# Odd television facts **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 17, 2011, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833 "2011-06-17T14:18:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/61 "2011-06-18T01:23:59Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > Shaggy is now voiced by Matthew Lillard, who did such a fine job of getting his voice right in the live action movies. Beat ya. Post [#50](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13928494&postcount=50). 😉 > [@Bearflag70](#): > > They changed the name of the Incredible Hulk from Dr. Bruce Banner to Dr. David Banner in part because CBS thought the name Bruce sounded too gay. That’s Lou Ferrigno’s explanation. However, producer Kenneth Johnson said he didn’t want the Hulk to be perceived as a comic book series, so he wanted to change the practice of major characters having alliterative names, such as Bruce Banner, or Peter Parker, or Reed Richards, which was common to Marvel’s characters. He also wanted to honor his son, David, so Banner’s first name became David. He kept Bruce as the character’s middle name, which was shown on his tombstone when he was believed to have been killed by the creature. [The Incredible Hulk (TV Series)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Hulk_(TV_series)#Development) ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/62 "2011-06-18T01:33:10Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > [Jorge Garcia, who very famously played Hurley, tried out for Sawyer.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwHcA_GbquQ) > > They loved him and created Hurley just for him, making him the first casting of LOST. I didn’t know that! I think Jorge Garcia was perfect as Hurley. How much of a smooth talking, lady-magnet con man could he have been as Sawyer?? ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/63 "2011-06-18T01:35:35Z")
> [@Manduck](#): > > Also, if I remember this correctly, and it’s possible that I don’t - didn’t Leonard Nimoy replace Martin Landau on Mission Impossible after Star Trek was cancelled? Looks like it. I had thought Landau segued from **MI** to **Space: 1999** (which would have added a level of irony), but there was a six-year lull between the two. ---
**Author:** ![janis\_and\_c0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/janis_and_c0/32/21_2.png) [@janis\_and\_c0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/janis_and_c0)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/64 "2011-06-18T01:48:22Z")
> [@TreacherousCretin](#): > > Most interesting. All I ever “knew” about her was that she despised Andy Griffith and spoke to him only when absolutely necessary. > > . On her deathbead she [apologized](http://en.allexperts.com/q/Andy-Griffith-1122/2008/7/Andy-Griffith-Frances-Bavier.htm) for the way she’d treated him ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/65 "2011-06-18T01:49:25Z")
[quote=“DMark, post:13, topic:585833”] …“Bill Frawley often growled at his boss Desi Arnez, ‘Where did you dig up that bitch?’ when referring to his TV wife, Vivian Vance. Frawley’s other pet name for Vance was ‘Old Fat Ass’…At 64, Frawley was 25 years Vance’s senior. ‘He should be playing my father,’ she often complained. Vance also deeply resented a clause in her contract that allowed her character to be written out of the show if anything happened to Frawley.” After **I Love Lucy** wrapped up (I’m pretty sure this was after the **Luci-Desi Comedy Hour** too) there was talk of a spinoff featuring just Fred & Ethel Mertz. Frawley was willing to to it, but Vance said no amount of money was enough for her to work with him again. Vance was in a bar when she heard the news about Frawley dying. Her reaction was to buy everyone in the bar champagne. Vance did become close friends with Lucille Ball in real life; she appeared in both of Ball’s following sitcoms ( **The Lucy Show** & **Here’s Lucy** ). She insisted that both her new characters be named “Vivian” because she was so sick of people walking up to her on the street and calling her Ethel. Lucy & Desi’s marriage had totally broken down by the time the last specials were being filmed. They onlys spoke to eachother on camera when their characters had too. Lucy was crying so much she kept ruining her Geisha makeup in the Japan episode. Their first day of court was literely the day after filming on the finale wrapped. > [@](#): > > …They loved him and created Hurley just for him, making him the first casting of LOST. Chris Colfer audtioned for the role of Artie. Obviously he didn’t get it, but the producers like him so much they created the role of Kurt Hummel for him (eliminated a Bollywood obsessed character named Rajeesh). Over on the **Golden Girls** Rue McClanahan was originally cast as Rose and Betty White as Blance. Rue was best known for playing sweet, but flightly characters (Vivian Harmon on **Maude** and Aunt Fran Crowley on **Mama’s Family** and Betty was best known for playing bitchy vamps (Sue Ann Nivens on the Mary Tylet Moore Show and Ellen Harper Jackson on **Mama’s Family** ) so they switched to avoid typecasting. Estelle Getty was actually younger than Bea Arthur; she was the 2nd youngest actress after Rue. Betty