Tom McMahon

I Spy Now On DVD

I Spy Now On DVD

 

From an Amazon review:

The 82 hour-long episodes (all in color) of the spy adventure series "I Spy" ran from 1965-1968 on NBC. All 28 episodes from season one are on this DVD, there was no pilot episode.

It was a top-notch spy saga with a fair amount of the same "tongue-in-cheek" self-parody found in "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." series and the popular James Bond movie franchise. But don't expect the same level of gadgetry and gimmicks; "I Spy" is much more about the witty banter between its pair of spies, Kelly Robinson (Robert Culp) and Alexander Scott (Bill Cosby). Their cover as they travel the world on assorted missions is tennis, Kelly is a tennis pro and Scotty is his trainer. They work for an unnamed U.S. espionage agency.

The intelligent and witty tone of the show obviously appealed to its fans as reflected by its three year broadcast run and subsequent syndication. Much of the credit for this goes to Sheldon Leonard who incorporated the more subtle comedy elements he had experimented with when producing "Make Room for Daddy", "The Andy Griffith Show", and "The Dick Van Dyke Show".

Cosby was hardly an unknown at the time of the series premiere. He was a wildly popular stand-up comic who had appeared many times on television variety shows and sold millions of record albums featuring his semi-autobiographical comedy routines. But his Alexander Scott character is generally a pretty serious guy (he does occasionally sneak in some of his comedy routines) and Cosby's portrayal is quite believable. Prior to this no comedian (and certainly no black comedian) had stared in an action show.

Culp is not so much the dashing James Bond style hero as a contemporary version of the less macho Bret Maverick type. He is not above pleading ignorance or confusion in a crisis. Fortunately the chemistry was excellent between the two stars.

A Shrine To Self-Importance

An excerpt from Andrew Ferguson:

American journalism followed the same trajectory into self-importance, borne aloft on the same draft of hot air and vanity. Our terrific country offers lots of ways to make a living, but with the possible exceptions of movie acting and architecture, only modern journalism would have the nerve to celebrate itself with something as gaudy and improbable as the Newseum. The Freedom Forum, a nonprofit foundation seeded with money from the Gannett newspaper chain, conceived and underwrote the museum for $450 million, and a half dozen newspaper and media companies kicked in another $122 million to pay for exhibits and other trimmings. That's $572 million--a lavish sum by any measure. It's especially impressive from an industry that is, according to its own incessant complaints, going broke.

(via Charlie Sykes)

Opportunity Cost

Explained for you in this excerpt from Economics Professor Don Salyards:

Because our lives are like a candle, each one with a certain time to burn before the flame is extinguished; opportunity cost is an obsession for many economists, including me. The other day my wife and I helped a neighbor pack for a move to a new apartment. I was astounded to find that he probably owned 200 movie DVD’s! As I packed them into boxes my first thought was that at $15 each, he had probably spent nearly $3,000 for these movies. But then, my economist brain focused in on the real cost of those DVD’s; the benefits that he could have received by spending between 500 and 700 hours doing something else. After all, if a person worked a 40 hour week, he would have to work nearly 18 weeks to “spend” 700 hours. With 700 hours, the young man could have taken a complete semester of college courses, or spent time playing tennis, or taken dancing lessons, or learned to cook, or gone on numerous vacations, etc.

It seemed to me that the young fellow had spent nearly 700 hours of “consumption” time watching movies, when he could have benefited greatly by using some of those hours in “investment” time (activities spent educating himself or otherwise improving his future prospects for success). Why did he instead spend all of this time watching movies? First of all, he enjoys movies immensely, so he should spend some time watching them. But secondly, I suspect that he ignored the fact that there were some really beneficial alternative uses for his spare time. Don’t get me wrong, if watching 700 hours of movies gave him more satisfaction than anything else he could have done during every one of those 700 hours, the young man should have watched 700 hours of movies. I suspect, however, that even he would acknowledge that he would have been better off if he had watched a few less movies and reaped the benefits that would have come to him using at least some of his time doing something else.

The 1955 Record Album Lonesome Echo: The Songs Are Sung By Jackie Gleason. The Album Cover Is Painted By Salvador Dali. And The Mind Boggles.

The 1955 Record Album Lonesome Echo: The Songs Are Sung By Jackie Gleason. The Album Cover Is Painted By Salvador Dali. And The Mind Boggles.

