[QUOTE=Stan Shmenge]
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.
[/QUOTE]
The whole premise is incredibly dated. Today a straight guy and two straight girls who wanted to share an apartment, assuming they had the money for rent, wouldn’t draw so much as a snooty look unless one of them had a big dog. Of course even at the time it’s unlikely that a guy who was opposed to straight members of the opposite sex living together platonically would have been any less opposed to a gay guy.
Trivia about Norman Fell: he had a longtime rivalry with Jack Klugman. They used to take parts from each other when they were starting out since they were the same basic type and Fell became super irked when Klugman passed him doing 90 starting with The Odd Couple and then with Quincy.
Since Stan Shmenge mentioned The Lawrence Welk Show, I decided to look it up to see how it was filmed. While doing that, I found the following clip from it:
Apparently Welk had no idea what the song “One Toke over the Line” was actually about.
(This clip is available at several other websites if it fails to load for you.)
The way I heard it was that Roddenberry watched Star Wars and said “I can hire the same special effects company, and I have better characters.” I’m not sure how true that is.
But he didn’t hire the same effects company. He hired a much cheaper one. Eventually he fired them and hired ILM. Footage was used from both, though. Pay close attention to the sensor array of the Enterprise. In some scenes it’s amber, in others it’s blue. ILM used blue.
When Pete Duel died during production of Alias Smith and Jones producers had enough footage of him for one more episode, but needed to use voice actor Paul Frees to loop dialog. The producers then replaced Duel, but neither they nor ABC ever acknowledged his death.
I recall reading some “Star Trek” book or other that gave a break-down of some new character descriptions and the first few episodes that would have been shot.
Although Shatner and most of the old cast had agreed to do the new show, Nimoy was steadfastly refusing. Therefore he would have been replaced by Xom, a full-blooded Vulcan who was the opposite of Spock - he would have had no capacity at all for emotion, yet he would be fascinated by the concept and would be constantly asking questions about human emotions.
The other major new character would have been Lt. Ilia, from a race that was the polar opposite of Vulans. Ilia’s race would have been super-emotional, and incapable of relating to anyone else other than sexually. (A watered-down version of Ilia appeared in “TMP” of course, but they didn’t dwell on her “super-sexualized” backstory.)
It may not be apparent from my perfunctory description, but when reading the character outlines that Roddenberry wrote, it was clear that these two characters were re-worked some more and eventually became Data and Counselor Troi on TNG.
I did figure it out from your description. And if you’d included the words “completely useless” in your description of Ilia, it would have been even more obvious.
Producer Don Fedderson was mentioned upstream. A few more Fedderson tidbits: He was the father of Mike Minor, the downed pilot who became a regular on “Petticoat Junction,” produced by Paul Henning.
Minor would later marry Linda Kaye Henning, Paul’s daughter. Linda Kaye Henning was the inspiration for “Elly Mae” character on “Beverly Hillbillies,” and supplied the voice of Jethrene, played by Max Baer. Fedderson also had another actor son Greg, who died a few years ago, but I’m not familiar with him.
In at least one episode, Jethro and Jethrene actually appeared in the same scene, although Jethrene’s back was to the camera.
Don Fedderson’s wife Tido (Mike’s mom, maiden name Minor) appeared in almost every, if not every, episode of his 1950s series “The Millionaire,” always uncredited.
When Fedderson and Tido divorced, he married b-movie actress Yvonne Lime–who was then forever relieved of the stress of waiting for her agent to call.
Maybe because it was suicide and not a natural death? But it wouldn’t have killed them to put one measly ‘in-memory-of Peter Duel 19__ - 19__’ sign after the credits of that show.
Speaking of Mary Tyler Moore - she lost out on the part of Danny Thomas’s daughter in the Danny Thomas Show because she didn’t look right for the part (her nose was, uh, too perfect to be a part of his family!).
However, when Carl Reiner was looking for someone to play Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show, it was Danny Thomas who suggested they audition her for the role.
Won by a nose?
Same book as I referenced earlier in this thread, "Forbidden Channels" by Penny Stallings. page 59…she was to play the OLDER daughter (the one who was not as memorable as the younger daughter who got all the good lines).
You’re probably thinking of Angela Cartwright (who played Linda), but originally DT had an older, teenaged, daughter, Terry, played by Sherry Jackson. Jackson left the show and they sent the character off “to college” but soon decided they wanted the character back for at least occasional appearances. That was the role MTM auditioned for.
In fact, the part of Danny’s wife was originally played by Jean Hagen. When Hagen left the show after three seasons, the producers killed off the character in a car accident – making the Danny Thomas Show one of the few early TV shows to use death to write out a character.
Speaking of Car 54, it was shot on location in New York City. Toody and Muldoon’s squad car (and every other squad car on the show) was painted bright red and white (red shows up as black, when filmed in black and white) in order to keep the TV shows cars from being mistaken for actual police cars.
While I am sure that there were rumors all over the place, NPH officially came out in November, 2006. HIMYM premiered in September 2005. I am not saying that the cast, casting directors and production company didn’t know, but an average schmoe (e.g. me) who only knew NPH as Doogie Howser and the psychic colonel on Starship Troopers had no clue (nor cared) about his sexual orientation. That said, given the skittishness of the money people in Hollywood, I’m not sure he would have been cast in the role had he come out two years earlier. Maybe. Maybe not.
NPH was like Jodie Foster. He “came out” in 2006 but it’s been an open secret for years. I remember back when Harold & Kumar came out in 2003 that Harris’ real-life gayness was part of the joke of playing “Himself” in the movie.
During episodes of The Flintstones, there were ads featuring the Flintstones and Rubbles smoking Winston cigarettes. “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.”
