television Archives - Page 13 of 43

Sigourney Weaver turns 70

Journeyer

Given the relatively few roles of hers that I’ve actually seen, I’ve nevertheless felt as though I’ve watched Sigourney Weaver in lots of films.

The first movie she was in, I’ve viewed several times, a non-speaking part as a date for Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) in Annie Hall (1977).

Then I went to see Alien (1979). OMG. She was fierce and strong and smart, and that was very appealing. No doubt that her character, Ripley, is one of the most significant female protagonists in all of cinema. I never watched any of the sequels – there were at least three – but I’m glad I saw the original. She did reprise Ripley briefly on the TV show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee in 2019.

In Ghostbusters (1984), Sigourney held her own as Dana in the mostly male film. I saw the sequel (1989) to this, but honestly, I’m not remembering it that much.

The performer played a real person, Dian Fossey, in Gorillas in the Mist (1988), a woman studying the primates and trying to stop their decimation. She was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Golden Globe for Best Actress for this role. She’s become a supporter of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and is now its honorary chairwoman.

Sigourney is the mean boss in Working Girl (1988). I know we’re supposed to root for the Melanie Griffith character over the conniving boss stealing her ideas, but Weaver, Oscar-nominated, was such a good villain! The Golden Globes picked as best supporting actress, meaning she won BOTH GG acting awards in the same year.

I loved Dave (1993), even though the Constitutional premise is absurd. Sigourney plays the First Lady, estranged from President Bill Mitchell (Kevin Kline). The White House staff use his doppelganger Dave (Kevin Kline) to cover up the fact that Mitchell had a stroke.

My, but The Ice Storm (1997) was depressingly good at portraying suburban ennui. She won the BAFTA Award – think British Oscars – for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

Sigourney played The Warden in Holes (2003), and the voice of the ship’s computer in WALL-E (2008).

I wish I had seen the performer, trained at the Yale University School of Drama, on stage. She was a 1985 Tony nominee as Best Featured Actress In A Play in Hurlyburly.

On television, she’s hosted Saturday Night Live twice; I saw the 1986 episode but not the one in 2010. I’ve heard her speak fondly about her father, the late Sylvester L. Weaver Jr., better known as Pat. He virtually pioneered the very concepts of morning and late-night television programming in creating both the Today Show (1952) and Tonight! (1953).

Sigourney and Pat went to the Academy Awards together in 1987, when she was nominated for Best Actress for Aliens; she lost to Marlee Matlin in Children of a Lesser God.

Susan Alexandra “Sigourney” Weaver took her first name from a minor character in The Great Gatsby. My spellcheck does not like that first name, wanting to change it to Journeyer, which would also be appropriate.

She received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in December 1999. Sigourney Weaver turns 70 today. Read this June 2019 interview in PARADE.

Lydster: Andi Mack finale

Shut up, Jonah!

My daughter and I often watched the Disney program Andi Mack over the past three years. Given some of the painful programming I deigned to watch with her over the years, this wasn’t bad.

The premise was about a girl (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) who finds out that her older sister Bex (Lilan Bowden) is actually her mother, and Celia (Lauren Tom), who she thought was her mother, was her grandmother. Very soap opera, admittedly, but the evolution of the relation of Andi and Bex was pivotal. The other focus was the relationship among Andi’s best friends Cyrus (Joshua Rush), Buffy (Sofia Wylie) and Jonah (Asher Angel) .

I love watching the show with my daughter. She grouses about various characters, most notably Jonah, who was well meaning but totally clueless when it came to attempts at romance, with Andi, seeming mean girl Amber (Emily Skinner) and deaf girl Libby (played by a deaf actress, Millicent Simmonds).

I’ll admit Jonah could be clueless, most notably when the core four salvaged designer clothes from a dumpster and gave them away. when confronted by the police, he said way too much. Shut up, Jonah! My daughter also complained about Andi, when it seemed like the typical teenage behavior I was seeing at home.