From Varifrank:

Think about it for a second.

Gleason - Dali.

Unfortunately, this is not where the weirdness ends. Heres just a partial list of things I that I find weird about this rather odd artifact from the past.

1. Jackie Gleason, made record albums where he showcased his singing. Apparently this went on for years with no intervention from the authorities.

2. Capitol Records, who would one day have the Beatles under contract, gave Jackie Gleason a contract to make these albums, which were not for comedy skits, but singing. I assume this was done for money and profit and not for laughs or as a result of the loss of a bet on the part of a record company executive.

3. People bought the albums. I cannot for the life of me figure out why. Perhaps there was a shortage of rodent repellant in the 1950's.

And that's just a partial list of Varifrank's partial list. I guess that the Gleason style just isn't his cup of tea. But maybe it's not about the songs anyway:

Although Gleason's 1955 album is not nearly as well known as most others in this list, it can be seen as one of the most important. Throughout the 50s, more and more experimentation with album art was taking place, particularly in the jazz scene. While the crooners of the day still tended to favour a simple photo of themselves as their album cover, others such as Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Count Basie were employing artists to come up with more interesting concepts. When TV personality Gleason used a piece by legendary surrealist Salvador Dali for his album cover, it was official; the album cover was a legitimate art form. It hasn't looked back.

Hogan's Heroes In Germany

From Wikipedia:

The show was not broadcast in Germany over German TV until 1992. The original dubbed version was titled Stacheldraht und Fersengeld (Barbed Wire and Turning Tail); it was then re-dubbed and released in 1994 as Ein Käfig voller Helden (A Cage of Heroes), which gained considerable popularity (The show was broadcast over US Armed Forces Network in 1974 for about one week, but the German government strongly requested its removal, which was acted upon by the management of Armed Forces TV).

In the newer German version, the Germans speak in various different accents which makes it funnier to a German audience than Standard German would. It amplifies the contrast between Klink (who portrays the Prussian stereotype) and Schultz (who portrays the Urbayern Bavarian stereotype). Furthermore Klink’s choice of vocabulary and memorable quotes add jokes which would not be present in a direct translation of the English language original. Another major change is that Newkirk, who speaks with a British accent in the original, is changed to an exaggerated stutterer in the German version. Apart from that there are numerous deviations from the original plot, introducing elements which were not present in the original. Amongst other things it introduces a new character, Kalinke, who is Klink’s cleaning lady and permanent mistress. She is referred to, but never seen.

TV Network News Coverage Falls As US Deaths In Iraq Decline

TV Network News Coverage Falls As US Deaths In Iraq Decline

Take A Good Look: There Will Never Be Another One Like Him

From a eulogy of Harry Caray by Bob Costas:

Sometime in the 1960s Harry Caray found himself in Memphis, Tenn. The phone rang in his hotel room. "Harry," the voice said, "this is Elvis Presley. I grew up in Mississippi listening to you call the Cardinal games on KMOX. I think you're the greatest. I'm sending a car over to bring you to Graceland." There, by Caray's account, the two sat till the early-morning hours, eating barbecue, drinking Budweiser and talking baseball.

Entertainers loved Harry Caray. He counted many, Sinatra and Elvis included, as friends. And why not? Caray himself was a kind of performance artist, working from a broadcast booth instead of a stage. The Harry Caray Elvis heard in the '50s and '60s was a truly great announcer; his outsized personality combined with exceptional broadcasting skills. In recent years, with age and illness, those skills diminished, leaving only Harry: the voice, the windshield-size glasses, the passion for the game that made him the fan's announcer. And that was good enough.

I had the good fortune to experience both Harrys. Back in 1963 Harry The Great Announcer was in the broadcast booth calling Stan Musial's last game in the old old Busch Stadium (nee Sportsmens Park). His signature line from that game was the title of this post: Take A Good Look: There Will Never Be Another One Like Him.

It's been 45 years now and you know what? Harry was right: There never has been another one like Stan Musial. But you also know what? In those 45 years there have been lots of other great ballplayers: Nolan Ryan, Ryne Sandberg, Bruce Sutter just to name three. None of them like the others. And there will be more to come.

I mention this now because right now the State of Wisconsin is still going through a period of sports grief about Brett Favre. Yes indeed, there will never be another one like him. But I've been through this, and I'm here to tell you it's OK. There's lots more yet to come.