was the oldest actress on the show and will be the last regular castmember to die. Sophia was only supposed to be an occasional guest star, but after the pilot she was upgraded to the main cast (displacing a gay cook named Coco in the process). > [@robert\_columbia](#): > > And, some early episodes of The Next Generation have men wearing similar dresses. I think the idea was that gender-specific clothing was a thing of the past in the new, updated future. Ah, the infamous skant. It only appeared on background extras, never on a speaking characters. The executives really, really hated them (allegedly one even sent a memo demanding they fire the “fag costume designer” who designed them). Data was originaly the ship’s science officer and hence wore a blue uniform. It looked horrible with his makeup. He looked best in a gold uniform so they swapped the colours around so red meant command and gold meant ships operations. The saucer seperation manouver was meant to be a regular thing (whenever the ship was in danger all the civilians would be evacuated to the saucer section, and only the rest of the ship go into danger). It turned out that was way to difficult & expensive to film on a regular basis. Also Captain Picard was supposed to have a French accent, but nobody could keep a straight face when Patrick Stewart tried one so they just had him use his native British accent. And Roddenberry had originally planed for Wesley Crusher to be Picard & Crusher’s love child, but that plotline never meant anywhere. Wesley was also supposed to be a girl at one point. ---
**Author:** ![BunnyTVS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BunnyTVS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BunnyTVS)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/66 "2011-06-18T01:50:13Z")
> [@etv78](#): > > Sorry, but I got a couple _movie_ facts: > > James Cameron didn’t think O.J. Simpson was scary enough to play the Terminator. Lance Henrikson, was originally lined up for the Terminator role. The original idea was the the Terminator was a cyborg who could blend in to modern (for the 80’s) life. Lance took this to the whole method actor extreme, and turned up to the audition with silver foil wrapped around his teeth. He also scared the shit out of the casting assistant. Arnie was originally cast for the Kyle Reese character. Officially he got the Terminator role because he had a number of ideas about how the Terminator would act. (I reckon it’s because his acting was so mechanical at the time). On a similar theme… When he was being cast for Robocop, Paul Weller studied robotic dancing from a professional mime artist. The director, Paul Verhoven, was dead against it. He wanted the character to have more natural movements. At least, that was the story on the directors commentary. Now they say it bacame more stilted due to the make up of the costume. However for the scene where Clarence Boddicker leaves Bob Morton a grenade as a present, the props designer created a mini grenade based on a weapon used by the Japanese. The director though it looked too puny, and had them make the model used in the final scene. The prop designer still had this _case_ of fake mini grenades, that he stuck in his garage and forgot about. Until he moved house, and the new residents found a rather suspicious package in the garage… ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/67 "2011-06-18T02:51:10Z")
More William Frawley stuff: After “I Love Lucy”, Frawley appeared in “My Three Sons” as Bub, the housekeeper. When Frawley was forced to leave the show for health reasons after five seasons, William Demarest replaced him (as Uncle Charley). Frawley frequently visited the set and made no effort to hide his dislike of Demarest. He became such a pain in the ass he was told to stay away. mmm ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/68 "2011-06-18T03:27:00Z")
Vance hated Frawley so much that she turned down an offer of $50,000 from Desilu just to do a pilot for a Fred-Ethel spinoff once _I Love Lucy_ had run its course. If a hit it would have made her a very rich woman and she knew it, and Frawley was all willing, but she couldn’t stand the idea of working with him for several more years. (She and Lucy also got off to a rough start, but settled it enough to star together in another series and appear together several times later in their careers.) From what I’ve read _everybody_ loved Desi Arnaz. He and Lucy had epic arguments of course due to his womanizing and gambling, but she never stopped loving him and there are actually very sweet home movies of them playing together with their grandchildren in which you’d never realize they were divorced. When Frawley died (in the lobby of [this hotel](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/KnickerbockerHotel_Dec2006.jpg)- now a retirement home- where his much much younger girlfriend assisted him when he had a heart attack) Arnaz took out full page ads in several papers including _Variety_ and L.A. Herald with Frawley’s picture and the words “Adios Amigo”. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/69 "2011-06-18T03:35:03Z")
