There was a time when all you had to do was cup your ear and, before you even spoke, everybody knew you were doing a Gary Owens impression. The man with that unmistakable announcer’s voice died Friday at 80. Owens was already a seasoned radio hand when he became a TV star—along with Goldie Hawn,
I’ve said it before: 1969 was an important year in the history of television. Several quiet little comedies emerged that year, shows I feel were HBO before HBO. They were all before their time, one reason none of them lasted. The examples I’ve listed before are Room 222, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and My World
PASADENA, Calif.–I was sitting through a TCA session on the upcoming Fox drama Wayward Pines when the news reached my Twitter feed: Don Harron had died. There had been word he was not in good health. Harron was 90. I probably first discovered him on Hee Haw. The creators of that show were Canadian, Frank
The annual “TCM Remembers” tributes have become as much a part of the end of each year as Auld Lang Syne. The 2014 tribute, above, is one of the longest at 5:13, and needed to be given the many prominent film and TV performers and others connected to the entertainment industry who passed away in the
“Keep banging on your drum/And your day will come.” Craig Ferguson, sporting a liberated, Mohawk-y ‘do, stood on his anchor desk and left us with a joyous, Proclaimers-like, jump-up-and-dance anthem. Would that CBS had given him a band ages ago, that was a stompin’ good way to go out. Ferguson spent 10 years in late night,
“What did Rudolph do? He saved capitalism! Kids got their presents. Can you imagine? The very idea that we won’t get our loot, our gifts, and there’ll be no Black Fridays—O my God!” That was Paul Soles, putting it all in perspective, when I spoke to him last week about Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. Fifty
Anyone who still thinks Canada never had a “Golden Age” of television should have been at Sunday’s Canadian International Television closer. I had the great pleasure of hosting the Sunday afternoon “Out of the Vault” panels. Thanks to CITF organizer David Heath. Lindsey Vodarek and all at the Bell Lightbox for putting together 10 full days of
STOP READING THIS RIGHT NOW and get down to the Bell Lightbox. Sunday at 2:30, I have the great pleasure to host an afternoon of TV awesomeness from the ’60s and ’70s. Things kick off at 2:30 p.m. with a newly-transferred digital gem from my 16mm TV on Film collection: We’ve Got it All Together.