March 2008 Cable News Ratings From Drudge

CABLE NEWS RACE
NIGHT OF MARCH 13, 2008
VIEWERS

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2,979,000
FNC HANNITY/COLMES 2,280,000
FNC GRETA 1,896,000
CNN KING 1,640,000
FNC HUME 1,530,000
CNN COOPER 1,417,000
FNC SHEP 1,392,000
CNN DOBBS 1,057,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,001,000
CNNHN GRACE 605,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 507,000

<mumble mode="underhisbreath">Back in the Jack W era, if you weren't #1 or #2 you were history. And to think we let Roger Ailes get away ...</mumble>

Play The TV Trifecta Game!

To be in the TV Trifecta, an actor has to have been a regular on series television on three TV series that lasted a minimum of two seasons apiece. So go ahead and name the three TV series each of these actors was on:

• Bea Benaderet
• Allan Melvin
• Ken Berry
• Jane Curtin
• Leonard Nimoy
• William Shatner
• Lucille Ball
• Vivian Vance
• Courtney Thorne-Smith
• June Lockhart
• Bill Bixby
• Betty White
• James Garner
• Katey Segal
• Harry Morgan
• Michael Landon
• David Hasselhoff
• Julia Louis-Dreyfus
• Gavin McLeod
• Bill Cosby
• Rene Auberjonois

Answers here and here.

How to Write Comedy for Radio: The Undergraduate Senior Thesis of Johnny Carson at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, May 1949

From the University of Nebraska web site:

Entertainment and television icon Johnny Carson received his bachelor of arts degree in radio and speech (with a minor in physics) in 1949 from the University of Nebraska. While at Nebraska, he was a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and served as master of ceremonies for the Kosmet Klub, a male dramatic society.

Before completing his bachelor of arts degree, Carson did a senior thesis for his broadcasting professor, William Dempsey. His 1949 senior thesis was entitled “How to Write Comedy for Radio,” which he recorded on a reel-to-reel tape. The 45-minute recording was a scholarly examination of the techniques and devices that radio comedy writers used to construct the jokes and gags in comedy radio shows. Using bits from several well-known comedians, such as Jack Benny and Bob Hope, Carson illustrated the various techniques used to write comedy, which he later effectively used in television through his “Tonight Show” monologues.

The link above will let you download the entire 49-minute, 69 MB MP3 file, truly a fascinating piece of American broadcast history. I just learned about Carson's thesis from the PBS Pioneers of Television 4-part series.

G. David Schine: Assistant to Senator Joseph McCarthy, Executive Producer of The French Connection, Part Owner of the Ambassador Hotel Where RFK Was Shot, Married to Miss Universe 1955, Purveyor of Bubble Gum Music, and Had A Cameo On the Batman TV Show

G. David Schine, Sen. Joe McCarthy, and Roy Cohn

• Wikipedia, imdb, and the G. David Schine Official Site
• Schine Music holds the copyright to the old DeFranco Family hit "Heartbeat -- It's A Lovebeat"
• Batman: It was the favorite show of his 6 kids, so he made a cameo in the next-to-last episode.

Actor Chuck Connors: TV's Rifleman, A Favorite of Leonid Brezhnev, Infielder For The Chicago Cubs, And As The First Center Of The Boston Celtics He Became The First NBA Player To Shatter A Glass Backboard

Connors On A 1952 Baseball Card

Even for us aging baby boomers, it's easy to forget the variety of roles Chuck Connors had as an actor, including Old Yeller, Roots, and Murder, She Wrote. And what an interesting guy.

Chuck Connors As A Boston Celtic

The backboard story:

His claim to fame in the NBA is that he was the first player to break the glass backboard through no fault of his own, as a very important part of the backboard was missing, and he took a simple set shot that shattered the board. The game was being played at the Boston Arena (not the Boston Garden since a Gene Autry rodeo was being held there). As luck would have it, the backboards were stored in an area behind the bulls, but luckily two drunken cowboys were found and paid a couple of bucks who dodged the bulls and brought out the backboard they needed.

