MNF`s big three: Don Meredith, Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford Frank Gifford was asked recently about the current state of the TV broadcast booth. Gifford, one-third of the most famous trio of Monday Night Football announcers (the others being Howard Cosell and Don Meredith), said he wasn’t too impressed. All that boosterism bugged him, he said.
When the Naked Gun movies came out in the late ’80s and early ’90s, friends would not sit next to me in the theatres–I laughed that much. So, when I was invited to have lunch with and interview Leslie Nielsen in the mid-’90s, when he was in Toronto promoting his mostly made up autobiography, The Naked
Last hand: Connelly, Patterson, Cannell and Fillion Stephen J. Cannell was one of the icons of American television. The prolific writer/executive producer lost a battle with Melanoma Thursday at his home in Pasadena, Calif. He was 69. Castle star Nathan Fillion spoke admiringly about Cannell during a visit to the set of the ABC series in 2009.
Over the years I’ve spent covering television I’ve only met a few genuine movie stars. One was Tony Curtis, who died Wednesday in Hollywood at 85. First time I met the man was way back in 1986, on one of my first TCA press tours. Curtis was at the Century Plaza hotel in Beverly Hills,
Want some insight into why TV is still feeding my family? Have a feature today in the Toronto Star’s “Prime Time” section. This monthly supplement covers “business, entertainment, health and beauty for Boomers.” I guess I’m part of the entertainment mix. Editor Elizabeth Holland called me up a while back and asked for info on
Long time NBC news correspondent Edwin Newman always spoke with the authority of someone who knew the right words. He used language with precision, a TV guy with an old school dedication to the craft of copy writing. There was something welcome and relatable about his look, too, more Ed Asner or Edward G. Robinson
Art Linkletter seemed to be on TV all the time when I was a child. In those black and white, pre-school days, he was the kindly man in the business suit talking to kids in the hours after Friendly Giant and before the soaps. A friend who reads this blog (that is a friend) emailed
Gene Kiniski, who passed away April 14, 2010 at 81, was one of my all-time favourite interviews back when I was typing for The Toronto Sun. The hulking ring legend was helping to promote the series Wrestling With the Past on the Comedy Network when I caught up with him in 2001.I met Kiniski at