In the penultimate episode, Bex has finally married Andi’s dad Bowie (Trent Garrett). For the final episode, more storylines are resolved. My daughter was pleased when Cyrus started a relationship; she was so surprised, though, that she literally fell off the sofa. When Cyrus came out as gay to Buffy, and eventually the others, the group One Million Moms wanted the show cancelled. It obviously didn’t work. Andi Mack was Disney’s most-watched series over the past three years.

My daughter was bemused/confounded by her mother. My wife thought the boyfriends of Buffy (Garren Stitt as Marty) and Cyrus (Luke Mullen as TJ, named for two musicians) were the same character. She didn’t understand why we weren’t appalled that he was two-timing with Buffy and Cyrus. The two young men ARE both white and fairly tall.

As the article notes, the breakthroughs in the storylines for Andi Mack were fairly modest. But for an entity as Disney, it was progress.

The Good Fight and other Sunday TV

no CBS All Access for me

Before The Good Fight aired in 2017, I was a huge fan of the TV seriesThe Good Wife (2009-2016). Maybe it was the premise. In real life, the US was experiencing a series of sex scandals, involving high profile male politicians.

Often, but not always, there was a wife standing by her husband. It happened in New York State, with Eliot Spitzer, the crime-fighting attorney general who became governor. But it as revealed that Spitzer, in his former role, was also prostitute-facilitating Client 9.

Likewise “Alicia [Julianna Margulies] has been a good wife to her husband, a former state’s attorney [Chris Noth]. After a very humiliating sex and corruption scandal, he is behind bars. She must now provide for her family and returns to work as a litigator in a law firm.”

After the run ended, there was a spinoff called The Good Fight, starring Christine Baranski as Diane Lockhart, Alicia’s former boss/partner/frenemy. CBS showed the first episode. To see others, though, one had to sign onto something called CBS All Access. No thanks. The new Star Trek is on the same platform.

Now, after the third season of The Good Fight, with another one scheduled, Season 1 is being shown on CBS broadcast TV, each Sunday night. I’m excited, but not enough to have watched any of the five episodes I’ve recorded. I know lots of folks like to binge on these things, but it’s not me.

That means the DVR records a lot Sunday nights. In addition to The Good Fight, there are also one or two episodes of 60 Minutes episodes. Of course, most of them I’ve already seen unless some NFL football game, NCAA basketball contest or golf tournament ran long.

The other hour is The $100,000 Pyramid. It’s a game show that initially aired in 1973 as the $10,000 Pyramid, hosted by the late Dick Clark. Former NFL linebacker Michael Strahan is the current host. The game plays the same as it did decades ago. The clues in the first round may be more explicit – “horny” was a word a contestant had to convey recently.

Whereas I specifically dislike some of the other shows ABC has brought back, such as To Tell The Truth and Match Game, though I had watched them in earlier incarnations. I have no interest in seeing Press Your Luck or Card Sharks then or now.

WNBF-TV: one channel, four networks

I seem to recall the ABC show Lawrence Welk on Saturday night at 6 or 6:30; it nationally aired at 9 pm that night.

When I went to college in New Paltz in 1971, most of my classmates were from New York City or Long Island. They were shocked that we in upstate Binghamton did not have the array of television stations they had.

In fact, when WNBF-TV, channel 12, signed-on December 1, 1949 it “carried programs from all four American television networks at the time -CBS, DuMont, NBC, and ABC.

DuMont collapsed in 1956. The first new UHF station arrived in Binghamton on November 1, 1957 with WINR-TV, channel 40, an NBC affiliate. So when I was a kid, Channel 12 had both CBS and ABC shows.

Here are TV listings from Wednesday, Nov. 11, 1959. Left-hand column is WNBF-TV 12, right-hand is WINR-TV 40. The listings start at 6:00 pm and every line usually represents 15 minutes.

Bourbon Street Beat was an ABC show, airing most places on Monday, 8:30-9:30. GE Theater was a CBS show, airing in NYC Sunday a 9 pm. Tightrope was pegged by CBS for Tuesday at 9 pm. At least I’ve Got a Secret was a CBS show on at the right time.