And his real strength for the Celtics, as well as his break into acting:

Connors signed to play with the Celtics for the inaugural 1946-47 season. Connors averaged 4.6 points per game in 49 games for the Celtics that season. He was no major offensive threat, as he sank less than one in four field-goal attempts (94-for-380) and less than half of his free throws (39-for-84). Connors explained to author George Sullivan about his role on the Celtics that season:

I'm positive my greatest value to the Celtics was as an after-dinner speaker. It seems to me I did more public speaking for the team than playing that first season. They sent me all over New England on speaking engagements. I'd pick up $25 or $50 an appearance, whatever the traffic would bear. When I wasn't apologizing [for the few wins the team had], I was doing things like "Casey at the Bat" and "Face on the Bar Room Floor." I did "Casey" at the Boston Baseball Writers Dinner that first winter, and Ted Williams was there too after winning the 1946 American League MVP Award. Ted was very kind to me and laughed his head off at my rendition. Afterward, he said to me, "Kid, I don't know what kind of basketball player you are, but you ought to give it up and be an actor." So doing those after-dinner speeches was my raison d'etre.

It was also the beginning of an acting career for Connors. ...

"I owe baseball all that I have and much of what I hope to have," Connors said in 1953 when he retired as a ballplayer. "Baseball made my entrance to the film industry immeasurably easier than I could have made it alone. To the greatest game in the world I shall be eternally in debt." For Connors, the turning point in his life came during spring training in 1951 when the Chicago Cubs demoted him to their Los Angeles Angels farm club in the Pacific Coast League. "Greatest break I ever got," Connors said in 1954. "I'm out there right in the middle of the movie business where, if a guy has anything, he's got the chance to break in."

And the Brezhnev connection, from a 1973 Time magazine article:

At a presidential get-together in San Clemente last June, Leonid Brezhnev hit it off so well with Actor Chuck Connors that the Soviet party leader invited Connors to look him up sometime. Connors leaves for Moscow next week. He stopped by White House to say dosvidaniya to the host whose party say started it all, and who is counting on the trip to help repair some of the damage to East-West détente caused by the Middle East war. "The President gave me about two dozen presidential tie clips and ladies' pins, with instructions to spread them around when I thought it appropriate," said Connors. Brezhnev will get more than a tie clip. "I've ordered two engraved Colt revolvers or for the General Secretary," Connors added. "Brezhnev is quite a western buff."

The Invaders on DVD

The Invaders on DVD

(via). This was the spookiest show I watched as a kid.

The Tombstone and Epitaph of Merv Griffin

The Tombstone and Epitaph of Merv Griffin

(via PopWatch and TV Squad)

My Great Idea For A New Reality Series That Could Be Rolled Out Quickly During The Writers Strike

Last. Dugger. Standing.

A Blog Is Like A TV Series

• Some start with a big splash.
• Others start quietly and slowly build an audience.
• Some die in infancy.
• Some are popular but hated by intellectuals.
• Some are loved by critics but are truly dreadful.
• Some will go on for years and years and years.
• Some fans are fanatic, other fans are lukewarm.
• And the fans are more fickle than you might think.
• Some truly great work goes unnoticed and unappreciated.
• Just OK work can be wildly overpraised.
• Keeping up quality work can be a real challenge.
• It can be hard not to "hit the wall" at the 4 to 5 year point.
• Ending the thing can be tough if it's popular.
• When it ends, the star may show up right away in a new one.
• Or the star may go away for a little while.
• Sometimes the star just wants to do something completely different after a long run.
• Often the star just needs a break.
• Just because the old one was successful doesn't mean the new one will be, even with the same star.
• Long term success requires periodic tweaking, freshening, and re-invention.
• The star may be known around the world.
• When an old one dies, a new one will take its place.
• Even after they're gone, the good ones are still remembered.

If You Could Only Watch 5 Cable TV Networks For The Rest Of Your Life, What Would They Be?

My List:

1. Fox News Channel: Duh.
2. Spike: Antidote to Lifetime.
3. ESPN: College Football.
4. TruTV: Spike Lite.
5. Game Show Network: Even tho I don't get it now.

From this post on Entertainment Weekly. See also my previous post If You Could Only Watch 5 TV Shows For The Rest Of Your Life, What Would They Be?

The Coffee Achievers: An Ad Campaign by the National Coffee Association in the 1980s Urging Americans to Drink More Coffee

The Coffee Achievers: An Ad Campaign by the National Coffee Association in the 1980s Urging Americans to Drink More Coffee

Today it seems bizarre on so many levels. Click on the link or the picture to see the YouTube video.

