OFTA TV Behind the Scenes Hall of Fame
The best and greatest television craftspeople, IMHO.
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- Producer
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Dick Clark was born and raised in Mount Vernon, New York on November 30, 1929, to Julia Fuller (Barnard) and Richard Augustus Clark. He had one older brother, Bradley, who was killed in World War II. At the age of 16, Clark got his first job in the mailroom of WRUN, a radio station in Utica, New York, which was owned by his uncle and managed by his father. He worked his way up the ranks and was promoted to weatherman before becoming a radio announcer. After graduating from Syracuse University with a degree in business administration, Clark began working at several radio and television stations before landing at WFIL radio in 1952. While working at the station, Clark became a substitute host for Bob Horn's Bandstand, an afternoon program where teenagers danced to popular music, broadcast by WFIL's affiliated television station. In 1956, Horn was arrested for drunk driving, giving Clark the perfect opportunity to step in as the full-time host.
After acquiring nationwide distribution the newly reformatted program, now titled "American Bandstand", premiered on ABC on August 5, 1957. In addition to the name change, Clark added interviews with artists (starting with Elvis Presley), lip-sync performances, and "Rate-a-Record," allowing teens to judge the songs on the show - and giving birth to the popular phrase, "It's got a good beat and you can dance to it." Clark also established a formal dress code, mandating dresses and skirts for the women and a coat and tie for the men. But perhaps the most impactful change that Clark made to the show was ending "American Bandstand's" all-white policy, allowing African American artists to perform on the show.
Under Clark's influence, "Bandstand" became one of the most successful and longest-running musical programs, featuring artists including Chuck Berry, the Doors, the Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, and Smokey Robinson. Sonny and Cher, The Jackson 5, Prince, and Aerosmith were among the influential artists and bands that made their television debuts on "Bandstand", which is also credited with helping to make America more accepting of rock 'n' roll.
With the success of "American Bandstand", Clark became more invested in the music publishing and recording businesses, and began managing artists, hosting live sock hops, and arranging concert tours. But in 1960, when the United States Senate began investigating "payola", the practice in which music producing companies paid broadcasting companies to favor their products, Clark became caught up in the scandal. The investigation found he had partial copyrights to over 150 songs, many of which were featured on his show. Clark denied he was involved in any way, but admitted to accepting a fur and jewelry from a record company president. In the end, the Senate could not find any illegal actions by Clark, but ABC asked Clark to either sell his shares in these companies or leave the network so there was no conflict of interest. He chose to sell and continue on as host of "American Bandstand", which was unaffected by the scandal.
In 1964, Clark moved Bandstand from Philadelphia to Los Angeles and became more involved in television production. Under his company Dick Clark Productions, he produced such shows as "Where the Action Is", "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes", and more recently, "So You Think You Can Dance", as well as made-for-television movies including "Elvis", "The Birth of the Beatles", "Wild Streets", and "The Savage Seven". Clark also hosted television's "$10,000 Pyramid", "TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes" (with co-host Ed McMahon), "Scattergories", and "The Other Half". Clark also had several radio programs, including "The Dick Clark National Music Survey", "Countdown America", and "Rock, Roll & Remember".
In 1972, he produced and hosted the very first edition of "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve", a musical program where Clark counted down until the New Year ball dropped in Times Square, featuring taped performances from musical artists. "New Year's Rockin' Eve" soon became a cultural tradition, airing on ABC every year with Clark as host (except in 1999 when ABC aired "ABC 2000: Today", a news milestone program hosted by Peter Jennings). In December 2004, Clark suffered a minor stroke and was unable to host, so Regis Philbin stepped in as a substitute. The following year, Clark returned as co-host alongside primary host Ryan Seacrest. Many were worried about Clark due to his slurred and breathless speech, and he admitted on-air he was still recovering but that he wouldn't have missed the broadcast for the world. The following year, Seacrest became "New Year's Rockin' Eve's" primary host, but Clark always returned for the countdown.
Clark has received several notable awards including four Emmy Awards, the Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994, and the Peabody Award in 1999. He was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1976, The Radio Hall of Fame in 1990, Broadcasting Magazine Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. Clark had been in St. John's hospital in Los Angeles after undergoing an outpatient procedure the night of April 17, 2012. Clark suffered a massive heart attack following the procedure. Attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful and he died the next morning of April 18, 2012.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
While in junior high school, he became interested in science fiction, and years later while reading a copy of 'Astounding Stories' when he was working as an airline pilot, he decided to give it up and become a writer. He moved West and joined the Los Angeles police force to gain experience that would help him toward a writing career in Hollywood. He began selling scripts for television shows such as 'Dragnet' and 'Naked City'. He was head writer on 'Have Gun Will Travel' for two years, winning the 'Writer's Guild Award' for 'Best Script'. He created and produced 'The Lieutenant' followed by 3 years of the 'Star Trek' television series and produced the films 'Pretty Maids All in a Row', the first 'Star Trek' film and was executive consultant on the following two.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
Aaron Spelling graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, with a Bachelor of Arts Degree. Before that, he attended Forest Avenue High. He started as a writer and sold his first script to Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theatre (1955). He wrote for various television shows, including Playhouse 90 (1956). After he wrote his first pilot he became a producer for Four Star Productions. He partnered with Danny Thomas and formed Thomas-Spelling Productions. In 1972 he formed Aaron Spelling Productions, and then joined with Leonard Goldberg for Spelling-Goldberg Productions. In 1986 his company went public and formed Spelling Entertainment, Inc. In 1995, he became vice-chairman of Spelling Entertainment, Inc., and chairman of Spelling Television, a subsidiary. Spelling Entertainment owns World Vision (syndication), Hamilton Projects and Republic Pictures. It also owns a software company called Virgin Interactive. Hamilton Projects handles merchandising for Spelling's shows. The main office is located at 5700 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, California.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
James L. Brooks was born on 9 May 1940 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Broadcast News (1987), As Good as It Gets (1997) and Terms of Endearment (1983). He was previously married to Holly Holmberg Brooks and Marianne Catherine Morrissey.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Director
- Writer
William Hanna was an animator, film director, and television producer. He was the co-founder of the company Hanna-Barbera, with his longtime partner Joseph Barbera.
Hanna was born in an Irish-American family, son of William John Hanna (1873-1949) and his wife Avice Joyce Denby. He was born in Melrose, New Mexico Territory, though the family never set root there. His father worked as a construction superintendent for railroads, water systems, and sewer systems. He was often re-assigned, requiring his family to move with him to new locations.
Hanna attended Compton High School in Compton California from 1925 to 1928. During his high school years, Hanna played the saxophone in a dance band. He developed a passion for music that would lead to him personally working on several theme songs for his animated work.
Hanna briefly attended Compton City College, studying both journalism and structural engineering. The Great Depression affected his family's financial situation, forcing him to drop out of college and seek work. He worked first as a construction engineer, then as a car wash employee. A family friend convinced him to seek a job for Leon Schlesinger's company "Pacific Title & Art Studio", which designed title cards for films. Though he lacked formal training, he displayed a talent for drawing. This helped him get hired at an upstart animation studio connected to Schlesinger, the Harman and Ising animation studio, which was producing the "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" series. Hanna was promoted to head of their ink and paint department.
In 1933, the studio's heads (Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising) dissolved their business relationship with Schlesinger. Schesinger retained the rights to the "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies", while Harman and Ising kept the rights to their popular character Bosko. Hanna followed them into their subsequent projects. By 1936, he was promoted to film director and directed a few short films in their "Happy Harmonies" film series.
In 1937, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stopped distributing animated films by Harman and Ising, and created their own animation subsidiary: the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio (1937-1957). They hired away most of the staff of the Harman and Ising studio, including Hanna. In 1938, Hanna became a senior director for the "Captain and the Kids" film series, an adaptation of the popular comic strip "The Katzenjammer Kids". The series failed to find an audience, and was terminated in 1939. Hanna was demoted from director to story-man.
During this period, Hanna started co-working with fellow animator Joseph Barbera on the idea of a film series featuring a cat-and-mouse duo. The two were allowed to co-direct the film "Puss Gets the Boot" (1940), introducing the characters of Tom and Jerry. The film was popular with critics and the audience, but studio head Fred Quimby was not initially interested in a full series with the characters. However, the commercial failure of other products of the studio convinced Quimby to try reusing Tom and Jerry. Hanna and Barbera were assigned their own production unit to work on the new series.
