Ramblin' with Roger

Posts Tagged ‘television’

As I perused the pictures my baby sister Marcia sent me this spring via Facebook, I noted only one of just her and me. That’s not that surprising; I have not a lot of memories of things she and I did alone together. There were many things the THREE of us did together: Leslie, 16 months younger, and Marcia, five years my junior. Also, Leslie and I sang together, and Leslie and Marcia shared a room.

Still, there was one thing Marcia and I did together that was just ours, without Leslie or my parents Read the rest of this entry »

I was feeling as though I wanted to write about a couple recent deaths, but I needed an angle. Then it came to me.

I watched Annette in a number of Disney programs, and almost certainly in Make Room for Daddy with Danny Thomas. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was growing up, pianist Van Cliburn was the most famous classical musician in the United States. He had an album sell a million copies, unheard of in the genre. It was a function, in part, of the fact that when he won a prestigious competition in the Soviet Union, he was considered a Cold Warrior.

Only problem, as Dustbury noted, is that Cliburn never saw himself that way; he just loved playing the music. Listen to the link Jaquandor provided, and read the sweet story, while you’re at it.
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I was a HUGE fan of the singing group The Temptations from roughly 1964 to 1984; I could even tell you roughly when members came and went. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a huge fan of the game show JEOPARDY!, which has been on, in its current iteration, since 1984. Seldom, though, have I enjoyed it as much as I did during the second week of the Teen Tournament this month. There are fifteen contestants in week one, whittled down to nine in week two. They play three games, only the winners of which go to the two-game final.

Game 1 of the semifinals was won by the aptly-named high school senior Barrett Block, who looked and sounded like Clark Kent. Read the rest of this entry »

I know some people who appear to be unrelentingly positive, seeing the 3/4s empty glass as 1/4 full. I appreciate those people, as long as they don’t seem to be wearing rose-colored glasses.

I recall very little about the particulars, actually. Couldn’t tell you which Darrin was in it Read the rest of this entry »

My fondness for actor Jack Klugman, who died on Serling Day Eve, was quite great. He appeared in four different episodes of the classic television show The Twilight Zone, which I own on DVD. Watch a couple minutes of In Praise of Pip.

Much later, using his fame as Quincy, the fictional medical examiner, the actor Read the rest of this entry »

According to Vince Waldron’s book (pictured), which I read this past summer (I recommend it), when asked to play the part of comedy writer Sally Rogers on The Dick van Dyke Show in 1961, longtime actress Rose Marie asked “What’s a Dick van Dyke?” The 35-year-old actor had been a pantomimist, radio DJ, and a local talk show host. He was even the anchor of the CBS Morning Show, but like many before and after him, that program was a failure, even with Walter Cronkite as his news reader.

Whatever real success he had had up to that point was on Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie. Producer Sheldon Leonard caught the show, and signed Van Dyke. Impressively, and fortunately for him, Read the rest of this entry »