The two-part TV movie Cross of Fire is set in the 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan was at the height of its political power in Indiana. Part One, originally telecast November 5, 1989, details the resurgence of the Klan (which had been created during the Reconstruction era) under the leadership of David “Steve” Stephenson […]. Cloaking himself in the twin veils of patriotism and morality, Stephenson rails against such “deviates” as blacks, Jews and Catholics, gaining political clout and financial kickbacks as his “invisible empire” grows. Part Two […], telecast November 6, traces the fall of Stephenson…not because his followers have wised up but, because of a 1925 rape and murder charge.
♠ The scandal reached the governor. He was indicted and tried but, the conclusion was a hung jury. He wasn’t retried due to the statute of limitations but, left office disgraced with his political career destroyed.
Sixty years ago, today, the game show Take a Good Lookdebuted on ABC. Created by Ernie Kovacs, it ran for two seasons with 53 episodes. Designed as a parody of Goodson-Todman panel games, celebrities were to guess the secret of the person brought before them. The clues provided were short video clips or skits and were extremely vague. The people brought on stage were regular folks that had an interesting area of expertise, had experienced extraordinary events in their lives or had been in the news.
Kovacs was a guest panelist on What’s My Line? (10 appearances) and a mystery guest (two appearances). This is probably where the idea for his show came from.
This sudsy made-for-TV melodrama is based on a Barbara Cartland novel and follows the romantic exploits of an American heiress who sets sail for exciting Paris at the turn-of-the-century. She is traveling there to meet her fiance but, ends up falling in love with a French journalist.
Reluctant to accept her arranged marriage to an English Duke she has never met, beautiful, young, American oil heiress, Emmeline Nevada Holtz, nicknamed “Vada” after the state, travels to Paris to buy her trousseau before meeting her husband-to-be. When her travelling companion, Nancy Sparling, has an accident and hurts her leg, Vada assumes her name to avoid unwelcome attention. [She] travels on with just her elderly maid, determined to make the most of her last chance to explore Bohemian Paris and, the wonders of the city that she had heard and read so much about. At her hotel she finds a handsome intruder in her suite, not a thief as she at first thinks but, a journalist looking to interview the famous heiress Emmeline. Smitten by this charismatic Frenchman and his talk of poetry, Vada finds herself agreeing to go with him to the Soleil d’Or, wellspring of the Symbolist movement. Soon, they are deeply and uncontrollably in love, a love that is surely doomed by her deception, her betrothal to the Duke and, now, a terrifying ordeal at a Satanist Black Mass on the dark side of the City of Light.
Harsh Realm is a virtual reality game created by the U.S. Army, programmed to minutely replicate the real world for training simulations. In the world of Harsh Realm, a small nuclear bomb is detonated in the program’s version of New York City, killing four million people and thrusting its participants into a post-apocalyptic disaster scenario. Lieutenant Tom Hobbes is unknowingly thrust into this world by his superiors with one mission: to kill “General” Omar Santiago. Along the way, he meets fellow soldiers sent into the game and alternate versions of people he knows in the real world (including Dexter, an alternate version of his real world dog). It is in this world that Hobbes must survive, defeat Santiago, save the real world and, somehow return to his real life and his fiancée, Sophie Green.
Lt. Hobbes, a young idealistic Marine who’s about to get married, is sent into a [virtual reality] war game simulation where he is to terminate a renegade General who has taken control of the program. [He] also learns that he is actually trapped in the game, along with numerous other soldiers previously sent to kill Santiago. Meanwhile, Hobbes real life fiancee investigates his disappearance with the help of a mysterious female ally with an agenda of her own.
Hutton stars as Goldie, a showgirl-turned-manicurist. One of Goldie’s regular customers is a millionaire, Mr. Strickland. After he suddenly dies, Goldie discovers that he has left everything he owns, including his $60 million fortune and his three children, to her.
Although Hutton was a popular actress, the show only lasted for thirty episodes before being cancelled, mainly because it was scheduled opposite ABC‘s popular series The Donna Reed Show.