From 1940 to 1957, Hanna and Barbera co-directed 114 short films starring Tom and Jerry. The series was a critical and popular success, winning 7 Academy Awards and being nominated for other 7. In 1955, Fred Quimby retired, and Hanna and Barbera replaced him as studio heads. But by this time production costs for the films were high, while they were less profitable than before. MGM shut down the studio in 1957.
Hanna briefly partnered with animator Jay Ward in creating their own animation studio, called "Shield Productions". They parted ways before producing anything notable. Hanna next partnered with Barbera again, creating the company Hanna-Barbera Productions. Since the market for theatrical animated shorts was in decline, the duo intended to produce animation for television. They received partial funding from Screen Gems, in return for a distribution deal.
The studio's first television series was the moderately popular "The Ruff & Reddy Show". It was followed by the more successful "The Huckleberry Hound Show" and "The Yogi Bear Show", which introduced popular characters and managed to attract an adult audience. Realising that there was a market for adult-oriented cartoons, Hanna and Barbera next developed the animated sitcom "The Flintstones", a parody of "The Honeymooners" with a Stone Age setting. It found success with both adult and juvenile audiences, helping the studio become the leader in television animation for most of the 1960s.
In 1966, Hanna-Barbera Productions was sold to Taft Broadcasting for 12 million dollars. Hanna and Barbera continued serving as studio heads until 1991. In 1991, the studio was sold to Turner Broadcasting System, with Hanna and Barbera reduced to an advisory position. In 1996, the studio was sold to Time Warner, with Hanna remaining an advisor until his death in 2001.
In March 2001, Hanna died of esophageal cancer at his home in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, He was 90-years-old. He was buried at Ascension Cemetery in Lake Forest, California. His legacy includes more than 100 animated series, multiple films and television specials, and a large number of enduring characters.Best animator in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Joseph Roland Barbera was an American animator, film director, and television producer. He was the co-founder of the company Hanna-Barbera, with his longtime partner William Hanna.
Barbera was born in an Italian-American family. His parents were barbershop-owner Vincent Barbera (1889-1965) and Francesca Calvacca (1875-1969), both Italian immigrants from Sicily. Vincent was from the farming town of Castelvetrano, while Francesca was from the spa town of Sciacca (founded as the ancient Greek colony of Thermae).
Barbera was born in Little Italy, at the Lower East Side section of Manhattan. Months following his birth, Barbera's family moved to Flatbush, Brooklyn. He was mostly raised in Flatbush. Vincent Barbera grew prosperous for a while, but a gambling addiction led him to squander the family fortune. In 1926, Vincent abandoned his family, and Joseph was taken under the wing of his maternal uncle Jim Calvacca.
Barbera attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. During his high school years, he worked as a tailor's delivery boy. Meanwhile, he excelled in boxing and won a number of titles, but decided against becoming a professional boxer. He graduated high school in 1928, and started working odd jobs.
In 1929, Barbera first became interested in animation, after viewing Walt Disney's "The Skeleton Dance" (1929). Shortly after, he started working as a freelance cartoonist. Some of his print cartoons were published in Redbook, the Saturday Evening Post, and Collier's. Meanwhile Barbera took art classes at the Art Students League of New York and the Pratt Institute, hoping to improve his drawing skills.
Barbera was eventually hired as an inker and colorist by Fleischer Studios. In 1932, he was hired by the Van Beuren Studios as an animator and storyboard artist. At Van Beuren he worked on such film series as "Cubby Bear" and "Rainbow Parades". The studio's most prominent cartoon starts were a human duo known as "Tom and Jerry". Barbera worked on the Tom and Jerry series, and apparently liked the sound of the duo's name.
In 1936, Barbera left the financially struggling Van Beuren studio to work for Paul Terry's Terrytoons studio. In 1937, he left Terrytoons to work for the then-recently established Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio (1937-1957). MGM offered its animators higher salaries than what Terrytoons could offer. His first few years at the studio were not particularly notable. In 1939, he and co-worker William Hanna started working on the idea of a cat-and-mouse duo of characters. They were allowed to co-direct "Puss Gets the Boot" (1940), introducing the new duo of Tom and Jerry. It was critically and commercially successful, but studio head Fred Quimby was initially uninterested in producing a full series of Tom and Jerry films. The lack of success of other products of the studio convinced Quimby, and Barbera and Hanna became the head of their own production unit to work on the new series.
From 1940 to 1957, Hanna and Barbera co-directed 114 Tom and Jerry animated shorts. The Tom and Jerry series was very popular with critics and audience. But by the 1950s, production costs were high while the profitability of the shorts was lower than before. MGM decided to shut down its animation subsidiary. Barbera was unemployed for the first time in decades.
Barbera briefly partnered with Robert D. Buchanan (1931-) in production of an animated television series, the science fiction series "Colonel Bleep" (1957-1960). It was the first animated series specifically produced for color television. Barbera eventually left this partnership and teamed up with William Hanna again. They founded Hanna-Barbera Productions, their own animation studio. With theatrical animation in decline, they focused on the new market of television animation.
The studio's first television series was the moderately successful "The Ruff & Reddy Show". It was succeeded by the much more popular "The Huckleberry Hound Show" and "The Yogi Bear Show". Survey's revealed that the two shows had attracted an adult audience, convincing Hanna and Barbera that they could market animation to adults. Their next series was the animated sitcom "The Flintstones" (1960-1966), popular with both children and adults. Its success helped establish Hanna-Barbera Productions as the leader in television animation.
In 1966, Hanna-Barbera Productions was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 million dollars.Barbera and Hanna remained studio heads until 1991, when the studio was sold to the Turner Broadcasting System for an estimated 320 million million dollars. Barbera and Hanna were reduced to advisory positions, which would they keep for the rest of their lives. Barbera periodically worked on new Hanna-Barbera shows, and even provided input for the original live-action adaptation of Scooby-Doo in 2002.
In 2001, Hanna-Barbera Productions was absorbed into Warner Bros. Animation. Barbera received executive producer credits for Warner Bros. sequels and adaptations of his old series (such as "What's New, Scooby-Doo?" and "Tom and Jerry Tales"). In 2005, Barbera co-directed a new Tom and Jerry short film: "The Karate Guard". Barbera then started work on a Tom and Jerry feature film, " Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale" (2007). He died before production was completed.
Barbera died in December 2006, at the age of 95. He had never fully retired and was still working at the time of his death. His legacy includes more than a 100 television series, and a large number of enduring characters.Best animator in the history of television forever!- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Mike Post - musician, composer, arranger and producer - has long been considered the most successful composer in television history. His career in television started in 1970. Over the years, he's written the music for seven thousand hours of TV including: Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order Criminal Intent, Law & Order and Nurses.
The list continues with NYPD Blue, The Rockford Files, Magnum PI, Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, The A-Team, Wiseguy, Hunter, The Commish, Quantum Leap, Doogie Howser MD, Blossom, Hooperman, The White Shadow, Hardcastle & McCormick, Byrds of Paradise, News Radio, Silk Stalkings and Renegade. Theme songs from The Rockford Files, The Greatest American Hero, Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law all became chart topping records and landed Post four of his five Grammy Awards. In 1996 he won the Emmy for outstanding achievement in Main Title composition for the critically acclaimed Murder One.
Born and raised in Los Angeles County's San Fernando Valley, the son of an architect, Post began his study of music with piano lessons at the age of six. His taste was decidedly eclectic--obsessed with Dvorak, Stephen Foster, the blues and rock n' roll. At fifteen, he was playing club dates. He bought an electric piano just like his idol Ray Charles had used on stage; a brown Wurlitzer.
Post's life revolved around music and Valley sub-culture--much like the characters in the film American Graffiti. Cut off from music during school hours, his salvation at Grant High School was a homemade paper keyboard that he would pull out and silently "play" in class, hiding behind dark sunglasses and an open book. Ironically, nearly twenty-four years later, Post was summoned back to campus as one of the school's 1987 Hall of Fame inductees. His 1962 senior classmates included Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees and Magnum PI's Tom Selleck.