Similar listings of the next day, Thursday, Nov. 12, 1959. (Ch. 12 on left, Ch. 40 on right).

The Donna Reed Show, The Real McCoys, and Pat Boone were Thursday night ABC shows in 1959 at the same time slots as indicated; the Real McCoys became a CBS show near the end of its run. I wonder if The Betty Hutton Show, Johnny Ringo, and Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater showed up in another time slot.

While the Wikipedia said Channel 40 also carried ABC shows, these listings were consistent with the national NBC lineup. Except one: The Lawless Years was bumped for a syndicated show called Colonel Flack.

I seem to recall the ABC show Lawrence Welk on Saturday night at 6 or 6:30; it nationally aired at 9 pm that night. Did Channel 12 record to broadcast a week later? How did this work?

I remember that other ABC shows, Maverick, The Rifleman, Ozzie and Harriet, and 77 Sunset Strip were on when I was a kid. Did they preempt the CBS shows? Were they on in time slots before prime time, or on Saturday or Sunday afternoons? Sports didn’t dominate the schedule then. Or maybe even at 11:30 pm.

Here’s a video of the Thursday night lineup in the fall of 1959.

I realize this sounds pretty obsessive, and it is. Next time I’m in Binghamton, I want to look at some microfilm showing the rosters of shows on Channel 12 in September 1962, then in November 1962, when WBJA, Channel 34, became the official ABC affiliate. Not incidentally, all of the call letters have changed, some more than once.

I’d be just as curious about the same phenomenon in Albany/Schenectady if I had grown up there. In fact, one of the very first blog posts I wrote was about the Plattsburgh, NY/Burlington, VT television market in 2005.

I used for the season’s daily charts The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh (2007).

Thanks to folks on a couple Facebook lists, especially Keith Nelson, who provided the graphics. I also greatly appreciated the kind words people said about McKinley Green, my grandfather, who was a custodian at WNBF for many years.

Pop hits of Doris Day and… Peggy Lipton?

The Doris Day Show , The Mod Squad both on 1968-1973

Every obituary I saw and read mentioned the singing career of Doris Day. At least one noted that of Peggy Lipton, who died in the same three-day span in May 2018.

Doris Day had numerous top 40 hits between 1947 and 1958. Growing up, I knew her better for her 1968-1973 sitcom on CBS.

Peggy Lipton, of course, was on ABC’s The Mod Squad, which I watched religiously at least in the first three seasons, during that very same time period. Her music career was somewhat less successful.

Doris Day –

Love Somebody (with Buddy Clark), #1 for five weeks in 1948

It’s Magic, #2 in 1948, from the film Romance on the High Seas

My Darling, My Darling (with Buddy Clark) – #7 in 1948, from the Broadway musical Where’s Charlie

Again, #2 for two weeks in 1949, from the movie Roadhouse

Shanghai, #7 in 1951

A Guy is a Guy, #1 in 1952 – originated as a British song, “I Went to the Alehouse (A Knave Is a Knave),” dating from 1719. During World War II, soldiers sang a bawdy song based on “A Knave…” entitled “A Gob Is a Slob.” Oscar Brand cleaned up the lyrics, and wrote this song based on it. Accompanied by Paul Weston’s orchestra

Sugarbush (with Frankie Laine), #7 in 1952. Featuring the Norman Luboff Choir and Carl Fischer’s orchestra

Secret Love, #1 for four weeks in 1954, from the film Calamity Jane

If I Give My Heart To You (with the Mellomen), #3 in 1954

Peggy Lipton –

Stoney End, #121 in 1968

Lu, #102 in 1970

Wear Your Love Like Heaven, #108 in 1970

But I discovered that Peggy Lipton had a role in a significant recording. On the commentary track for Michael Jackson’s Thriller, the late Rod Templeton noted that he had written the “rap” for the title song.

He was trying to get a “name” artist such as Vincent Price to do the bit on the song. Quincy Jones told him that Q’s then-wife, Peggy Lipton was actually friends with Price. So the collaboration came to pass.