Daniel Boone was one of two significant historical figures played by Fess Parker. He previously appeared as Davy Crockett in a series of episodes of the Walt Disney anthology television series […]. Efforts had been made to secure the rights to Crockett from Walt Disney but, Disney refused to sell, so, the series wound up being about Boone instead. In contrast, Parker’s Boone was less of an explorer and more a family man than Parker’s Crockett. Parker as Crockett also generally wore a light beard, whereas his Boone was predominantly clean-shaven.
The series is set in the 1770s and 1780s, just before, during and after the American Revolution and, mostly centered on adventures in, and about, Boonesborough, Kentucky. Some aspects of the show were less than historically faithful, which, at one point, led the Kentucky legislature to condemn the inaccuracies. The series’ story line does not follow historical events. Instead, story lines run back and forth concerning historical events.
Photo Credit: imdb.com
[Ed Ames] role as Mingo led to a famous tomahawk-throwing demonstration on The Tonight Show, that was rerun on anniversary clip shows for decades afterward, in which Ames threw a tomahawk at a target of a man and the hatchet landed between the cutout’s legs, much to host Johnny Carson‘s amusement.
Trivia Bits:
♦ According to an interview with Veronica Cartwright, she left the series because the producers wanted to have her character of Jemima Boone involved in more mature situations, such as budding romantic relationships. Patricia Blair did not like this because it made her feel too old, so she threatened to leave the series if Cartwright was not let go from the series.
♦ Israel Boone was one of seventy-two killed at the Battle of Blue Licks, one of the last battles of the Revolutionary War, on August 19, 1782. He was twenty-three. His father Daniel was there and saw his son killed. Coincidentally, Darby Hinton, who played Israel, was born on the 175th Anniversary of Israel’s death, August 19, 1957.
♦ [The] Boones [actually] had ten children […].
♦ Unlike Fess Parker [6’5″ 1/2], the real Daniel Boone was only about 5’8″.
Bill Hastings works for a daily newspaper in a large city. His duties include a lonely hearts column, where he advises everyone on their problems, as “Phoebe”, while trying to deal with his own.
Photo Credit: wikipedia.org & wikimedia.org
Peter Lawford with J. Fred Muggs
Lawford stars as Bill Hastings, a former college professor who becomes the writer of the advice-to-the-lovelorn column at the fictitious Los Angeles Daily Star. Hastings writes under the pseudonym “Miss Phoebe Goodheart”. Marcia Henderson portrayed Mickey Riley, the female sportswriter at the newspaper and Hastings’s own romantic interest. Charles Lane, who later portrayed J. Homer Bedloe in the CBS series Petticoat Junction, played newspaper boss Mr. Fosdick. Joe Corey played Humphrey Humpsteader, a copy boy trying to become a reporter.
The show revolves around contestants competing by identifying accurate pricing of merchandise to win cash and prizes. Contestants are selected from the studio audience when the announcer states the show’s famous catchphrase, “Come on down!” (Contestants’ Row) [F]our contestants are called […] to take a spot in the front row behind bidding podiums […]. [They] compete in a bidding round to determine which contestant will play the next pricing game (known as One Bid). After winning the One Bid, the contestant joins the host onstage for the opportunity to win additional prizes or cash by playing a pricing game. [The Showcase Showdown (spinning The Big Wheel) follows with a final winner selected at the end of the episode (The Showcase)]
The Price Is Right has aired over 8,000 episodes since its debut and is one of the longest-running network series in United States television history. The show’s [48th] season [will] premiere on September [23, 2019.]
In his third HBO stand-up special, Chris Rock brings his critically acclaimed brand of social commentary-themed humor to this 1999 stand-up comedy presentation. Also released as an album, Chris Rock: Bigger and Blacker features Rock on-stage extolling his razor-sharp wit and wisdom on such topics as gun control, President Clinton, homophobia, racism, black leaders and relationships.
This is the show that introduced the world to Elvis Presley.
Dave Marsh, in his insightful musical biography Elvis, writes about the moment Elvis Presley burst upon the American scene via The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show on January 28, 1956. “In his first appearance on the Dorsey Brothers’ TV show, the young singer rocked the world”. Marsh described Elvis’ startling rendition of Heartbreak Hotel and concluded, “He owned the song and he owned the crowd”.