Post spent his evenings on the L.A. club circuit, often appearing with acts that had famous names but few, if any, original members. He was the new "Paul" in Paul and Paula and a member of the Markettes after the founding members had moved on. "There was little money in it, but it sure was fun," says Post. He graduated high school (just to make his parents happy), giggled with various rock groups and did a stint in the house band of a famed San Francisco topless club before he realized that he needed to return to school to study music. A year later, equipped with sight-reading skills and the ability to notate music, he formed a 60's folk ensemble, The Wellingbrook Singers, and toured the U.S. After the group disbanded, Post came off the road and in to the recording studio.
He began playing record, commercial, and movie dates; a part of what would famously be known as The Wrecking Crew. Post played for virtually everyone active in the LA recording scene during this time. Most notably he worked on all of Sonny and Cher's early hits, starting with I Got You Babe. Post's ambition ultimately led to a career on the other side of the glass. While working for producer Jimmy Bowen, he formed The First Edition, featuring then unknown bassist/vocalist, Kenny Rogers. Post's debut as producer led to the group's Top Five single, I Just Dropped In ( To See What Condition My Condition Was In). Next, he served as producer/arranger for Mason Williams' The Mason Williams Phonograph ALbum - the LP that spawned the hit record Classical Gas and garnered Post his first Grammy, awarded for "Best Instramental Arrangement".
At 24, Post became Musical Director for The Andy Williams Show, becoming the youngest musician in TV history to hold such a position. Later, he returned to television as a producer for The Mac Davis Show. He also began designing stage shows-putting together acts for artists like Dolly Parton and Ronny Milsap.
Yet, Post's most visible forte would be composing dramatic music for television and film. In 1968 he met veteran arranger/trombonist Pete Carpenter. Their initial project was music for the TV show Toma- Stephen J. Cannell's first series. It launched the most important musical collaboration and friendship of their lives. They followed up with The Rockford Files ( which became a Top 10 single and landed them each a Grammy), Baa Baa Black Sheep, Hunter and Magnum PI. Their partnership ended late in 1987 when Carpenter died after a long illness. In 1989 Post worked with the BMI Foundation to establish a Pete Carpenter Memorial Fund to benefit young composers.
In addition to scoring, Post has continued to work as a record producer and arranger. He's contributed arrangements to several Ray Charles LP's, produced, arranged, and co-wrote ( with Stephen Geyer ) the theme from The Greatest American Hero, which became a #1 record for singer Joey Scarbury. In 1981 Post hit the Top 10 again with his own recording of the theme from Hill Street Blues, which featured guitarist Larry Carlton.
When asked to comment on his success, he says, " I am so fortunate. If I couldn't make a living writing music, I'd do something else during the day and write music at night for free. I'm the luckiest person I've ever met. I've worked with, who I believe are, the greatest musicians in the world."Best music composer in the history of television forever!- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Mark Snow became a good friend with Michael Kamen while they were studying music at New York's Art and Music High School. After graduation, they became roommates at Juilliard (an elite music school). After studying at Juilliard, he became very fond of pop music. He, Michael Kamen and 3 others formed the New York Rock'n'Roll ensemble. The band was signed to Atlantic Records and Mark toured and recorded with them for 5 years. His interest then turned in writing film and television scores. He began to write and relocated to Los Angeles in 1974. Mark's musical composition career began in 1975 with the TV series, Starsky and Hutch (1975), and has taken off since then. However, he is best known for his work on The X-Files (1993) and Millennium (1996), he has made music for many other programs. He took piano lessons at age ten and, by the time he was twenty, he played both oboe and percussion.Best music composer in the history of television forever!- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
John Barry was born in York, England in 1933, and was the youngest of three children. His father, Jack, owned several local cinemas and by the age of fourteen, Barry was capable of running the projection box on his own - in particular, The Rialto in York. As he was brought up in a cinematic environment, he soon began to assimilate the music which accompanied the films he saw nightly to a point when, even before he'd left St. Peters school, he had decided to become a film music composer. Helped by lessons provided locally on piano and trumpet, followed by the more exacting theory taught by tutors as diverse as Dr Francis Jackson of York Minster and William Russo, formerly arranger to Stan Kenton and His Orchestra, he soon became equipped to embark upon his chosen career, but had no knowledge of how one actually got a start in the business. A three year sojourn in the army as a bandsman combined with his evening stints with local jazz bands gave him the idea to ease this passage by forming a small band of his own. This was how The John Barry Seven came into existence, and Barry successfully launched them during 1957 via a succession of tours and TV appearances. A recording contract with EMI soon followed, and although initial releases made by them failed to chart, Barry's undoubted talent showed enough promise to influence the studio management at Abbey Road in allowing him to make his debut as an arranger and conductor for other artists on the EMI roster.
A chance meeting with a young singer named Adam Faith, whilst both were appearing on astage show version of the innovative BBC TV programme, Six-Five Special (1957), led Barry to recommend Faith for a later BBC TV series, Drumbeat (1959), which was broadcast in 1959. Faith had made two or three commercially unsuccessful records before singer/songwriter Johnny Worth, also appearing on Drumbeat, offered him a song he'd just finished entitled What Do You Want? With the assistance of the JB7 pianist, Les Reed, Barry contrived an arrangement considered suited to Faith's soft vocal delivery, and within weeks, the record was number one. Barry (and Faith) then went from strength to strength; Faith achieving a swift succession of chart hits, with Barry joining him soon afterwards when the Seven, riding high on the wave of the early sixties instrumental boom, scored with Hit & Miss, Walk Don't Run and Black Stockings.
Faith had long harboured ambitions to act even before his first hit record and was offered a part in the up and coming British movie, Wild for Kicks (1960), at that time. As Barry was by then arranging not only his recordings but also his live Drumbeat material, it came as no surprise when the film company asked him to write the score to accompany Faith's big screen debut. It should be emphasised that the film was hardly a cinematic masterpiece. However, it did give Faith a chance to demonstrate his acting potential, and Barry the chance to show just how quickly he'd mastered the technique of film music writing. Although the film and soundtrack album were both commercial successes, further film score offers failed to flood in. On those that did, such as Never Let Go (1960) and The Amorous Mr. Prawn (1962), Barry proved highly inventive, diverse and adaptable and, as a result, built up a reputation as an emerging talent. It was with this in mind that Noel Rogers, of United Artists Music, approached him in the summer of '62, with a view to involving him in the music for the forthcoming James Bond film, Dr. No (1962).
He was also assisted onto the cinematic ladder as a result of a burgeoning relationship with actor/writer turned director Bryan Forbes, who asked him to write a couple of jazz numbers for use in a club scene in Forbes' then latest film, The L-Shaped Room (1962). From this very modest beginning, the couple went on to collaborate on five subsequent films, including the highly acclaimed Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), King Rat (1965) and The Whisperers (1967). Other highlights from the sixties included five more Bond films, Zulu (1964), Born Free (1966) (a double Oscar), The Lion in Winter (1968) (another Oscar) and Midnight Cowboy (1969).
In the seventies he scored the cult film Walkabout (1971), The Last Valley (1971), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) (Oscar nomination), wrote the theme for The Persuaders! (1971), a musical version of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and the hit musical Billy. Then, in 1974, he made the decision to leave his Thameside penthouse apartment for the peace of a remote villa he was having built in Majorca. He had been living there for about a year, during which time he turned down all film scoring opportunities, until he received an invitation to write the score for the American TV movie, Eleanor and Franklin (1976). In order to accomplish the task, he booked into the Beverly Hills Hotel for six weeks in October 1975. However, during this period, he was also offered Robin and Marian (1976) and King Kong (1976), which caused his stay to be extended. He was eventually to live and work in the hotel for almost a year, as more assignments were offered and accepted. His stay on America's West Coast eventually lasted almost five years, during which time he met and married his wife, Laurie, who lived with him at his Beverly Hills residence. They moved to Oyster Bay, New York and have since split their time between there and a house in Cadogan Square, London.
After adopting a seemingly lower profile towards the end of the seventies, largely due to the relatively obscure nature of the commissions he accepted, the eighties saw John Barry re-emerge once more into the cinematic limelight. This was achieved, not only by continuing to experiment and diversify, but also by mixing larger budget commissions of the calibre of Body Heat (1981), Jagged Edge (1985), Out of Africa (1985) (another Oscar) and The Cotton Club (1984) with smaller ones such as the TV movies, Touched by Love (1980) and Svengali (1983). Other successes included: Somewhere in Time (1980), Frances (1982), three more Bond films, and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).
