeared in the film Good Burger as the character Otis, a restaurant's French fry man. Several jokes were made about his advanced age, including Otis saying "I should've died years ago." A Late Night with David Letterman skit showed Letterman trying to summon Vigoda's ghost, but Vigoda walked in and declared, "I'm not dead yet, you pinhead!"
In May 2001, a website was mounted with only one purpose: to report whether Vigoda was dead or alive. In 2005, a "tongue-in-cheek" Firefox extension was released with the sole purpose of telling the browser user Vigoda's status.
Continuing with the gag, Vigoda appeared frequently to make fun of his status on the television show Late Night with Conan O'Brien, including a guest appearance on the show's final episode.
On January 23, 2009, Vigoda appeared live on The Today Show. He said he was doing well, joked about previous reports of his death and announced he had just completed a voice-over for an H&R Block commercial to air during the Super Bowl.
In the 1998 New York Friars' Club roast of Drew Carey, with Vigoda in the audience, comedian Jeffrey Ross joked, "my one regret is that Abe Vigoda isn't alive to see this". He followed that with "Drew, you're a big gambler, what's the over-under on Abe Vigoda?"
“When I was a young man, I was told success had to come in my youth. I found this to be a myth. My experiences have taught me that if you deeply believe in what you are doing, success can come at any age.” — Abe Vigoda
Good Night Mr. Vigoda I still don't believe you are really gone...
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
January
26, 1926
John Logie Bairdgave the world's first demonstration of true
television before 50 scientists in an attic room in central London.
In
1927, his television was demonstrated over 438 miles of telephone line between
London and Glasgow, and he formed the Baird Television Development Company.
(BTDC). In 1928, the BTDC achieved the first transatlantic television
transmission between London and New York and the first transmission to a ship
in mid-Atlantic. He also gave the first demonstration of both colour and
stereoscopic television.
January 27, 1976
The Happy Days spin-off Laverne and Shirley, featuring two
Milwaukee women who work on a brewery assembly line preimers.
The show starred Penny Marshall, sister of producer
Garry Marshall, and Cindy Williams. Fierce rivalry erupted between the two
stars, and Williams left the show in 1982. The show lasted only one more season
before its cancellation in 1983.
Alda was born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo in The Bronx, New York City. His father, Robert Alda (born Alphonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D'Abruzzo),
was an actor and singer, and his mother, Joan Browne, was a former showgirl.
His father was of Italian descent and his mother was of Irish ancestry. His adopted surname, "Alda," is a portmanteau of ALphonso and D'Abruzzo. When Alda
was seven years old, he contracted poliomyelitis. To combat the disease, his parents administered a
painful treatment regimen developed by Sister Elizabeth Kenny that consisted of applying hot woollen blankets to
his limbs and stretching his muscles. Alda attended Archbishop Stepinac High
School in White
Plains, New York. In 1956, he
received his Bachelor of Science degree in English from Fordham College of Fordham
University in the Bronx, where he was
a student staff member of its FM radio station, WFUV. Alda's half-brother, Antony Alda, was born the same year and would also become an
actor.
During Alda's junior year, he studied in Paris, acted in a
play in Rome,
and performed with his father on television in Amsterdam. In college, he was a member of the ROTC, and after
graduation, he served for a year at Fort Benning, Georgia, then joined the U.S.
Army Reserve, and served for six
months as a gunnery officer. A year after graduation, he married Arlene Weiss, with whom he has three daughters: Eve, Elizabeth, and Beatrice. Two of his 7 grandchildren are aspiring actors. The
Aldas have been longtime residents of Leonia,
New Jersey. Alda frequented Sol &
Sol Deli on Palisade Avenue in the nearby town of Englewood,
New Jersey—a fact mirrored in his
character's daydream about eating whitefish from the establishment, in an
episode of M*A*S*H in which Hawkeye sustains a head injury.
Career
January 28, 1956
Young country-rock singer Elvis Presley makes his
first-ever television appearance on the TV musical-variety program Stage
Show on this day in 1956.
Presley
sang "Heartbreak Hotel," which quickly became a hit single. In total,
Elvis appeared on six shows. The program was hosted by swing band leaders Tommy
and Jimmy Dorsey. Elvis went on to appear on Ed Sullivan's immensely popular
variety show, Toast of the Town, in the fall of 1956. The appearance
made Elvis a household name.
January 28, 1986
Challenger explodes
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when the NASASpace Shuttle orbiterChallenger (OV-099) (mission STS-51-L) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members, which included five NASA astronauts and two Payload Specialists. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 EST (16:39 UTC). Disintegration of the vehicle began after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff. The O-ring failure caused a breach in the SRB joint it sealed, allowing pressurized burning gas from within the solid rocket motor to reach the outside and impinge upon the adjacent SRB aft field joint attachment hardware and external fuel tank. This led to the separation of the right-hand SRB's aft field joint attachment and the structural failure of the external tank.Aerodynamic forces broke up the orbiter.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
