My friend Gene Trindl, who passed away four years ago this month at 80, shot more covers for TV Guide than any other photographer–over 200 covers. Gene worked with them all, and as he told me back when we were collaborating on a collection of his celebrity photographs, had a couple of memorable encounters with
This poster was everywhere in the late ’70s when I was a student at the University of Toronto. At St. Mike’s college, it probably was in more dorm rooms than crucifixes. Farrah Fawcett was an icon, and her passing today at 62, following a day or two after the death of Ed McMahon, is another
In October of 2006, I headed out to the Music Hall in Toronto to see Tonight Show legend Ed McMahon. I had interviewed the veteran sidekick on the phone a few days earlier for the Toronto Sun (read that story here). He sounded excited to be coming to a place called the “Music Hall,” and
Two thousand and eight was a tough year for TV critics. Many were re-assigned or lost their jobs altogether, caught in the squeeze of higher newsprint costs, lower advertising revenues and the apparent generational shift away from daily newspapers. Roger Ebert suggested in an article a month ago that film critics–also dropping like, well, canaries–were
If you are a fan of B-movies from the ’50s, or ’60s TV shows like My Three Sons, you had to be a fan of Beverly Garland. The blond-haired actress passed away Friday at 82. Read her obit in the L.A. Times here. Garland was one of those throaty, no-nonsense women who kicked ass in
For decades, if you wrote a letter to Starweek magazine, asking for an address to write to a star, or to get information on your favorite TV show, the guy who answered your letter was Eirik Knutzen. So it was with sadness to read in the TCA newsletter sent to critics today that Knutzen passed
Paul Newman, who died Friday after a long battle with cancer (read the well-prepared Associated Press obit here), was one of those iconic film stars who rarely bothered with television. One memorable cameo came during the very first Late Show with David Letterman in 1993. New to CBS and the Ed Sullivan Theatre, Letterman playfully
Frequent readers of this blog (you know who you both are) already know my nerdy little secret. The one show this bleary-eyed TV critic PVR’s every night and watches the next day isn’t Hole In The Wall or America’s Got Cramps or whatever the hell else they’re sticking us with this fall. It is a