After serious illness in the late eighties, Barry returned with yet another Oscar success with Dances with Wolves (1990) and was also nominated for Chaplin (1992). Since then he scored the controversial Indecent Proposal (1993), My Life (1993), Deception (1992), Cry, the Beloved Country (1995) and has made compilation albums for Sony (Moviola and Moviola II) and non-soundtrack albums for Decca ('The Beyondness Of Things' & 'Eternal Echoes').
In the late nineties he made a staggeringly successful return to the concert arena, playing to sell-out audiences at the Royal Albert Hall. Since then he has appeared as a guest conductor at a RAH concert celebrating the life and career of Elizabeth Taylor and made brief appearances at a couple of London concerts dedicated to his music. In 2004 he re-united with Don Black to write his fifth stage musical, Brighton Rock, which enjoyed a limited run at The Almeida Theatre in London.
He continued to appear at concerts of his own music, often making brief appearances at the podium. In November 2007, Christine Albanel, the French Minister for Culture, appointed him Commander in the National Order of Arts and Letters. The award was made at the eighth International Festival Music and Cinema, in Auxerre, France, when, in his honour, a concert of his music also took place.
In August 2008 he was working on a new album, provisionally entitled Seasons, which he has described as "a soundtrack of his life." A new biography, "John Barry: The Man with The Midas Touch", by Geoff Leonard, Pete Walker, and Gareth Bramley, was published in November 2008.
He died following a heart-attack on 30th January 2011, at his home in Oyster Bay, New York.Best music composer in the history of television forever!- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Bill Conti was born on 13 April 1942 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for Rocky (1976), For Your Eyes Only (1981) and The Karate Kid Part II (1986). He is married to Shelby Cox. They have two children.Best music composer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Music Department
Merv Griffin was a singer and band leader, movie actor, television personality and media mogul who in his time hosting The Merv Griffin Show (1962) was second in fame and influence as a talk show host only to Johnny Carson. Griffin was best known for creating the two most popular game shows in television syndication history, Wheel of Fortune (1983) and Jeopardy! (1984), which are watched by hundreds of millions of people all over the world. In the business world, he was identified as the visionary chairman of The Griffin Group.
Born in the San Francisco, California suburb of San Mateo, Griffin "came up through the ranks" in the classic sense, entering talent contests, writing songs, singing on local radio station KFRC-San Francisco, and later touring with Freddy Martin Orchestra. He became increasingly popular with nightclub audiences and his fame soared among the general public when he struck gold in 1950 with "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts", which reached the number one spot on the Hit Parade and sold three million copies.
Continuing to record hits, including "Wilhelmina" and "Never Been Kissed", Griffin made a foray into motion pictures after Doris Day saw his nightclub performance and arranged a screen test for him at Warner Bros. Studios. While under contract at Warner Bros., he appeared in a number of hit movies, including So This Is Love (1953) with Kathryn Grayson and The Boy from Oklahoma (1954) with Will Rogers Jr., and Lon Chaney Jr..
Television then discovered him. As a regular performer on The Arthur Murray Party (1950), The Tonight Show Starring Jack Paar (1957) and others, he was offered the opportunity to host his own television series, Play Your Hunch (1958). It was during this period that he conceived the idea for what was to become one of the most successful game shows in television history, Jeopardy! (1964). But it was in 1962 that his career took its most dramatic turn. He became a substitute host for Jack Paar on The Tonight Show Starring Jack Paar (1957) and scored some of the highest ratings in the show's history. As a result, NBC gave him his own hour-long daytime talk show program, The Merv Griffin Show (1962).
Griffin's name and talk show career will always be seen in the light of that of Johnny Carson, the "King of late night TV", with whom Griffin directly competed on CBS from 1969 to 1972. Griffin's first daytime talk show began on the same day Carson first hosted The Tonight Show (1962). While Carson's style was indebted to his long apprenticeship in Los Angeles in the 1950s, Griffin was based in New York, where he socialized with New York's theater and café crowds. Griffin's approach to television talk was influenced by two New York shows, David Susskind's The David Susskind Show (1958) and Mike Wallace's Probe and Night Beat (1956), and like Susskind and Wallace, he openly embraced controversial subjects. In 1965, Griffin was criticized as a "traitor" when he aired a special from London in which Nobel Prize-winning philosopher Bertrand Russell denounced the Vietnam War.
Despite his success on daytime television, it was late night that was The Holy Grail for talk show hosts. In 1969, CBS hired Griffin to directly compete with Carson in the 11:30 PM to 1:00 AM time slot that had proven a grave yard for other personalities. Not one to shy away from controversy, Griffin began to be harassed by CBS censors who objected to the antiwar statements of his guests and ordered him to feature pro-war guests for balance. "The irony of the situation wasn't wasted on me", Griffin recalls in his autobiography. "In 1965, I'm called a traitor by the press for presenting Bertrand Russell, and, four years later, we are hard-pressed to find anybody to speak in favor of the Vietnam War".
In March 1970, CBS censors pixilated antiwar activist Abbie Hoffman because he was wearing a shirt that resembled an American flag. The resulting blurred image meant that Hoffman's voice emanated from a "jumble of lines". CBS also pressured Griffin into sacking his long-term sidekick Arthur Treacher, who had been his television mentor, because he was too old. The censorship did not boost the ratings for Griffin, who was facing stiff competition from the genial Carson, who himself was criticized during the era for shying away from controversial subjects.
In 1972, a fed-up Griffin negotiated a syndication deal with Metromedia to move his talk show back to the daytime, and in the event he was terminated by CBS. The deal was signed in secret as a penalty clause in his CBS contract gave him $1 million in the event of his being fired. Later that year, CBS terminated Griffin's late-night talk show and Griffin immediately made the transition to Metromedia's syndicated network.
While Griffin may have been a washout in late night television (and he had LOTS of company - EVERYONE who went up against Carson lost the ratings race, and Johnny always came out the victor), Griffin's impact on daytime was immense, specifically through his production of game shows. An avid fan of puzzles since childhood, Griffin first produced a successful game show in 1964, Jeopardy! (1964) for NBC. After 13 seasons as a daytime talk show host, Griffin retired from his talk show in 1986 to devote himself to producing his highly profitable game shows.
Jeopardy! (2002) remains the second highest rated game show in television syndication while Wheel of Fortune (1983) continues to be the longest running game show to hold the number one spot in television syndication history. Other Griffin successes in the game show field included "One in a Million" and Joe Garagiola's Memory Game (1971), both airing on ABC, Let's Play Post Office on NBC, and Reach for the Stars (1967).
In 1986, Griffin sold his production company, Merv Griffin Enterprises, to Coca-Cola's Columbia Pictures Television unit for $250 million as well as a continuing share of the profits of the shows. At that time, the transaction represented the largest acquisition of an entertainment company owned by a single individual. Subsequently, Sony Pictures Entertainment purchased Columbia and he retains the title of executive producer of both "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy!" (for which he still creates puzzles and questions.) He served as Executive Producer of "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" (2000).
After his retirement from daytime chat, Merv became a real estate baron, acquiring the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, which is now the venue of choice for virtually all of the Tinseltown's most high profile events such as The Golden Globe Awards, The Soap Opera Digest Awards, and The American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Awards. He also owns the Hilton Scottsdale Resort and Villas in Arizona, and St. Clerans Manor, an 18th century estate once owned by director John Huston which is located near Galway, the premier resort destination in Ireland.
In January 1998, Griffin opened The Coconut Club, one of the country's hottest swing/dance clubs, at his Beverly Hilton Hotel. This weekend venue, fashioned after Hollywood's famed Coconut Grove (where Griffin headlined as a boy singer with The Freddy Martin Orchestra) features live Big Bands, Swing Orchestras, and Rock Bands amidst a glamorous nightclub setting.
He was honored with the prestigious 1994 Broadcasting and Cable "Hall of Fame" Award, alongside such figures as Diane Sawyer and Dan Rather. Winner of 15 Emmy Awards, Griffin was presented an Outstanding Game/Audience Participation Show Emmy for 1993-1994 as executive producer of Jeopardy! (1984) He had also been the recipient of the coveted Scopus Award from the American Friends of Hebrew University, "The Duke Award" presented by the John Wayne Cancer Institute, and he had been honored by the American Ireland Fund and the SHARE organization. He was Lifetime Honorary Festival Chairman of La Quinta Arts Festival and recently donated his Wickenburg Inn and Dude Ranch to Childhelp USA.
