Every Sunday night back in the 1950s and ’60s families would gather around their living room TV and watch The Ed Sullivan Show. The variety hour ran 23 seasons, ending 54 years ago in 1971. Now streaming on Netflix, the documentary Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan is not just another “best of” blast of nostalgia.
When I interviewed this century’s most successful creator of sitcoms — Chuck Lorre — earlier this summer for a podcast, I asked if he had any new shows coming up. He immediately singled out Leanne, which premiered Thursday on Netflix. All 16 first-season episode are available now. Lorre, who has worked with some pretty fair
I’ll always be grateful to my Grade 7 teacher, Mr. (Tom) O’Hanley, for turning me and my classmates on to the brilliance of Tom Lehrer. The New York City native passed away Saturday in Connecticut at 97. His earthly exit will get a fraction of the attention that came earlier this week with the death
Before there was Saturday Night Live, MuchMusic or MTV, the really big shew with hottest music acts was The Ed Sullivan Show. It began in 1948 as The Toast of the Town, with bold face newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan introducing, between the plate spinners, acrobats, comedians and a little puppet mouse named Toppo Gigio, everyone
Sometimes my name trips people up on the phone. In 2008, for example, Hulk Hogan wrestled with it. “Bill Brioux–sounds like a wrestling name,” said the WWE’s ultimate showman. Hogan was on the line to promote the finale of American Gladiators, then in its first incarnation on NBC and City-TV. The Hulkster was shocked to
Bloody hell! Wasn’t Ozzy Osbourne supposed to live forever? The Black Sabbath frontman and self-proclaimed “Prince of Darkness” died Tuesday at 76. Besides a half century of substance abuse, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer battled Parkinsons and emphysema. Not being much of a Heavy Metal fan, my first exposure to the Warwickshire, England,
As Theo Huxtable, Malcolm-Jamal Warner was probably one of the biggest teen stars ever on broadcast network television. Back in the 1980s, when The Cosby Show was at it’s “Must See” peak on NBC, around 40 million U.S. viewers a week were watching The Huxtables — live at 8 pm on a Thursday. It was
There are plenty of twists and turns in the compelling new HBOMax documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes (seen in Canada on Crave). We learn that things very nearly took a tragic turn early for the multi-Grammy award winning singer-songwriter entertainer. He tried to take his own life, for example, before breaking through in