Conflicting Messages I Am Receiving From My TV Set

Conflicting Messages I Am Receiving From My TV Set

Captain Kirk's Guide To Women

Captain Kirk's Guide To Women

"How Does a swaggering, overbearing, tin-plated, dictator with delusions of godhood Get All Those Chicks?"     (via Mike Lynch Cartoons)

The Wall Street Journal Is Better Than Ever

The Wall Street Journal Is Better Than Ever

The New Phone Books Are Here! The New Phone Books Are Here!

I made Best of the Web yesterday. I sent in the link about the Springfield power plant explosions. So I got that going for me . . .

The Filming Of A Reality TV Show: Inside America's Next Top Model

An excerpt from former contestant Elyse Sewell:

I'm reminded of an example from the first episode: the first elimination session, in which Tessa "got the boots," took more than six hours to film. As Tyra congratulated whomever (Giselle?) and gave her condolences to Tessa, it was four o' clock in f**king morning. Lighting snafus, copyreading errors (oh, the copyreading errors), disorganization in the proceedings, and countless other production flaws meant that an eternity intervened between the time we were shown filing into the judging chamber and Tessa packing her suitcases at the end of the show- but this was edited to five minutes of airtime. While watching the episode, I expected a glaring contrast between the freshly-made-up contestants at the beginning of the scene and the wilted and crabby girls at the end, but even though I was looking for it, I couldn't detect any discontinuity.

Since You Brought It Up, Maria . . .

Maria Monreal-Cameron, President and CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin, on whether the Big Ten Network (BTN) should be added to Time-Warner's basic tier of cable TV service in Wisconsin:

BTN insists that everyone with basic cable -- whether Big Ten fans or not -- should have to pay their heavy fees. BTN has gone so far as to suggest that anyone who thinks otherwise is an enemy of the Big Ten itself.

I think that's a personal foul. BTN's heated rhetoric tries to hide the fact that charging for BTN on everyone's basic cable bill would amount to a hidden Big Ten Tax on all Wisconsin consumers. As the president of a small business organization, I appreciate the BTN's interest in making its programming available to the widest audience possible, but instead the network seems more interested in forcing its way into our homes than in giving us the choice to purchase the network.

For their part, I imagine that cable providers don't want to either raise basic cable prices or cut into their profits to carry a sports channel that even sports columnists think has a limited audience. Cable providers say they want to carry BTN and make it available to all customers who want it on a separate tier. But by all accounts, the Network won't budge.

Given that the BTN will air second-rate games and is nonetheless asking top dollar, letting it appear on an optional sports tier seems like a fair compromise that would end up satisfying everyone -- the ones who want to pay for these games as well as those who don't.

Excellent points, Maria. As a matter of fact, I myself have made much the same case against Univision and Telemundo. Since I can't even understand what they're saying on those channels, why am I being forced to pay for them?

Pushing Daisies: The Only TV Series That Offers A Comic Book Recap Of Previous Episodes

Pushing Daisies: The Only TV Series That Offers A Comic Book Recap Of Previous Episodes

They use Skitch and Comic Life from plasq. Based on still images from the show, the comics help viewers catch up on missed episodes and relive the live show. Skitch is used to capture images from a DVD stream. The resulting images are placed into a Comic Life template, filtered, mixed with speech balloons containing key plot points, then shared on abc.go.com

A Recipe Tester For The Food Network, Sarah Copeland Boasts One Of The Best Jobs On Earth

An excerpt from Elizabeth Davies:

You might like your job. Your boss might not even be particularly annoying. But you don’t hold a candle to job satisfaction compared with Sarah Copeland. The 30-year-old Rockford native actually — get this — is paid to eat.

A recipe tester with the Food Network, Copeland spends her days cooking, dreaming up recipes and of course, eating.

“I’m always amazed by what a strong reaction people have to food, and to my job,” she said in an e-mail interview from her home in New York City. “When they find out I get paid to play with food all day, most people say I have their dream job.”

So much so that Copeland was recently featured on the television show “I Want Your Job,” produced by the Fine Living Network. Host Michelle Beadle followed Copeland through her day developing recipes in the Food Network’s New York kitchen.

