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
In paying tribute last week to Hugh Downs, the long-time announcer, host and newsman who passed away last week at 99, I forgot to single out another one of his accomplishments: sitcom scene stealer. Fortunately, retro-savvy reader Kevin Vahey weighed in with a link to a classic: Downs getting pulled over in an episode of
It was just like Hugh Downs to pass away right after Carl Reiner. Even at close to 100 years of age, he found a way to go quietly. The broadcaster, who died at home in Arizona July 1 at 99 years of age, was a true TV ironman logging more hours on network television than