Category: TV

In 1954, Red Skelton had an unfortunate accident. During a rehearsal, he plunged headlong into a “breakaway” door which failed to give. The resulting concussion landed him in the hospital.

What to do? A live show was about to be broadcast in just thirty minutes!

A writer named Johnny Carson had another gig as host of a show called Earn Your Vacation. He was obviously used to being in front of the camera. So he was persuaded to host that night’s episode.

He was brilliant. NBC execs watched, and remembered.

In 1962, tumultuous Tonight Show host Jack Paar called it quits for the final time. NBC contacted Carson’s agent to see if he wanted the job. Carson said sure, as long as long-time friend Ed McMahon could join him. Thus began a run that would last for thirty years.

Carson’s immaculate sense of timing and delivery, as well as having the best comedy writers in Hollywood, let him build a legacy that Jay Leno will have a hard time surpassing. His anniversary show that aired each year cemented certain routines into our minds, like the Jack Webb copper clapper caper, Ed Ames throwing a hatchet and nailing a human cardboard figure in the crotch (Carson’s classic ad lib: “I didn’t even know you were Jewish!”), and the night he burst in on a filming of CPO Sharkey to berate Don Rickles for breaking his cigarette box during the previous night’s co-hosting.

The show also spawned urban legends. Who hasn’t heard of the off-color remark made to Winnie Palmer after she allegedly informed Johnny that she kissed Arnie’s (golf) balls before each tournament? Or the remark made to Zsa Zsa Gabor after she offered to let him pet her “cat?” Snopes.com disproves both of them, but one of the truest marks of greatness is to inspire such legends.

Carson was a huge influence on this particular class clown. I would do my best to imitate his timing, and I would get laughs, even reluctant ones from teachers trying to maintain order.

I would get a rush when each night’s announced guests included the Mighty Carson Art Players. That meant an appearance by Carnac the Magnificent, who would curse the audience when they applauded that the FINAL envelope containing the hidden question was announced. Or maybe Floyd R. Turbo, American would be delivering a comical right-wing bombast. Perhaps it would be Art Fern hosting a Tea Time Movie, sneaking kisses from foxy Carol Wayne in between hot-pitched commercials (“Drive to the Slausen Cutoff, Stop the car, get out and cut off your slausen”). It didn’t matter who it was, it would be great.

One last legend that turned out to be true, because I watched it live: Johnny really DID tell Dolly Parton that he would give a year’s salary to peek under her blouse. And I believe he was making about $4,000,000 a year at the time.

Once upon a time, Americans were entertained by vaudeville. Every town had at least one theater that might show silent movies and double up as a stage for live performances. Performers would travel from town to town doing their thing for small, eager audiences. Their specialties might be circus acts, music, dancing, comedy, stunts, acts of mental prowess, acrobatics, and in one unique case, a man who would swallow water followed by kerosene and regurgitate it onto a miniature building. The kerosene would come up first, setting the building on fire, followed by the water putting it out.

Small town America ate this stuff up. And even though vaudeville was killed by talkies in the 1930’s, an entertainment columnist by the name of Ed Sullivan knew that there was still a market for it in the fledgling television market.

So on June 20, 1948, CBS gave him a chance to prove his point. He did, for twenty three years.

Originally called Toast of the Town, the show soon simply became known as Sullivan. It became a solid anchor for CBS to dominate Sunday nights for many years. And it also became a part of our culture, a show that literally had something to offer to everyone in the family, regardless of age.

Perhaps its ultimate genius can be summed up by this simple fact: it was one of a very few shows that my television-spurning father never missed.

Ed was a man of fierce convictions. He fervently believed that entertainment should also be innocent, and ensured beforehand that any acts he booked knew that going in. If you crossed the line Ed drew in the sand, you were blacklisted.

In an unfortunate misunderstanding, that happened to comedian Jackie Mason. He was doing a comedic bite where he was flashing fingers. Ed thought he flashed THAT finger. He was barred from the show.

