Lies! Lies! All lies!
The explanation I heard was that he wasn’t explicitly a vegetarian, but he wasn’t explicitly eating meat either. So he could eat sandwiches and “burgers” but not “ham sandwiches” or “hamburgers”.
That seemed to be born out but what he was eating when I was paying attention after I was first told this (about five years ago or so now).
Well, him and Jesus.
Early on, Michael Keaton worked stage crew on the set of Mister Rogers. The crew often tried to get Fred Rogers to break character and played all sorts of pranks on him.
One of Michael’s jobs was to stand behind the closet door and Fred would hang up his sweater by handing it to Michael.
One day he opened the closet door - and there stood Michael in the nude. Fred still did not break character, just kept the opening patter going without a pause.
I just remembered that before James Dean got into noteworthy plays on Broadway, or perhaps during that same timeframe (early 50’s), he tested the tricks and stunts on the TV show Beat The Clock – fairly common knowledge for Dean fans of the day.
Another person who was working on that set was George Romero. His first job in show business was Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Romero said Rogers was a great guy who encouraged his film making career. Romero invited Rogers to a screening of Night of the Living Dead and he says Rogers enjoyed the movie.
“Friends” debuted a year after “Frasier.” I think you mean she got the call to be Ursula in “Mad About You,” which I think officially counts as her break.
She was however required to were clothes 2 sizes two small for her so she’d look fat. A better wardrobe was one of her conditions for working on the Lucy Show.
Fran Drescher and Peter Marc Jacobson have been really aggresive about selling the remake rights to foreign TV broadcasters.
Lalla Ward later married Richard Dawkins; they were introduced by Douglas Adams, who knew her from when he was a writer on the show.
Baker was a drunk, which was a big part of that. Some time after his departure from Who and divorce from Ward, he stopped drinking to excess, and is, by all accounts, a much more pleasant fellow to be around - and his next marriage worked out very well, indeed. (He’s been married to Sue Jerrard since 1986 - IIRC, he cleaned up early in their relationship when he saw he was going to ruin it as he had his relationship with Ward.)
Important Dates in TV History
o Sept 21, 1970 invention of Monday Night Football
o Nov 23, 1993 invention of Food TV
o 1950ish invention of the remote control
So is that whole Michael Keaton gag on Mr. Rogers definitely real?
I see no cite for it, though.
The business of filming someone’s parts in a TV show all at once and cutting it together with other parts was apparently an idea tried in several different programs, possibly mostly in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. In his memoir (co-written with Robert Karen) When the Shooting Stops . . . the Cutting Begins: A Film Editor’s Story, TV and movie editor Ralph Rosenblum talks about his job editing the TV program The Guy Lombardo Show. Everything for a single season of the show would be filmed in pieces. All of Guy Lombardo’s introductions would be filmed at one time. All the songs played by the orchestra would be recorded at one time without any filming of the orchestra. (It might take longer than one day, but it would be in one continuous block during the working hours of several days.) They would then film shots of the orchestra pretending to play together. They would film shots of each section of the orchestra pretending to play together. They would then film shots of the dancers doing a dance number. All of the guest singers for a single season were shot in one long session. Any one episode of the program would contain dozens or perhaps hundreds of individual shots which were filmed with no relation to the other shots. All these shots would then be cut together to make it look like each single episode was shot at a single continuous take:
[QUOTE=alphaboi867]
Fran Drescher and Peter Marc Jacobson have been really aggresive about selling the remake rights to foreign TV broadcasters.
[/QUOTE]
The wiki: there are many productions of it in other countries and the original show is phenomenally successful in syndication around the world.
Who’s the Boss (“Who Indeed?” for Community fans) has been remade in several countries as well. England was first I believe, where the Tony Micelli character was changed to a never-quite-made-it football player.
I think Ugly Betty (from the Colombian telenovela Betty La Fea) still leads in the show with the most independent adaptations. There have been productions all over Latin America, Europe and Asia. The U.S. version was probably one of the least successful of the adaptations, largely because it never regained momentum after the writer’s strike.