Another famous always contentious relationship was Robert Reed and Sherwood Schwartz. Reed hated _The Brady Bunch_ and felt it destroyed his career (whether it did or not is impossible to say; he may have been a much bigger star without it or he may have been one of a million actors who never got the big break). Schwartz had a really stinging assessment of Reed: “Bob was the sort of actor who if he bombed in Hamlet would blame the writing”. Reed boycotted the last episode of the series. In that episode Peter sells Greg some defective hair tonic; Reed thought (understandably) this was stupid since kids didn’t use hair tonic in the early 1970s and in fact the writer- a guy in his late 50s- had just recycled a plot he’d used on a radio show many years before. # As obnoxious as he could be to directors and writers and Schwartz, the actors who played his kids all seem to have great memories of him. He actually paid to take them all on a Caribbean cruise during the final hiatus of the series. (Unlike the kids he and Florence Henderson got residuals so whatever else the show did to them career wise it set them up for life.) Norman Fell always felt screwed by _Three’s Company_. He and Audra Lindley left the show to star in the spinoff _The Ropers_ but only with the agreement that if the show only lasted one season they could come back to Company. The show was done as a midseason replacement, then picked up for one season though only half a season aired (even though it wasn’t a ratings bomb- wasn’t great but wasn’t a bomb). Fell reckoned this to be one season and wanted to come back to _Three’s Company_ (which would have been difficult since the apartment manager was now Mr. Furley whose brother owned the building) but the producers said, legally correctly, that he had been paid for a season and a half of _The Ropers_ and thus they had fulfilled their end of the deal. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/70 "2011-06-18T03:40:14Z")
More on the Frawley / Vance feud - “My Three Sons” and “the Lucy Show” taped on neighboring sound-stages. During “Lucy” recordings, Frawley would throw frisbees at the stage to make her fluff her lines. Although contrary to popular legend, Vance was **not** contractually required to be 25 lbs heavier than Lucy during the run of “I Love Lucy.” Another beloved actor with a bad “off-camera” rep is Tom Baker, the fourth to play the lead character in “Doctor Who.” He became increasingly demanding & difficult to work with over his tenure on the show, which is reflected in the quick turnaround in companion characters. True, the show has always had a revolving cast, but typically a companion character traveled with the Doctor for two or three years before departing. Tom’s companions typically lasted a year before bolting out the door. And before anyone rushes to correct me, yes I know that Lalla Ward (the 2nd incarnation of Romana) married him shortly before they both departed the show - but it should be noted that the marriage barely lasted six months, and was over before Baker’s final episode had even aired. (On one of the DVD’s, a producer from that time let out that Baker & Ward could go from one day being madly in love, to the next day not speaking to each other at all unless they were filming.) ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/71 "2011-06-18T03:53:19Z")
Very well known but I’ll mention it anyway: Robert Altman received $75,000 for directing MASH, not even a great deal in 1971, and received nothing from the series with which he was not involved in any way. His son Mike wrote the lyrics to the song _Suicide is Painless_ when he was 14 years old and still receives royalties from it, earning millions from the TV show and from the times the song charted in the U.S. and U.K. (which it did in the 1970s) even though the words are hardly ever heard. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/72 "2011-06-18T03:57:02Z")
People always associated with a TV show who actually appeared in only a minority of episodes: Tim Conway was only a regular for 3 seasons of _The Carol Burnett Show_. He made frequent guest appearances but was not in nearly as many episodes as Lyle Waggoner who is almost forgotten. Aunt Esther (LaWanda Page) and Grady (Whitman Mayo) didn’t appear until Season 3 of _Sanford & Son_ and were in amazingly few episodes considering how many memorable moments they were part of. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/73 "2011-06-18T04:01:17Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > People always associated with a TV show who actually appeared in only a minority of episodes: > Tim Conway was only a regular for 3 seasons of _The Carol Burnett Show_. He made frequent guest appearances but was not in nearly as many episodes as Lyle Waggoner who is almost forgotten. > > Aunt Esther (LaWanda Page) and Grady (Whitman Mayo) didn’t appear until Season 3 of _Sanford & Son_ and were in amazingly few episodes considering how many memorable moments they were part of. Also, Paul Lynd, Uncle Arthur on “Bewitched.” He is one of the actors most closely associated with the series, but he only appeared in eight episodes (over the course of eight seasons.) In his earliest episode, he doesn’t even play Uncle Arthur - he’s the rude, neurotic driving school instructor who bullies Sam when she’s learning to drive. