Since the dawn of television, viewers have always wanted to be amazed. One who knew this was George Joseph Kresge, Jr., a.k.a. The Amazing Keskin. Billed as a mentalist with special powers of perception, Kreskin (born in 1935 in New Jersey) was one of those amazing TV distractions that tickled viewers in the late ’60s
Early last month, when I wrote about the death of Canadian talk show host Mike Bullard, it reminded me of a turning point for one of the biggest late night stars in America: Conan O’Brien. Now 61, O’Brien was 40 early in 2004 and after a decade at 12:35 a.m. secure enough in his job
Harry Belafonte made a lasting impression a dozen years ago on a visit before Television Critics Association reporters. The activist/singer, one of the last Black Civil Rights icons of the 1960s, passed away Tuesday, April 25. He was 96. Back in July of 2011, he stood out as a towering figure from a golden age
Robert Blake, who died March 9 of heart disease at the age of 89, almost didn’t get to be Baretta. The gritty cop series, which ran on ABC from 1975-78, began a season earlier when it was called Toma. That series was based on a real-life New Jersey police officer named David Toma, who was
I kid you not: I was too young to have seen Jack Paar in his prime as host of The Tonight Show. I was born in 1957, the year Paar took over Tonight from Steve Allen and made it his own for the next five years. With the show starting around 11:15 p.m., this was
One of the great late night talk show guests of all time was Charles Grodin. Who else was cocky enough to slump down next to Johnny Carson and ask if he cared at all about any of his guests? (As he does in the above clip from 1990.) The studio audience and viewers at home
On Sunday, CNN premieres The Story of Late Night, a six-part docuseries examining the nearly 70-year history of television’s post-primetime talk shows. The series was produced by Toronto-based Cream Productions. To set it all up, listen to my conversation with Bill Carter (above), the long-time New York Times columnist and bestselling “Late Shift” author who
The King of Late Night, Johnny Carson, took his final Tonight Show bow 29 years ago next month, His band leader, the man behind the Tonight Show orchestra, kept right on going. If it wasn’t for the pandemic, he’d still be touring all over America, playing 40 weeks a year, killing it on an instrument