In March 2001, the Gold Label released his new CD, "It's Like a Dream", for which he composed the title song. Among his private passions are his family, son Tony Griffin, daughter-in-law Tricia, and grandchildren Farah and Donovan Mervyn, his long-haired sharpei dog Charlie Chan, his La Quinta ranch near Carmel, where he raises thoroughbred racing horses, and his 135 foot, four-story high ocean going yacht, Griff. Merv Griffin died at age 82 of prostate cancer in Los Angeles, California on August 12, 2007.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Production Manager
Norman Lear enjoyed a long career in television and film, political and social activism, and philanthropy.
Born in 1922 in New Haven, Connecticut, Lear flew 52 combat missions over Europe in World War II before beginning his television career. His classic shows of the 1970s and '80s - All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, among others - collectively reached as many as 120 million viewers per week and are said to have transformed the American cultural landscape, bringing the social and political issues of the day into American living rooms for the first time. With the rise of the radical religious right, Lear put his career on hold in 1980 to found People For the American Way, the nonprofit organization that remains a relevant and effective force defending all aspects of the First Amendment.
Lear was among the first seven television pioneers inducted in 1984 into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. In 1999, President Clinton presented him with the National Medal of Arts, noting that "Norman Lear has held up a mirror to American society and changed the way we look at it." His memoir, Even This I Get to Experience, was published in 2014, and the 2016 documentary Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You received an Emmy nomination as the representative program for the PBS American Masters series. In 2017, Lear received a Peabody Lifetime Achievement Award and was a Kennedy Center Honoree.
He was the father of six, the grandfather of four, and the husband of Lyn Davis Lear.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Director
- Producer
- Writer
James Burrows was born on 30 December 1940 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He is a director and producer, known for Cheers (1982), Will & Grace (1998) and Taxi (1978). He has been married to Debbie Easton since 1997. He was previously married to Linda Solomon.Best director in the history of television forever!- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Alexander Courage was born on 10 December 1919 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for Star Trek (1966), Jurassic Park (1993) and Star Trek: Generations (1994). He was married to Shirley Pumpelly. He died on 15 May 2008 in Pacific Palisades, California, USA.Best music composer in the history of television forever!- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
David Shire was born on 3 July 1937 in Buffalo, New York, USA. He is a composer and writer, known for Zodiac (2007), Short Circuit (1986) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). He has been married to Didi Conn since 11 February 1984. They have one child. He was previously married to Talia Shire.Best music composer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Director
Paul Junger Witt was born on 20 March 1941 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and director, known for Dead Poets Society (1989), The Golden Girls (1985) and Three Kings (1999). He was married to Susan Harris and Ann Elizabeth McLaughlin. He died on 27 April 2018 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Actor
- Production Manager
Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III was born in Santiago, Cuba on March 2, 1917. His father was the mayor of Santiago. The 1933 revolution led by Fulgencio Batista had landed his father in jail and stripped the family of its wealth, property and power. His father was released because of the intercession of U.S. officials who believed him to be neutral during the revolt. The family fled to Miami, Florida. One of Desi's first jobs in America consisted of cleaning canary cages. However, after forming his own small band of musicians, he was hired by Xavier Cugat, the "king" of Latin music.
Desi soon left Cugat, formed his own Latin band, and literally launched the conga craze in America. He was cast in the Broadway play "Too Many Girls" and then brought to Hollywood to make the film version of the play. It was on the set of Too Many Girls (1940) that he and Lucille Ball met. They soon married and approximately 10 years later formed Desilu Productions and began the I Love Lucy (1951) shows. Desi and Lucille had two children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr.. At the end of the I Love Lucy (1951) run, which included The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957), the two divorced. Desi later wrote an autobiography entitled "A Book." In 1986 he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died on December 2, 1986 at age 69.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Attended Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon University) as a playwriting major. Barbara Bosson (his second wife), Michael Tucker, Bruce Weitz and Charles Haid were classmates; he and Tucker drove cross-country to Hollywood for full-time jobs at Universal, where Bochco would remain for 12 years.
In 1978, he moved to MTM Enterprises, who after several attempts gave him carte Blanche to create a show similar to Fort Apache the Bronx (1981) (Hill Street Blues (1981)). In 1985, MTM fired him, in part for his inability to keep HSB on budget. After creating L.A. Law (1986) and Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989) for NBC, he struck a $15M deal with ABC in 1987 to create 10 series pilots over 10 years.Best producer/writer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Marshall Herskovitz is a writer, producer, and director in Los Angeles who has won many awards for his work in television and film. Born in Philadelphia, he attended Brandeis University, then moved to Los Angeles in 1975, where he attended the American Film Institute and met his longtime creative partner Edward Zwick. In the years since he helped create such series as Thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, and Once and Again. Among the films he has produced are Legends of the Fall, Traffic, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond and Love and Other Drugs. He also directed Jack the Bear and Dangerous Beauty.
In 2007 Herskovitz migrated to the Internet with Quarterlife, the ground-breaking online series and social network dedicated to artistic, activist twenty-somethings. A year after launch, the website - www.quarterlife.com - has become an international destination with members in 60 countries, and the series is now the most successful scripted program in Internet history.
Herskovitz, a longtime environmentalist, has served on the board of several organizations dedicated to preserving America's precious natural resources. He is a founding member of the national 1Sky campaign.
He is currently serving as President of the Producers Guild of America.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Actor
- Producer
A former boxer, paratrooper and general all-around angry young man, Rod Serling was one of the radical new voices that made the "Golden Age" of television. Long before The Twilight Zone (1959), he was known for writing such high-quality scripts as "Patterns" and "Requiem for a Heavyweight," both later turned into films (Patterns (1956) and Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)). The Twilight Zone (1959) featured forays into controversial grounds like racism, Cold War paranoia and the horrors of war. His maverick attitude eventually drove him from regular network television.Best writer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Tom Fontana was born on September 12, 1951 in Buffalo, New York, USA. He is an Emmy Award winning writer and producer, known for Copper (2012), Borgia (2011), Oz (1997), Homicide: Life on the Street (1993) and St. Elsewhere (1982). He was twice married to Sagan Lewis, before her death in 2016.Best writer in the history of television forever!- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Jim Henson never thought that he would make a name of himself in puppetry; it was merely a way of getting himself on television. The vehicle that achieved it was Sam and Friends (1955), a late-night puppet show that was on after the 11:00 news in Washington DC. It proved to be very popular and inspired Jim to continue using puppets for his work. He made many commercials, developing the signature humor that Henson Productions is known for. A key reason for the success of his puppets is that Jim realized he didn't need to hide puppeteers behind a structure when they were in front of a camera. All he had to do was instruct the camera operators to focus on the puppets and keep the puppeteers out of the frame. This allowed the puppets to dominate the image and make them more lifelike. This work on puppets and television would lead to separate projects that had different goals. The first one was his work on the The Jimmy Dean Show (1963) with the character Rowlf the Dog, the oldest clearly identified character that Henson Productions still uses. This show provided an income that allowed Jim to work on a pet project. That project was Time Piece (1965), a surrealistic short about time which was nominated for best live-action short Oscar. Henson shot to prominence when he was approached to use his muppets for the revolutionary educational show Sesame Street (1969). The show was a smash hit and his characters have become staples on public television. Unforetunately, this also led to Henson being typecast as only an entertainer for children. He sought to disprove that by being part of the initial crew of Saturday Night Live (1975), but his style and that of the creative staff simply didn't jibe. It was this circumstance that encouraged him to develop a variety show format that had the kind of sophisticated humor that "Sesame Street (1969)" didn't work with. No American broadcaster was interested, but British producer Lew Grade was. This led to The Muppet Show (1976). It initially struggled both in the ratings and in the search for guest stars, but in the second season it became a smash hit and would eventually become the most widely watched series in television history. Hungry for a new challenge, Henson made The Muppet Movie (1979), defying the popular industry opinion that his characters would never work in a movie. The film became a hit and spawned a series of features which included the moody fantasy The Dark Crystal (1982), which was a drastic and bold departure from the amiable tone of his previous work. The most successful TV work in the 1980s was Fraggle Rock (1983), a fantasy series specifically designed to appeal to as many cultural groups as possible. During this time he also established the Creature Shop, a puppet studio that became renowned for being as brilliant with puppetry as ILM was at special effects. When he died all too soon in 1990, he was indisputably one of the geniuses of puppetry. More importantly, he was a man who achieved his phenomenal success while still retaining his social conscience and artistic integrity as his work in promoting environmentalism and his brilliant The Storyteller (1987) series respectively attest to.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Carl Reiner is a legend of American comedy, who achieved great success as a comic actor, a director, producer and recording artist. He won nine Emmy Awards, three as an actor, four as a writer and two as a producer. He also won a Grammy Award for his album "The 2,000 Year Old Man", based on his comedy routine with Mel Brooks.