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/74 "2011-06-18T04:16:05Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > One of the major reasons Richard Moll was cast as Bull on Night Court was the fact that at 6’8" he could legitimately tower over Harry Anderson and John Larroquette, both of whom are 6’4", and getting an actor with that much height AND good comic timing is not easy. > > In fact, by the time the final cast was set in the later seasons, Night Court had a remarkably tall cast - the shortest of the male regulars - Charles Robinson, who played Mac - is 6’3", and Marsha Warfield (Roz) is 5’11. Only Markie Post isn’t remarkably above average, though I forget, just now, how tall she is. I once read an interview with Warfield where she said this was one of the reasons she liked doing the show. It was the only time in her adult life she felt petite. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/75 "2011-06-18T04:21:55Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > Over on the **Golden Girls** Rue McClanahan was originally cast as Rose and Betty White as Blance. Rue was best known for playing sweet, but flightly characters (Vivian Harmon on **Maude** and Aunt Fran Crowley on **Mama’s Family** and Betty was best known for playing bitchy vamps (Sue Ann Nivens on the Mary Tylet Moore Show and Ellen Harper Jackson on **Mama’s Family** ) so they switched to avoid typecasting. A similar switch happened on _Friends_. Jennifer Aniston was originally cast as Phoebe and Lisa Kudrow was cast as Rachel. ---
**Author:** ![Speak\_to\_me\_Maddie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Speak\_to\_me\_Maddie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speak_to_me_Maddie)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/76 "2011-06-18T04:25:32Z")
**Elaine Miles** who played the inimitable **Marilyn Whirlwind** on **Northern Exposure** was discovered when she drove her mother to an audition for the role. The producers spotted her in the waiting room and begged her to do the role. She had never acted. She agreed to play role only if she was allowed to essentially be herself which she felt would be an accurate non-stereotypical representation of a modern native-american woman. She also asked to be allowed to showcase her traditional dancing which can be seen in the pow-wow episode. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/77 "2011-06-18T04:53:21Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > A similar switch happened on _Friends_. Jennifer Aniston was originally cast as Phoebe and Lisa Kudrow was cast as Rachel. I can see why they would’ve tried that arrangement, it could’ve worked. Though maybe not as well as how it turned out. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/78 "2011-06-18T06:19:23Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > Check out the cast intros for the 1991-92 season of **Saturday Night Live**. When Phil Hartman’s name is announced, look to his left. See the woman with the obviously-swinging earring? That’s his wife, Brynn Hartman, who would later murder Phil before killing herself. It’s a little strange to me that they continued to show that same image of Phil and his murderer together whenever they aired that season in reruns, for years afterward. For all I know, they still do. and the reason her earring is swinging is because she kept trying to turn so that her face was in the shot. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/79 "2011-06-18T13:47:03Z")
> [@Speak\_to\_me\_Maddie](#): > > **Elaine Miles** who played the inimitable **Marilyn Whirlwind** on **Northern Exposure** was discovered when she drove her mother to an audition for the role. The producers spotted her in the waiting room and begged her to do the role. She had never acted. She agreed to play role only if she was allowed to essentially be herself which she felt would be an accurate non-stereotypical representation of a modern native-american woman. She also asked to be allowed to showcase her traditional dancing which can be seen in the pow-wow episode. I well remember the Christmas episode where she danced, and the story of the Raven and the Sun. That episode inexplicably moved me to tears. She was so beautiful, so dignified, dancing on that stage. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833/80 "2011-06-18T13:57:24Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > Check out the cast intros for the 1991-92 season of **Saturday Night Live**. When Phil Hartman’s name is announced, look to his left. See the woman with the obviously-swinging earring? That’s his wife, Brynn Hartman, who would later murder Phil before killing herself. It’s a little strange to me that they continued to show that same image of Phil and his murderer together whenever they aired that season in reruns, for years afterward. For all I know, they still do. This makes me curious. I watched SNL back then. I tried finding the clip of the opening on line but Google has failed me. I did find [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKJU_SjkqC4). It’s one of my favorite Phil Hartman moments. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-television-facts/585833.md?page=5)