I missed it because I was living in England in the Fall of 1976. 
There are posts on YouTube of the most short-lived TV series of different years. I’ll try finding Mr T and Tina in one for 1976.
Apparently, Michael Richards, the actor who played Cosmo Kramer on Seinfeld is also a standup comedian. I wonder why he isn’t doing that any more?
At least he got a second chance on Curb Your Enthusiasm:
A Mea Culpa written by someone else. Yeah, the shark was indeed jumped.
It took 23 years for Jerry Van Dyke to recover from My Mother the Car 1965-66.
His redemption finally came with Coach 1989–97. He was nominated 4 times for an Emmy but didn’t win.
He survived the lean years with a odd banjo/comedy act. He often performed in my home state of Arkansas. Hot Springs was a popular tourist spot with spas and clubs where Jerry sometimes performed.
Jerry retired and lived in Arkansas. Died Jan 5, 2018, in Malvern Arkansas.
He had lymphoma that required extreme chemo (my best friend happened to have exactly the same cancer at the same time); unlike my friend, during or just after the cancer chemo, Jeff contracted COVID which very nearly killed him. The medical expenses were certainly in the hundreds of thousands of dollars but I find it hard to believe that Jeff’s wealth couldn’t easily absorb the hit.
But you may be right.
IIRC he torpedoed his standup career (and reputation) by making extremely hostile racist remarks on stage.
He was POed by a heckler and flew off the handle. Unfortunately, it was videotaped and made public.
He called the heckler a n***er and made a reference to lynching. Even his fellow comedians were very critical of him.
One evening, just a few years after he crashed and burned, I was channel-surfing, and there Hammer was, doing a Bible lesson.
I always felt a bit bad for Hammer. He had a few harsh lessons when it came to managing money, employing friends and family who did nothing by drain his accounts, providing nothing in return, and whoever advised him to go hard to stay relevant did him a disservice. I think Hammer was talented enough that he might have been able to make it through the gangsta rap period without trying to make himself out to be something he wasn’t.
“I didn’t choose the Thug Life… in fact the Thug Life kicked me out!”
Mickey Rooney, once the highest paid actor in Hollywood, will always be remembered by people my age (old, but not Mickey Rooney is a star old) as the crazy guy pretend washing invisible dishes as his wife shills insurance.
Interesting. I know him only as a star of movies that were 10-20 years old when I was a kid seeing them on TV. I have no recollection of any commercials he ever appeared in.
Probably won’t imbed and it’s other people commenting on how weird it is, but I found this clip. Not only did it not embed, it wouldn’t let me post at all. I had to break the link with a space before the word ‘shorts’ in the link if you wanna try that hard to see.
https://www.youtube.com/ shorts/pNOm9ob_Arg
When I was a kid, my father worked for Paul Masson, setting up signage in supermarkets, restocking and straightening the bottles, etc. We had SO MUCH Paul Masson-Orson Wells crap in our garage. The signs were slick, so on the rare snow days in Atlanta, we used them for sleds.
Thank you. FTR, here it is
This should do it:
I remember Mickey Rooney doing some commercials – but not that particular one.
However, that’s easily explained. 2004 was in our family’s toddler-TV phase when we watched very little adult TV.
“Active career” and lots of money don’t always go together. Dean Winters has been a regular in at least five series I remember ( Rescue Me, Oz, Law and Order SVU, and 30 Rock) plus I don’t know how many one-offs and even a couple of movies - but I remeber reading he’s earned more from those Allstate Mayhem commercials than all the movie and TV roles put together.