In 1997, I met Ken Berry at one of those Hollywood Collector’s shows. That’s where fans line up to get autographs from some of their favourite former TV stars. Berry, an always affable TV presence, died Saturday in Burbank, Calif. He was 85. The Illinois native was a familiar face throughout the ’60s and ’70s
It’s always a good sign at a TV on Film Program screening when the audience can sing along with the theme song. Such was the case last Thursday night in Toronto when an episode of Tales of the Wizard of Oz was pulled out of the vault. The 1961 series was produced by Crawley Films
James Karen is one of those actors whose face you recognize even of you don’t know his name. If “Actor whose name I don’t know” was something you could look up, Karen’s face and name would likely be on the other end of a search. He played a lot of nameless guys, including Larry’s silver-haired
COLUMBUS, Ohio — One of the film collector friends I used to run into at Cinefest in Syracuse every year was Leonard Maltin. This week, the author, film historian and frequent TCM contributor is a very active participant in Cinevent 50. Maltin told me Friday that he hadn’t attended this classic film fan gathering since
On Sunday, I will “take off” for the SCTV reunion at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto. CHML’s Scott Thompson had plenty of questions about Martin Scorsese’s upcoming SCTV documentary, which has just been picked up in Canada by CTV. Smart move, Bell. Not a lot of details are known at this point about the project,
Very late in posting this but had a great time last Saturday moderating a panel at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. A A 40-year-old CBC TV-movie was saluted: “The Making of the President 1944.” Among the distinguished guests on the panel was the author of the original short story upon which the movie was based,
On Saturday, May 5, it will be my privilege to help salute a rare, 40-year-old CBC teleplay: The Making of a President. The hour-long drama, which has nothing to do with the similarly-titled American election chronicles of Theodore H. White, has been kept in a deep corner of the CBC vaults since it aired in 1978.
Strange, with the success this spring of the re-boot of Roseanne, that headlines should turn toward news of the passing of Harry Anderson. Anderson’s breakout series Night Court ran from 1984 to 1992. That was back in the day when NBC was considered a “Must See” network. His series started a few years before Roseanne premiered on ABC in