Nancy Dickerson, The Pioneering Woman Of TV News

Nancy Dickerson, The Pioneering Woman Of TV News

From One Gal's Musings, Nancy Dickerson is one of the thirteen women she will invite to tea when she gets to Heaven:

Before Katie Couric, before Barbara Walters, there was Nancy Dickerson. She was the only woman I remember seeing on the news when I was a little girl in the 1960s. I used to look forward to her appearances because she was so rare – like the okapi at our local zoo. She covered Washington for NBC and got real stories, not fluff pieces about food or fashion. What was it like to be one of the first chicks in the boys’ club?

Back in the '60's there was nobody like Nancy Dickerson. Her son, Slate Magazine's chief political correspondent John Dickerson, has written a book about her titled On Her Trail. An excerpt:

By 9:00 she started typing out her script. Her long nails made almost as much noise as the typewriter keys. By 10:00 her colleagues could hear her practicing to the ping of her regulation NBC stopwatch as it switched on and off.

Twenty-four hours later I was born. Dad was in Fort Lauderdale closing a business deal so my eighteen-year-old about-to-be-half sister Elizabeth had to drive Mom to the hospital. Dad took the first flight he could find and arrived just before the blessed event.

Mom was 41. Viewers were shocked when they heard that the Nancy Dickerson, whom they had just been watching, had given birth. They had seen her every day and weren't aware she was pregnant. She and her bosses at NBC had stuffed me under the desk, careful always to shoot her from the chest up. Any signs of pregnancy or blatant womanhood would distract viewers from the news.

In the summer of '68 Mom was in the middle of covering the presidential race, and so my birth was reported in that context. "What's in a Name," read the headline of a Washington Post item. "Lyndon Hubert Eugene Richard Ronald Nelson seemed like a nice name to NBC's Nancy Dickerson, who was looking for something safe to call her son. Now she thinks it's just as well that she and her husband decided to call him John Frederick instead. 'Because,' she said with a sigh, 'we never even thought of Spiro.'"

Three weeks after I was born, Mom was in Miami covering the Republican convention. That confused viewers even more. Didn't she just give birth? She had, but she gave up on her experiment with breastfeeding and went off to cover the story.

Nancy Dickerson was born in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin and taught grade school for a couple of years in Milwaukee before going off to seek her fame and fortune in TV Land. She passed away in 1997 at the age of 70.

The Organ Interlude At The Memorial Service For Jimmie Dodd (1910-1964)

The Organ Interlude At The Memorial Service For Jimmie Dodd (1910-1964)

Rupert Murdoch And The Future Of News

An excerpt from Steve Boriss:

Murdoch knows that the decades-old supply chain through which we receive our news is about to snap, and he is replacing it with his own. This chain once began with stories originated by the NY Times, which passed to the TV networks and wire services, then to metro TV stations and newspapers, which served as “middlemen” to carry news the last 50 miles to our homes. But some day, the chain will begin with stories from the Wall Street Journal, which will travel over the Internet directly into people’s homes without ever leaving News Corp properties — Fox News for news, Fox Films for entertainment, FoxSports for sports, MySpace for news of family and friends, and your local Fox TV affiliate for hyperlocal news.

Your local Fox affiliate’s web site will be your portal to news as small as your neighborhood and as large as the world. It will replace your newspaper and the other local TV stations. Their reporters will penetrate your community institutions and their salespeople will find ad revenue in places that no one ever thought to look before, like all those small retailers that never had enough money to buy a TV or newspaper ad.

Morey Amsterdam: Buddy Sorrell On The Dick Van Dyke Show, Writer For Will Rogers, And Nightclub Entertainer For Al Capone

An excerpt from David L. Hixson:

Morey Amsterdam was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 14, 1908. From the beginning, the arts touched his life. His father was a concert violinist who played for the Chicago Opera and, later, the San Francisco Symphony. Like many vaudeville veterans, Amsterdam began his performing career as a child. His first public performance took place in 1922 when Morey sang as a tenor on a San Francisco radio program. The teenager then joined his piano-playing brother in his vaudeville act. He started out as a cellist, but soon the instrument merely became a prop for his comedy. When his brother left show business, Morey continued on his own. At age 16, he was hired as a regular performer by a nightclub owner named Al "Brown," who had been impressed with Amsterdam's stage act. Brown's real name was Al Capone. A shootout on the club premises inspired Amsterdam to seek greener, and safer, pastures in California.

Amsterdam attended the University of California at Berkeley for a time, but by 1930 he was in New York City, working as a comedy writer for radio stars Will Rogers and Fanny Brice.