Allen Funt of Candid Camera is one of those celebrities who I don’t think I’ve ever read anything nice about. Joan Rivers’ first job in show business was working as a writer- she hated him with a passion. Fannie Flagg credits him for giving her the first big break she had in TV… but hated him. He was apparently just a raging tyrannical bullying asshole to everybody who worked with him- “Funt at his regular” being basically “Arthur Godfrey at his worst”.
Lawrence Welk was liked by most of the performers on his show except they all said he was incredibly cheap. He paid them the absolute minimum he could, his reasoning being that they could make it up in the personal appearances for which he was giving them free advertisement. He himself was one of the richest men in Hollywood due to money from the show and real estate investments.
Hee-Haw began as a CBS show, was cancelled after two seasons, was brought back in syndication and became one of the most profitable shows ever, running for more than 20 years. Eventually Clark and Owens and the other owners sold it to a Hollywood based production company who immediately changed everything to catch a younger demographic and the show was a total failure within a year. Elvis loved the show and wanted to sing a Gospel number with the HeeHaw Gospel Quartet (for those unaware there was a Gospel number in most episodes) but his owner, Col. Tom, wouldn’t let him.
A new version of Star Trek was supposed to start in the late 70s on a new TV network. That idea was scrapped and they made the Star Trek I movie instead. In the 80s they finally made a new Star Trek series (TNG) and it was on a new network.
And “The Searchers” with John Wayne.
When TV news broadcasts were invented, anchors had problems reading the script and looking at the camera. The teleprompter was invented for this but Don Hewitt of CBS (later created “60 Minutes”) suggested they learn to read Braille.
ST:TNG was never on a network. It was syndicated. So was DS9. The network you mention was going to be started by Paramount, with the ST program being Star Trek: Phase II. They changed their mind with the success of Star Wars and released Star Trek: The Motion Picture instead. Paramount did start UPN in 1995, with Star Trek: Voyager as one of its flagship (heh) programs.
That was a fascinating link and I may have to buy that book. Never saw the Lombardo show, but Welk never rolled that way. But Lombardo probably had a pretty big touring schedule.
And someone said Welk was cheap! Hewitt was probably joking. Clever though.
Considering the quality of the rest of the programming on UPN, it was actually the perfect choice. Crap leading a bunch of other crap. How could they have possibly muffed this show? And they hyped the crap out of it. It was going to be raw and gritty and controversial, they were going to take everything to a whole new level of awesome! It was on a bunch of TV guide covers and billboards all over and the usual PR blitz of spots on ET and stars going on the talkers.
Instead of controversial, like they promised, it was pablum. It had forgotten everything that made Star Trek what it was.
Now they hardly show it any more, while you can catch TNG several times a day on some cable channel or other. And of course they still show the original as well, at least here in the LA market on KDOC.
By the time “The Ropers” had finished stinking up the room, they were happy with Knotts. I quit watching the show because of him. It was just sad to see him. I can’t blame the guy for making a paycheck, but you can’t really top what he did on AG or even come close. And having decided to watch an episode of the first season a month or two ago, Three’s Company really didn’t hold up well. How many wacky misunderstanding can these three dolts go through? You never hear one of them say: “Hey, remember the last twenty times we thought Jack was up to something and it all turned out to be shit we made up in our heads? Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to act on our unfounded suspicions!”
Fell was the best thing on that show. His comic timing was amazing. So they managed to screw up two shows in one shot with that dick move, at least for me.
Good thread! I wish I had an odd television fact. Oh wait, I do! It was Jack Webb’s hand that held the thing that makes the VII in MARK VII LIMITED.
I read that Paramount was wanting to buy the adjacent studio lot called DesiLu. DesiLu had several properties, but it’s most profitable was The Lucy Show. Paramount was willing to pay top dollar to acquire the rights to Lucy. When the deal finally went through, the got their precious Lucy, along with a couple of lesser properties. The least valuable property was this short-lived TV show called Star Trek.
Somehow, they managed to earn their investment back on that one. Mission: Impossible also has earned them a few coins.