Reiner was born in The Bronx, to Bessie (Mathias) and Irving Reiner, a watchmaker. His father was an Austrian Jewish immigrant and his mother was a Romanian Jewish immigrant. At the age of sixteen, while working as a sewing machine repairman, he attended a dramatic workshop sponsored by the Works Progress Administration. The direction of his life was set.
In the 1970s, some sources claimed that Reiner made his movie debut in New Faces of 1937 (1937), but that is unlikely as he would have only been fifteen years old at the time. (the movie shares the same plot as his erstwhile partner Mel Brooks' classic The Producers (1967), with a crooked producer planning to fleece his "angels" by producing a flop and absconding with the money). He didn't appear on screen, silver or small, until he made his television debut in 1948 in the short-lived television series, The Fashion Story (1948), then became a regular, the following year, on The Fifty-Fourth Street Revue (1949), another television series with a brief life.
Reiner made his Broadway debut in 1949 in the musical "Inside U.S.A.", a hit that ran for 399 performances. His next Broadway show, the musical revue "Alive and Kicking" (1950) was a flop, lasting just 43 performances. Max Liebman, the producer/director/writer/composer, had been called in to provide additional material after the show's troubled six week out-of-town preview in Boston. It didn't help -- the show closed after six weeks on Broadway -- but an important contact had been made.
Leibman was a producer-director on Your Show of Shows (1950), one of the great television series, and he hired Reiner to appear on the show in the middle of its first season. Reiner's first gig on the revue-like show was interviewing The Professor, a character played by Sid Caesar. He became central to the comedy portions of the show and, in 1953, he racked up the first of six Emmy Award nominations for acting. (In all, he was nominated for an Emmy Award a total of 13 times). When, in 1954, "Your Show of Shows" was split up by the network into its constituent parts, Reiner continued on with Sid in Caesar's Hour (1954). (Imogene Coca was given her own show, which lasted one season, and Leibman was allowed to produce specials).
"Your Show or Shows" had been a Broadway-style revue, featuring skits such as dancing (including a young Bob Fosse) whereas "Caesar's Hour" was pure comedy. "Your Show of Shows" had had a great cast, another other than Coca, most of the cast, including Reiner, Howard Morris, and Nanette Fabray (who went on to win an Emmy Award) moved over to "Caesar's Hour". In his three seasons on the show, he was nominated three more times for an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor, winning twice in 1957 and 1958. But it was its stable of comedy writers that was essential to the great success of both "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour". In addition to Mel Brooks, the writing staff included Neil Simon, his brother Danny Simon, Larry Gelbart and Mel Tolkin. (There are rumors that the young Woody Allen served as the writing staff's typist).
Reiner had sat in informally with the writers during "Your Show of Shows", but he began writing formally for "Caesar's Hour", having learned his craft from all of the other writers. As a self-described uncredited "writer without portfolio", he was able to leave writers' meetings at 6 P.M., if he wanted to. This gave him the time to work on a semi-autobiographical novel. Published in 1958, Enter Laughing (1967) is about a young man in 1930s New York trying to make it in show business. It was transformed into a play and, eventually, adapted into a movie in 1967, and a musical, many years later.
In 1959, he created the pilot for a television series, "Man of the House", in which he would play a writer, Rob Petrie, who balanced his family life with the demands of working as a writer for a comedy show headlined by an egotistical comedic genius modeled after Sid Caesar (a "benign despot" who lacked social skills, according to Reiner). The series was rooted in his experience on "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour". The network didn't pick up the pilot at first, as CBS executives claimed the main character, which was clearly autobiographical on Reiner's part, was too New York, too Jewish and too intellectual. In 1960, Reiner teamed up with Mel Brooks on The Steve Allen Plymouth Show (1956), and their routine "The 2000 Year Old Man" was a huge success. Reiner played the straight man to Brooks in the routine, which was spun-off into five comedy albums, bringing them a Grammy Award. They also made an animated television special based on their shtick in 1975.
Though CBS turned down "Man of the House", with the two-time Emmy Award-winning comedian Reiner as the lead, it was still interested in the series. However, they wanted a different actor in the lead role, and the casting of the protagonist came down to Johnny Carson and Dick Van Dyke. Carson was a game show host of no great note at the time, but Van Dyke was in the smash Broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie (1963), for which he won a Tony Award. He got the role and another chapter of television history was made, when Mary Tyler Moore, Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam all were cast in leading roles. Reiner, himself, would eventually play the role of Alan Brady, the abrasive Sid Caesar-like comic convinced of his own genius, in the last few seasons of the series' five-year run.
Another milestone in television comedy, The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), brought Reiner five more Emmy Awards, three for writing and two as the producer of the series. In 1966, Reiner and the other principals, including executive producer Sheldon Leonard and Dick Van Dyke, decided to end the series at the height of its popularity and critical acclaim. (The show won Emmy Awards as best show and best comedy in 1965 and 1966, respectively). Twenty-nine years after the show was ended, Reiner reprised the role of Alan Brady on Mad About You (1992), winning his eighth (and so far, last) Emmy Award, this time as Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.
It was on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" that Reiner first became a director. His feature film debut, as a director, was with the film adaptation of the play Joseph Stein had adapted from his 1958 novel, Enter Laughing (1967). His work as a writer-director, with Dick Van Dyke, in creating a Stan Laurel-type character in The Comic (1969) was not a success, but Where's Poppa? (1970) became a cult classic and Oh, God! (1977), with George Burns, and The Jerk (1979), with Steve Martin, were smash hits. The last film he directed was the romantic comedy That Old Feeling (1997).
Reiner's career continued into the 21st century, when most of his contemporaries had retired or passed. He was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2000 and acted in the remake of Ocean's Eleven (2001) and its two sequels. He also appeared as a voice artist in the film Good Boy (2003), and the animated series The Cleveland Show (2009) (he even wrote an episode for the series rooted in his "Your Show of Shows" experience). He was also a regular on the series Hot in Cleveland (2010) (with fellow nonagenarian Betty White), and appeared on an episode of Parks and Recreation (2009) in 2012. His last film role was as the voice of Carl Reineroceros in Toy Story 4 (2019), opposite his old compatriot Mel Brooks.