The Invaders

The Invaders

An excerpt from a fine article by Todd Frye:

The Invaders centered on David Vincent (Roy Thinnes), a man who had learned that aliens are plotting to take over the world. Because of this he became a fugitive, moving from place to place lest the 'invaders' catch him. The aliens had already infiltrated human society to a large degree; there were aliens in local police departments, the news media, the corporate world, even the government. Anyone could be an invader from outer space. Luckily their ability to take human form was somewhat flawed. As they had no hearts, they would have neither a pulse nor a heartbeat. Sometimes their form might be slightly imperfect, most often the pinkie finger would jut out awkwardly. Finally, their bodies would glow when in need of the regeneration required to keep their human shape. When an Invader was destroyed, his body went up on a cloud of red smoke, with nothing but ashes left behind.

They also had this little disk that they could hold to the back of your head and give you an instantly fatal cerebral hemorage. This was the spookiest show I watched as a kid. Read about more classic TV shows here.

When Joey Bishop Joined Vince Lloyd And Lou Boudreau In The Chicago Cubs WGN Radio Broadcast Booth Late In The 1976 Season

I had just gotten out of the Navy and left the San Francisco Bay area, came back to Illinois and started my studies at Northern Illinois University. The Cubs were awful that year, as usual, and were just playing out the season. For some reason Vince and Lou brought in Joey Bishop for a couple of games to chat, and he was really funny and interesting. That's when I became a Joey Bishop fan -- I never cared for him before that. Any older Cub fans out there remember this?

The Magical Life of Marshall Brodien: Creator of TV Magic Cards and Wizzo the Wizard

The Magical Life of Marshall Brodien: Creator of TV Magic Cards and Wizzo the Wizard

Envy

An excerpt from Doug Giles:

1. Envy is the vice of proximity. We are always prone to envy people close to us in temperament, gifts or position.
2. Envy is highly subjective. It is in the eye of the beholder. It is not the objective difference between people that feeds envy, but the subjective perception. As a Russian proverb says, "envy looks at a juniper bush and sees a pine forest."
3. Envy doesn't lessen with age. It gets worse as we run into more and more people with happiness and success, offering more fodder for envy.
4. Envy is often petty but always insatiable and all-consuming. However small the occasion that gives rise to it, envy becomes central to the envier's whole being. The envier "stews in his juice." Envy begins with pride and then plunges the person into hatred.
5. Envy is always self-destructive. What the envier cannot enjoy, no one should enjoy, and thus the envier loses every enjoyment. The envier's motto is "if not I, then no one." As an eighth-century Jewish teacher put it, "the one who envies gains nothing for himself and deprives the one he envies of nothing. He only loses thereby."

10 Bonus Points if you can guess who he's referring to.

Play The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Game!

1. William F. Buckley, Founder of the conservative National Review.
2. His brother is James Buckley.
3. James Buckley defeated Charles Goodell for the US Senate in 1970.
4. Charles Goodell had a son named Roger, who is NFL Commissioner.
5. Roger Goodell is married to Jane Skinner of Fox News.

A Right-Wing Conspiracy in just 5 moves! To beat me, you have to produce your own Right-Wing Conspiracy in 4 moves or less. Think you can do it?

Who Would Want To Grow Up In Such A World?

Rick Esenberg on a disturbing event that took place the other night on TV Land:

Suddenly we are in a parallel universe. It's Leave It to Beaver but Ward is not Ward and Wally is not Wally. Mr. Rutherford was there but he was not Mr. Rutherford. He was some guy named Baxter who worked for a milk company. For a moment, we were uncertain whether our senses were betraying us or the laws of nature had been suspended. I mean, Ward sounded like Ward, offering slightly sardonic but essentially good natured commentary from behind the paper. Wally was still all integrity with a dirty face. Jerry Mathers was the Beaver. But who took Hugh Beaumont and Tony Dow? If Richard Deacon was not Lumpy's father, who was? (I guess, in the end, they decided it was the milkman. Deep.)

At the commercial break, we learned it was the rarely seen pilot episode. Order had returned to God's creation. A bit later I saw a glimpse of a world that might have been when Bizarro Ward (Max Schowalter who was then known as Casey Adams and who was about ten years younger that Hugh Beaumont)confronted the man who should have been Fred Rutherford. There he was - Ward Cleaver - jabbing a cigarette at the fellow and blowing smoke through his nose like Jimmy Cagney. I am glad they dumped him. I would not have wanted to grow up in that world.

