Ralph Furley was also the result of “We need a Don Knotts type” and, after calling the usual suspects for auditions, somebody said “Did we call Don Knotts?” The producers had assumed he wouldn’t be interested, but with his movie career in low gear and alimony payments and kids in college he was very interested in the paycheck of a hit series. He said in interviews that Barney Fife made him world famous but Ralph Furley was why he had a comfortable retirement.
Abe Vigoda on how he was cast as Fish in Barney Miller:
“I got the role because the producer thought I looked tired. But I looked tired because I had been jogging earlier that day. He said to me, ‘You look tired, Abe.’ I said, ‘I am. I was just jogging five miles.’ He said, ‘You also look like you have hemorrhoids.’ I said, ‘What are you? A doctor or a producer?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m a producer and you know what? You’ve got the role.’ Just like that.”
Of course I’m guessing his recognition from The Godfather movies didn’t hurt.
Barney Miller inspired an Israeli sitcom in which the character based on Fish was 90 year old Yemenite.
Speaking of Betty White–She was originally supposed to audition for the role of Blanche on The Golden Girls, having just played the man hungry Sue Ann Nivens, while Rue McClanahan, having just played the air headed Vivien on Maude, was supposed to audition for Rose. While Betty was reading, Rue was reading the script and thinking “I so want to read for Blanche.” The producer came out and told her to go home because Betty had just gotten the role of Rose. She asked to read for Blanche. The producers wanted her, but said Bea Arthur did not want to play Dorothy.
Rue called and asked her why. “Because I don’t want to do Maude and Vivien meet Sue Ann.”
Blanche explained that she and Betty had switched roles. Bea thought a moment and replied “That could be interesting.”
Oops - you’re correct of course. I was remembering an interview Lisa gave on a talk show about this, but forgot that it was Mad About You. Speaking of which, I believe she was in BOTH shows, Friends and Mad About You running at the same time for a brief period.
Not bad for someone canned from their first show.
Gene Roddenberry wrote lyrics to the Star Trek theme. He got half of the royalty money every time that song was played, despite the lyrics never being used in the TV show.
When Reinhold Weege was creating Night Court, Judge Harry Stone was written as a huge Mel Torme fan. Harry Anderson, who won the role, is a Mel Torme fan in real life. Weege says the fact that Anderson and his character are Mel Torme fans is entirely coincidental, that Harry Stone was written that way before Anderson tried out for the part.
Ellen Foley, who played public defender Billie Young, is also a singer who sang along with Meat Loaf on “Paradise By the Dashboard Light.”
There are definite suggestions of this in various episodes.
This is somewhat contested, depending on whom you ask. Roddenberry always claimed someone pointed out the lack of a Russian to him, and he thought it was a good idea to fit his theme of a unified Earth. Others argue the main reason for the new character was because the producers wanted the young Beatles type. I think it’s probably a bit of both, with perhaps Roddenberry using the opportunity of the new character the producers wanted to add his concept of a Russian. Thus we get Chekov.
What is interesting, though, is that Walter Koenig is actually older than George Takei. (WK = Sept 14, 1936; GT = Apr 20, 1937). And Grace Lee Whitney (Janice Rand) is actually older than both of them and Nichelle Nichols, Majel Barrett (Nurse Chapel), Leonard Nimoy, and William Shatner.
So the two “kids” of the show were older than the roles.
Yes, and they even wrote it in - the two characters were twin sisters. IIRC Phoebe was even on an episode of MAY.
Egads. And I can’t figure out how to make those lyrics fit the music at all.
I might be misremembering because it’s been awhile since I read the books, but in one of the Star Trek nonfiction books written by David Gerrold, I believe it’s mentioned that both of these were factors in Chekov’s addition to the cast. Pravda actually complained about the fact that Star Trek didn’t contain a Russian character (with Russians at the time making big strides in space exploration) and Roddenberry agreed. But they also did want a young Beatles type. I believe Koenig wore a Beatle wig to his audition.
And one bit of silliness from this…Dan Fielding (Larroquette’s character) was eventually revealed to be an alias to hide his embarrassing real name: Reinhold Elmore - when his first name is revealed, the rest of the characters react with incredulity.
I remember reading that he wore a wig for his first season, while his real hair grew out. You can see a big difference in his appearance — in the early shows, he looks like a Beatle; in later shows, he looks about two years away from a comb-over.
One of the amusing continuity problems of Star Trek is that the episode “Space Seed,” which introduced Ricardo Montalban as Khan, was broadcast in the first season, while Walter Koenig wasn’t added to the cast until the second season. Not only was Chekov not featured in the episode, he wasn’t even in the crew. That invalidates the scene in *Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn * where the two recognize each other.
Not as wrong, however, as Deep Space Nine’s episode “Trials and Tribble-ations” where Worf and the crew are looking at the 75 year old recording of Klingons without ridges on their heads. Worf dismisses the different appearance, saying “We do not discuss it with outsiders.”
As this title shot shows, the program was (at least at first) called simply “Mary Tyler Moore”. However, many sources (including the Wikipedia article on the series) use the elongated name as well.
There was a short-lived variety hour, Mary, which featured such future notables as David Letterman and Michael Keaton in the company of players. Then there was the awkward hybrid The Mary Tyler Moore Hour, and later a sitcom called Mary.
And many fans would argue that just because Chekov wasn’t on the bridge, it doesn’t mean he wasn’t on the Enterprise. He could have been assigned to various departments around the ship to further his training to become one of the bridge crew. Koenig himself joked that the real reason Khan recognized Chekov was because he had to use the head and Chekov kept him waiting.
Speaking of Reinhold Weege and Night Court, somebody on their writing staff had a beef with Milwaukee. It was used as the butt of jokes many times: Yakoff Smirnoff’s character described Communist Russia as being thousands of miles of Milwaukee (a description that reduces Bull to screaming); a really stupid hooker says she’s from Milwaukee and everybody goes “Ohhhhh” (as in, ‘that explains it’); a rock star gives away all of his property including a shopping mall which nobody wants when they learn it’s in Milwaukee. Several others as well.
Wesley Crusher saving the Enterprise was originally planned for only one episode. A writer’s strike prompted them to split their different ideas for the episode into multiple episodes. A Mary Sue was born.
That was eventually explained away in an episode of Enterprise as being some sort of DNA-altering disease that came about as a result of failed Klingon experiments with gene therapy. The Klingons kept the details under wraps because they found it embarrassing.