Carl Reiner died at age 98 of natural causes on June 29, 2020, in Beverly Hills, California.Best writer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Donald P. Bellisario was born in North Charleroi in Pennsylvania. His father ran the tavern, where he grew up listening to the war stories of vets returning from WWII. He had a fifteen-year career in advertising before moving to Hollywood. He broke into television as the story editor for Black Sheep Squadron (1976). His most celebrated works to date are NCIS (2003), Magnum, P.I. (1980), Quantum Leap (1989), and JAG (1995). He has been married four times, and has seven children (one of whom is deceased), two stepchildren, and eight grandchildren.Best writer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Born in Mt. Vernon, New York, and raised in New Jersey, David Chase (born David DeCesare) dreamed of being a star drummer in a rock band! He spent many years playing drums and bass trying to be part of a successful rock band in the 1960s East Coast music scene. He also loved movies, such as The Public Enemy (1931) with James Cagney and TV shows like The Untouchables (1959) with Robert Stack. When not making music, he watched 1960s' Hollywood and foreign films avidly. After his music career ended, he got the inspiration to buy a movie camera and make his own movies. He studied at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and later the graduate film program at Stanford University. He began writing for network TV drama programs in the early 1970s. He eventually became a writer and producer on the classic NBC detective show The Rockford Files (1974) with James Garner. While on "Rockford", he penned many memorable episodes and pieces of dialog. He won his first Emmy in 1978, the year "Rockford" won the award for Best Dramatic Series. Many biographies incorrectly state that Chase won his first Emmy for writing the acclaimed TV movie, Off the Minnesota Strip (1980). Although it is a sensitive and well observed story about a young runaway trying to make sense of her life after being returned to her Midwestern family from a life of prostitution in New York City, Chase actually won his second Emmy (and a Writer's Guild Award) for that project. He then spent the 1980s and early 1990s getting paid for writing various TV scripts while writing feature film projects that never got produced. He also began directing his TV scripts whenever possible. He often told people stories about the troubled relationship he shared back in New Jersey with his mother. Encouraged to write about it, he found a way to combine a story about his mother with a mob story and a story about psychotherapy, which Chase had also began during this time. This intersection of ideas and themes led Chase to write the landmark pilot script to a show that the Fox network developed, then passed on shooting. HBO then decided to roll the dice with Chase on this odd mixture of mother/son conflict, mobster danger and insecurities about psychological therapy. The result: The Sopranos (1999). Everybody connected with the project thought they would film a pilot episode, it would not go to series and that would be that. It has since gone on to become one of the most successful shows to ever come out of a cable network. Chase and his crew have collected Emmy, Golden Globe, Writer's Guild and Director's Guild Awards for the show. In terms of impact and subject matter, it has been compared to The Godfather (1972). Chase vows to get his feature film projects off the ground, as soon as "The Sopranos" ends its run.Best writer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Flora Disney (née Call) and Elias Disney, a Canadian-born farmer and businessperson. He had Irish, German, and English ancestry. Walt moved with his parents to Kansas City at age seven, where he spent the majority of his childhood. At age 16, during World War I, he faked his age to join the American Red Cross. He soon returned home, where he won a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute. There, he met a fellow animator, Ub Iwerks. The two soon set up their own company. In the early 1920s, they made a series of animated shorts for the Newman theater chain, entitled "Newman's Laugh-O-Grams". Their company soon went bankrupt, however.
The two then went to Hollywood in 1923. They started work on a new series, about a live-action little girl who journeys to a world of animated characters. Entitled the "Alice Comedies", they were distributed by M.J. Winkler (Margaret). Walt was backed up financially only by Winkler and his older brother Roy O. Disney, who remained his business partner for the rest of his life. Hundreds of "Alice Comedies" were produced between 1923 and 1927, before they lost popularity.
Walt then started work on a series around a new animated character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This series was successful, but in 1928, Walt discovered that M.J. Winkler and her husband, Charles Mintz, had stolen the rights to the character away from him. They had also stolen all his animators, except for Ub Iwerks. While taking the train home, Walt started doodling on a piece of paper. The result of these doodles was a mouse named Mickey. With only Walt and Ub to animate, and Walt's wife Lillian Disney (Lilly) and Roy's wife Edna Disney to ink in the animation cells, three Mickey Mouse cartoons were quickly produced. The first two didn't sell, so Walt added synchronized sound to the last one, Steamboat Willie (1928), and it was immediately picked up. With Walt as the voice of Mickey, it premiered to great success. Many more cartoons followed. Walt was now in the big time, but he didn't stop creating new ideas.
In 1929, he created the 'Silly Symphonies', a cartoon series that didn't have a continuous character. They were another success. One of them, Flowers and Trees (1932), was the first cartoon to be produced in color and the first cartoon to win an Oscar; another, Three Little Pigs (1933), was so popular it was often billed above the feature films it accompanied. The Silly Symphonies stopped coming out in 1939, but Mickey and friends, (including Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, and plenty more), were still going strong and still very popular.
In 1934, Walt started work on another new idea: a cartoon that ran the length of a feature film. Everyone in Hollywood was calling it "Disney's Folly", but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was anything but, winning critical raves, the adoration of the public, and one big and seven little special Oscars for Walt. Now Walt listed animated features among his ever-growing list of accomplishments. While continuing to produce cartoon shorts, he also started producing more of the animated features. Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942) were all successes; not even a flop like Fantasia (1940) and a studio animators' strike in 1941 could stop Disney now.
In the mid 1940s, he began producing "packaged features", essentially a group of shorts put together to run feature length, but by 1950 he was back with animated features that stuck to one story, with Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953). In 1950, he also started producing live-action films, with Treasure Island (1950). These began taking on greater importance throughout the 50s and 60s, but Walt continued to produce animated features, including Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).
In 1955 he opened a theme park in southern California: Disneyland. It was a place where children and their parents could take rides, just explore, and meet the familiar animated characters, all in a clean, safe environment. It was another great success. Walt also became one of the first producers of films to venture into television, with his series The Magical World of Disney (1954) which he began in 1954 to promote his theme park. He also produced The Mickey Mouse Club (1955) and Zorro (1957). To top it all off, Walt came out with the lavish musical fantasy Mary Poppins (1964), which mixed live-action with animation. It is considered by many to be his magnum opus. Even after that, Walt continued to forge onward, with plans to build a new theme park and an experimental prototype city in Florida.
He did not live to see the culmination of those plans, however; in 1966, he developed lung cancer brought on by his lifelong chain-smoking. He died of a heart attack following cancer surgery on December 15, 1966 at age 65. But not even his death, it seemed, could stop him. Roy carried on plans to build the Florida theme park, and it premiered in 1971 under the name Walt Disney World. His company continues to flourish, still producing animated and live-action films and overseeing the still-growing empire started by one man: Walt Disney, who will never be forgotten.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock (born 1892). Raised as a strict Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits, Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. His first job outside of the family business was in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in movies began at around this time, frequently visiting the cinema and reading US trade journals.
Hitchcock entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. It was there that he met Alma Reville, though they never really spoke to each other. It was only after the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923) fell ill and Hitchcock was named director to complete the film that he and Reville began to collaborate. Hitchcock had his first real crack at directing a film, start to finish, in 1923 when he was hired to direct the film Number 13 (1922), though the production wasn't completed due to the studio's closure (he later remade it as a sound film). Hitchcock didn't give up then. He directed The Pleasure Garden (1925), a British/German production, which was very popular. Hitchcock made his first trademark film in 1927, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) . In the same year, on the 2nd of December, Hitchcock married Alma Reville. They had one child, Patricia Hitchcock who was born on July 7th, 1928. His success followed when he made a number of films in Britain such as The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Jamaica Inn (1939), some of which also gained him fame in the USA.
In 1940, the Hitchcock family moved to Hollywood, where the producer David O. Selznick had hired him to direct an adaptation of 'Daphne du Maurier''s Rebecca (1940). After Saboteur (1942), as his fame as a director grew, film companies began to refer to his films as 'Alfred Hitchcock's', for example Alfred Hitcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976), Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972).
Hitchcock was a master of pure cinema who almost never failed to reconcile aesthetics with the demands of the box-office.