Neither would I, Rick, neither would I.

Need To Hire A Local News Anchor or Weatherman?

Then check out the gallery at Collective Talent. There'll be some names and faces who are familiar to you, I bet. A fascinating look inside the TV news industry.

Ted Cassidy: Lurch On The Addams Family, And Reporter In Dallas On November 22, 1963

Ted Cassidy: Lurch On The Addams Family, And Reporter In Dallas On November 22, 1963

Before he became an actor, Ted Cassidy worked as a staff announcer for WFAA radio in Dallas and was part of WFAA's ongoing coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. He was among the first to interview assassination eyewitnesses W.E. Newman Jr. and Gayle Newman.

By the way, don't confuse the late Ted Cassidy (1932-1979) with the still-alive-but-retired Richard Kiel (1939- ).

From Millie Helper in The Dick Van Dyke Show To Grandma Yetta Rosenberg in The Nanny: The Apollo 13 Connection of Milwaukee Native and Actress Ann Morgan Guilbert. Plus, An Extra Special Bonus: Oprah!

From Millie Helper in The Dick Van Dyke Show To Grandma Yetta Rosenberg in The Nanny: The Apollo 13 Connection of Milwaukee Native and Actress Ann Morgan Guilbert. Plus, An Extra Special Bonus: Oprah!

She graduated in 1946 from Milwaukee's Juneau High School with a to-be-famous-in-the-future classmate, Apollo 13 Commander James Lovell. A number of years later Oprah Winfrey graduated from that same high school.

Character Actor Russ Conway

Character Actor Russ Conway

From The Original Mickey Mouse Club Show, describing his role in The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure:

Played Detective Fenton Hardy (the boys' father) in both Hardy Boys serials. Born Russell Zink in Manitoba, Canada in 1912, he broke into films in 1947, and television shortly after. He appeared in seventy-nine movies and over one hundred TV shows before he passed away in 1978.

He was in just about every TV series I watched as a kid. I just caught him as the basketball coach in a Leave it to Beaver re-run.

1 2 3 4: The Music In The iPod Nano TV Commercial

One Two Three Four
Tell me that you love me more
Sleepless long nights
That is what my youth was for

Old teenage hopes are alive at your door
Left you with nothing but they want some more

Oh, you're changing your heart
Oh, You know who you are

According to PromoGuy, the group who is called Feist. He has all the links and details, plus the video. Whenever you have a question about the music in a popular TV commercial, you can save yourself a lot of time by checking out PromoGuy first.

Jesse And The Rippers T-Shirt

Jesse And The Rippers T-Shirt

I've watched more episodes of Full House with the kids than I can possibly remember. Wear this shirt for free admission at the Smash Club. More great T-Shirt designs here.

Beaver Cleaver Pitches GE Flashbulbs

Beaver Cleaver Pitches GE Flashbulbs

A rare collectible. Flashbulbs were a great little bit of drama added to everyday life, like little incendiary bombs your could hold in the palm of your hand.

My List Of Five Show-Biz Types I Used To Love But Now Can't Stand, Plus My Favorite Dead Actor From The Police Academy Movies

My list:

1. Robin Williams
2. M*A*S*H
3. Bob Seger
4. WKLH-FM (The "Classic Rock" Station in Milwaukee)
5. Cartoon Network

For reasons best not explained here, I should probably add that I think the morning team on WKLH is one of the finest I've ever heard. And while Debralee Scott would be a solid choice from that Police Academy in the sky, I'd have to go with David Graf. Our son Ryan never fails to laugh when Eugene Tackleberry shows up on the screen.

Go ahead and add your list, but with this one limit: Every entertainer on your list has to make you sick because of their act, not their politics. So if you just loved the Dixie Chicks until they got all political, just leave them off your list.

The NBC Peacock: The Following Program is Brought to You In Living Color on NBC!

The NBC Peacock: The Following Program is Brought to You In Living Color on NBC!

Yet another post for Baby Boomers. An excerpt from Kris Trexler:

Starting in 1957 until the beginning of the 1962-63 TV season, every NBC color broadcast began with the colorful animated NBC Peacock which reminded viewers that "The Following Program is Brought to You In Living Color on NBC!" Keep in mind that N