March 17, 1956
Photo Credit: elvispresleymusic.com.au
After 17 months of personal appearances all over the south […], Elvis […] made his first appearance […]. Those shows were broadcast, live, from the CBS Studios in New York City. Young Elvis The Pelvis’ first appearance […] was followed by 5 others throughout the next 2 months until the 24 of March, 1956.
Update: Less than 24 hours after I posted this, YouTube snatched down the video. If they continue, YouTube won’t have any videos left to watch. So, that being said, I am leaving the original link and adding what I can find. ~Vic
[This was] a one-shot pilot episode for a TV series that was never picked up. In 1968, Mama Cass had launched her solo career and was hoping to move into television. This one-hour program only aired once on ABC-TV and was never shown, again. The show features Mama Cass Elliot with special guest stars, John Sebastian (The Lovin’ Spoonful), Joni Mitchell, Mary Travers (Peter, Paul and Mary), Buddy Hackett, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain (husband & wife, both from Mission: Impossible and later, Space: 1999).
[The show] features Matt Frewer as [Dr. Mike Stratford] who belongs to the practice Northeast Medical Partners with three other doctors in Providence, Rhode Island. Most of the comedy surrounds [his] zany antics, tempered by his obvious commitment to his profession and his patients. Though at first serving as “straight men” for Frewer’s manic style of comic acting, the other characters gained more depth as the series progressed, sometimes focusing on issues such as AIDS, breast cancer and homophobia.
The focal point of the series is Mike Stratford, a semi-psychotic doctor who has a passion for healing, anybody. Besides being a doctor, Mike has written a couple of books and is a daily feature on Wake Up Providence…, a local morning TV show. Other major characters include: Richard, Mike’s gay brother and an assistant English professor; Dierdre, a doctor whose looking for the right man and once slept with Mike; Grant, a doctor whose only looking to keep his image perfect; Abe, a doctor whose married with a son and a perfect family life; Faye, a nurse who likes crossword puzzles and kinky things.
Hour Glass was sponsored by Standard Brands, promoting Chase and Sanborn Coffee and, Tenderleaf Tea. The program included comedians, musicians, entertaining films (such as a film of dance in South America) and a long, live commercial for the sponsor’s products. Such famous names as Doodles Weaver, Bert Lahr, Dennis Day, Jerry Colonna, Peggy Lee and Joe Besser appeared on the program.
The Columbia History of American Television attributed the program’s short life to its cost, saying, “Standard Brands invested $200,000 in this series over its ten-month tenure at a time when that level of investment just couldn’t be supported and sustained, leading to the Hour Glass’s abbreviated run.” Another factor was that James Petrillo, president of the American Federation of Musicians, forbade musicians from performing on television without an agreement between the AFM and the networks, thus, limiting directors, and performers, to use of recorded music.
It is historically important, however, in that it exemplified the issues faced by networks, sponsors and advertising agencies in television’s formative years. The program was produced by the J. Walter Thompson agency […]. The lines of responsibility were not completely defined in those early years and the nine-month run of Hour Glass was punctuated by frequent squabbling among the principals. Each show was assembled by seven Thompson employees working in two teams, each putting together a show over two weeks in a frenzy of production. It must have been the curiosity factor that prompted some stars to appear on the show because they certainly were not paid much money. Hour Glass had a talent budget of only $350 a week, hardly more than scale for a handful of performers. Still, Standard Brands put an estimated $200,000 into the program’s nine-month run, by far the largest amount ever devoted to a sponsored show at that time. In February 1947, Standard Brands canceled Hour Glass. They were pleased with the show’s performance in terms of beverage sales and its overall quality, yet, were leery about continuing to pour money into a program that did not reach a large number of households (it is unclear if the show was broadcast anywhere other than NBC’s interconnected stations in New York and Philadelphia). The strain between NBC and Thompson played a role as well. Still, Hour Glass did provide Thompson with a valuable blueprint for the agency’s celebrated and long-running production, Kraft Television Theatre.