The footage of the bit exists, and it clearly shows that Mason never made an obscene gesture. But Ed thought he did, case closed. Mason went so far as to file a libel suit against Sullivan. A year an a half later, Mason was invited back and Ed publicly apologized. That placated Mason, who dropped the suit. But he still never appeared on the show again.

Mason’s career took a hit. Ironically, the Doors used a similar situation to enhance their popularity.

Ed insisted that they not use the phrase “girl we couldn’t get much higher” in singing Light My Fire. Jim Morrison tentatively agreed. Then once he started singing, he changed his mind. He looked Ed straight in the eye and sang the line intact. Ed glared back, and a legend was created. Doors fans loved it.

I still remember the hodgepodge of acts, including the plate spinning guy. He would spin about thirty plates at the ends of sticks, adding them and keeping them spinning one at a time. It was great fun, and when I get busy multitasking at work, I refer to it as “keeping all the plates spinning.” The Boomers I work with know exactly what I’m talking about.

Sullivan was savvy enough to let the acts speak for themselves. He would give brief intros, then step back and let them do their thing. His stiff style and distinctive voice were much imitated by class clowns and professional impersonators alike.

He also featured black performers when it cost him advertising dollars to do so. Sullivan, who was aware of the prejudice received by his Irish ancestors, declared early on that the show would be open to all performers regardless of race or nationality.

It would be nice if the reality-TV obsessed networks would recall what a consistent success the Sullivan Show was. America still has a taste for vaudeville.

When we decided we liked TV series during our childhoods, we REALLY liked them. Hence the longevity of shows like Art Linkletter’s House Party, which started on radio in 1945 and lasted 25 years.

One of the most delightful aspects of being out of school in the summer was being able to watch TV shows that you could otherwise not see, the VCR being many years into the future. One of my most eagerly anticipated daily viewings was Art Linkletter’s House Party.

I can’t remember exactly what time it aired, but I believe it was about 1:00 in the afternoon. The show would start with Art’s monologue, then progress to guest interviews, performing acts, quizzes where audience members could win prizes, and then the grand climax: interviews with kids.

Linkletter was a very appealing character to children. I remember just automatically liking the guy. And kids on his show were quick to open up to him, telling him ALL SORTS of juicy stuff.

Linkletter would frequently get the best (and most embarrassing) answers out of the kids by asking a very simple question: “Is there anything that your mommy or daddy told you NOT to say today?” Classic responses included “My mom is going to have a baby but my father doesn’t know.” Other kids hinted at daily visitors to the house that daddy didn’t know about, mommy’s frequent trips to the liquor cabinet, and other secrets now open to a television audience.

Art was a father figure to a generation of youngsters. He was like a family member to everyone else. Perhaps that’s why we were so deeply touched and hurt at his anguish when his daughter committed suicide in 1969, allegedly under the influence of LSD.

Art went on to become an outspoken opponent of drugs, and his voice had an impact. He frequently referred to losing his daughter, and the sheer pointlessness of the act. Today, he’s still alive and skiing. Still outspoken, he now is giving the message that growing old doesn’t mean getting old. In 2004, in an interview with Life Magazine, he boasted about still tackling the double diamond slopes.

Thanks, Art, for many happy summer afternoon memories of watching House Party.

The year was 1971. The typical American family was the Brady Bunch. So said one side of Hollywood. I beg to differ, said the other side. The typical American family is going through a divorce, and has a flamboyantly gay son who likes to go drag racing every now and then.

Thus were the American public presented with An American Family, And they were also presented with the birth of reality TV, for better or worse.

I’m not here to sit in judgment of reality TV. An argument could be made that Candid Camera was a prehistoric form of the genre. And I ‘m heavily into The Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers, two shows which seem to fit into the mold.

However, much of what constitutes reality TV homes in on the baser segments of human nature, and there are certainly some seriously low spots that can be tapped. An argument could be made that they are simply following the lead provided many years ago by PBS and the Louds.

The Louds were considered the typical American family by producer Craig Gilbert. In fact, they were well up the financial chain, and living in a very desirable area on the west coast, where summer and winter are differentiated largely by whether or not it was raining.

The deal was that they would agree to be filmed while they went about their day-to-day activities. The bonus to PBS was that those activities would include a marriage falling apart and a son coming out of the closet.

The result was a gut-wrenching presentation that would eventually make TV Guide’s Top 100 all-time series list. And it would also be recalled when the extremely profitable genre of reality TV arose in the late 1990’s.

The Louds agreed to be filmed in 1971, and some 300 hours of footage was shot. During the filming, husband and wife Bill and Pat decided to separate and get a divorce. It was all caught in living color.

Also, during the course of the twelve episodes, we deduced that son Lance was a homosexual. Hey, we’re talking southern California, no need to be coy about it. But the American TV public were exposed to it on a straightforward basis for what for them was the first time.

And this was the family that PBS decided was a typical one. LOL, nothing has changed there.

This column is not a bash of PBS. I’ve enjoyed many of their offerings over the years. But the year was 1971. Just how mainstream were the Louds?

It really doesn’t matter. They were fascinating. An American Family was one of the most-watched PBS offerings. It was a soap opera, but even better. The heartaches and anger were real.

The biggest tragedy about the show is that it’s not available any more. The Louds came and went in 1973 without anyone hitting the record buttons on their Betamaxes. And PBS has thus far been loath to re-release the episodes.

Here’s a suggestion: The next time it’s fundraising time, why don’t you PBS folks offer a nice boxed set of the travails that the Louds went through in front of your cameras? My guess is it could make for a nice haul, what with all those Jon and Kate fans out there ;-).

His name was Iron Eyes Cody. He appeared in over 200 films, alongside Roy Rogers, Richard Harris, and Clint Eastwood, among others. But perhaps his most familiar role is that of an Indian who is appalled by how polluted his nation has become, and who is seen shedding a single, but powerful, tear.

The commercial turned Baby Boomer kids into ecologists. We were deeply moved by Cody’s performance. But we didn’t know the half of his acting abilities.

The commercial has been rated as one of the greatest ever, by the folks who keep track of such things. Its message is clear as a bell, as Cody’s Indian paddles his canoe through a river with floating trash visible while factories in the background belch forth plumes of smoke. Then, pulling his canoe ashore, he walks over to a highway, where a passing motorist flings a bag of trash that explodes at his feet. Finally, as the camera pans up to his face, we see the tear.

The whole time, bold music is playing as might be heard in one of Clint Eastwood’s Sergio Leone westerns.

It made quite an impression on us.

A few years after the commercial’s 1970 release, we heard, as Paul Harvey would put it, the REST of the story.

Iron Eyes Cody, who had long claimed to be parts Cherokee and Cree, was actually born Espera DeCorti in the small town of Kaplan, Louisiana. His parents were Sicilian immigrants.

As a young adult, he moved to Hollywood, where he changed his name to Cody. At some point after that, he also lost the Italian first name and became known as Iron Eyes.

He took the art of acting to its ultimate point: he became an American Indian. He adopted native American causes, spoke out loudly about their plight, and was always seen in his beaded moccasins, buckskin jacket and braided wig.

He married a native American and adopted two children, also Indians. When rumors of his true ancestry surfaced, he vehemently denied them.

But the proof is in the paperwork. Iron Eyes Cody did, indeed, masquerade as an American Indian. But he was not castigated by his adopted race. The community recognized that he made a choice to become one of them, and support their causes in the process. They accepted him as one of their own.

Cody also spearheaded the Keep America Beautiful campaign, and today, that polluted river he paddled on 37 years ago is much cleaner now, as is the rest of the nation. And a great deal of the reason is that single tear glistening on Iron Eyes Cody’s face.