During the making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife Alma suffered a paralyzing stroke which made her unable to walk very well. On March 7, 1979, Hitchcock was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award, where he said: "I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen and their names are Alma Reville." By this time, he was ill with angina and his kidneys had already started to fail. He had started to write a screenplay with Ernest Lehman called The Short Night but he fired Lehman and hired young writer David Freeman to rewrite the script. Due to Hitchcock's failing health the film was never made, but Freeman published the script after Hitchcock's death. In late 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. On the 29th April 1980, 9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. His funeral was held in the Church of Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Father Thomas Sullivan led the service with over 600 people attended the service, among them were Mel Brooks (director of High Anxiety (1977), a comedy tribute to Hitchcock and his films), Louis Jourdan, Karl Malden, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh and François Truffaut.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
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David Milch was born on 23 March 1945 in Buffalo, New York, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Hill Street Blues (1981), NYPD Blue (1993) and Brooklyn South (1997). He has been married to Rita Stern since 1982. They have three children.Best writer in the history of television forever!- Director
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Born in New York and raised in Queens, John Frankenheimer wanted to become a professional tennis player. He loved movies and his favorite actor was Robert Mitchum. He decided he wanted to be an actor but then he applied for and was accepted in the Motion Picture Squadron of the Air Force where he realized his natural talent to handle a camera. After his military discharge he began a TV career in 1953 convincing CBS to hire him as an assistant director, which consisted mainly working as a cameraman at that time. He eventually started to direct the show he was working on as an assistant director. Frankenheimer still didn't want to direct films. He liked to direct live television, and he would have continued to do it if the profession itself hadn't cease to exist. He first turned to the big screen with The Young Stranger (1957) which he hated to do because he thought he didn't understand movies and wasn't used to work with only one camera. Disappointed his with first feature film experience he returned to his successful television career directing a total of 152 live television shows between 1954 and 1960. He took another chance to move to the cinema industry, working with Burt Lancaster in The Young Savages (1961) ending up becoming a successful filmmaker best known by expressing on films his views on important social and philosophical topics.Best director in the history of television forever!- Writer
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Garry Kent Marshall (November 13, 1934 - July 19, 2016) was an American actor and filmmaker. He started his career in the 1960s writing for The Lucy Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show before he developed Neil Simon's 1965 play The Odd Couple for television in 1970. He gained fame for creating Happy Days (1974-1984), Laverne and Shirley (1976-1983), and Mork and Mindy (1978-1982). He is also known for directing Overboard (1987), Beaches (1988), Pretty Woman (1990), Runaway Bride (1999), and the family films The Princess Diaries (2001) and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004). He also directed the romantic comedy ensemble films Valentine's Day (2010), New Year's Eve (2011), and Mother's Day (2016).Best producer in the history of television forever!- Producer
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Lorne Michaels was born on 17 November 1944 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is a producer and writer, known for Saturday Night Live (1975), 30 Rock (2006) and The Kids in the Hall (1988). He has been married to Alice Barry since 1991. They have three children. He was previously married to Susan Forristal and Rosie Shuster.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
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Richard Levinson was born on 7 August 1934 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for Columbo (1971), Murder, She Wrote (1984) and Rehearsal for Murder (1982). He was married to Rosanna Huffman. He died on 12 March 1987 in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, USA.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
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William Link was born on 15 December 1933 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for Columbo (1971), Murder, She Wrote (1984) and Rehearsal for Murder (1982). He was married to Margery Nelson. He died on 27 December 2020 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
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Sherwood Schwartz was born on 14 November 1916 in Passaic, New Jersey, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for Gilligan's Island (1964), The Red Skelton Hour (1951) and The Running Man (1987). He was married to Mildred Schwartz. He died on 12 July 2011 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Make-Up Department
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Michael George Westmore is a scion of the Westmores of Hollywood, the most illustrious family of make-up artists in the business. The dynasty (of which Michael is the 13th to pursue this line of work) began with his grandfather George Westmore in 1917, later to become head of MGM's make-up department. Michael's father, Monte Westmore, headed the make-up department at Selznick International Pictures and worked on Gone with the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940) before his untimely death at the age of 37. His uncles included Bud Westmore, who worked at Universal and was one of the creators of the molded foam rubber suit used for the Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954); Wally Westmore, who headed the make-up department at Paramount; Ern Westmore, who occupied the same position at RKO; and Perc Westmore, chief make-up artist at Warner Brothers, who was responsible for Bette Davis's look as Queen Elizabeth I and for that of Paul Muni as Louis Pasteur, Emile Zola and Benito Juarez. Their collective contribution to the industry earned the Westmores a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Vine Street.
A graduate of the University of California-Santa Barbara, Michael started at Universal in 1961. After three years, he rose to the position of Assistant Department Head of Make-Up. Turning free-lance in the 70s, he worked on the cult horror film Trilogy of Terror (1975), followed by Rocky (1976) (and three of the sequels) and Capricorn One (1977). For the biopic Raging Bull (1980), he transformed Robert De Niro into Jake LaMotta. His particular forte was to make actors age in the course of a film, which he did especially well in The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977) (Tommy Lee Jones) and in True Confessions (1981) (De Niro and Robert Duvall). He also excelled in the design and production of prosthetics, latex masks and the creation of special visual effects.
In 1986, Michael joined the Star Trek franchise as make-up supervisor and stayed on for eighteen years. Beginning with Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), he devised the look for the characters Data and Lal, as well as creating prosthetics and make-up to bring the Ferengi, the Cardassians and the Borg to life (the Borg Queen was possibly his pièce de résistance!). He also redesigned the Klingons by giving them more pronounced forehead ridges (based on dinosaur spinal columns), nose ridges and dentures to simulate sharp, fang-like teeth. Michael explained: "I read the script and create. The script doesn't usually say three eyes, two horns and blowing fire, so I get to devise creations of my own imagination". His designs for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) include the featureless visage of the changeling Odo and the ferocious, bony features of the Nausicaans and the Jem'Hadar. His alien head designs for Star Trek: Voyager (1995) have included the reptilian Voth and for Star Trek: Enterprise (2001) the Xindi.
Michael based most of his creations on earth animals. For example, he saw the Jem'Hadar as a combination of dinosaurs and rhinos: "If you look at all the pieces, you can see the rhinoceros between the hairdo and the dinosaur with the top of the head and everything. So I would use combinations of what people are familiar with to create my aliens."
In the course of his four decade-long career, Michael has won nine Primetime Emmy Awards and an Oscar for his work on the film Mask (1985). In conjunction with special effects make-up artist Thomas R. Burman, he has also created make-up sets for the CIA for use by overseas agents in need of changing their identities. In 1973, he published a reference book, The Art of Theatrical Makeup for Stage and Screen, followed in 2017 by Makeup Man: From Rocky to Star Trek: The Amazing Creations of Hollywood's Michael Westmore.Best make-up artist in the history of television forever!- Producer
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Celebrated American documentarian who gradually amassed a considerable reputation and a devoted audience with a series of reassuringly traditional meditations on Americana. Burns' works are treasure troves of archival materials; he skillfully utilizes period music and footage, photographs, periodicals and ordinary people's correspondence, the latter often movingly read by seasoned professional actors in a deliberate attempt to get away from a "Great Man" approach to history. Like most non-fiction filmmakers, Burns wears many hats on his projects, often serving as writer, cinematographer, editor and music director in addition to producing and directing. He achieved his apotheosis with The Civil War (1990), a phenomenally popular 11-hour documentary that won two Emmys and broke all previous ratings records for public TV. The series' companion coffee table book--priced at a hefty $50--sold more than 700,000 copies. The audio version, narrated by Burns, was also a major best-seller. In the final accounting, "The Civil War" became the first documentary to gross over $100 million. Not surprisingly, it has become perennial fund-raising programming for public TV stations around the country. Burns arrived upon the scene with the Oscar-nominated Brooklyn Bridge (1981), a nostalgic chronicle of the construction of the fabled edifice. The film was more widely seen when rebroadcast on PBS the following year. Though Burns has made other nonfiction films for theatrical release, notably an acclaimed and ambiguous portrait of Depression-era Louisiana governor Huey Long (1985), PBS would prove to be his true home. He cast a probing eye on such American subjects as The Statue of Liberty (1985), The Congress (1989) (PBS), painter Thomas Hart Benton (1989) (PBS) and early radio with Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1991) (PBS). Burns returned to long-form documentary with his most ambitious project to date, an 18-hour history of Baseball (1994), which aired on PBS in the fall of 1994. He approached the national pastime as a template for understanding changes in modern American society. Ironically, this was the only baseball on the air at the time, as the players and owners were embroiled in a bitter strike.Best documentarian in the history of television forever!- Art Department
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Michael Okuda is known for Star Trek: Generations (1994), Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). He is married to Denise Okuda.Best scenic designer in the history of television forever!- Art Department
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Visual Effects
Denise Okuda is known for Star Trek: Generations (1994), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) and For All Mankind (2019). She is married to Michael Okuda.Best scenic designer in the history of television forever!- Writer
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Brandon Tartikoff was a graduate of Yale University, and started his career out at WLS-TV in Chicago. He switched jobs to ABC in New York in the mid-1970s, and moved to NBC in 1977 where he became a programming executive hired by Dick Ebersol. Tartikoff took over programming duties from Fred Silverman in 1980. In 1982, Tartikoff had a second recurrence of Hodgkin's disease, which he was first diagnosed with and beat in the 1970s. Tartikoff was responsible for many programming hits during his years at the helm of NBC. In 1985, he finally got NBC back up to number one. He left NBC in 1991, and moved over to Paramount Pictures and became its chairman. Tartikoff left Paramount eighteen months later to help care for his daughter, injured in a 1991 car accident. He formed his own production company in 1995, and died of a third recurrance of Hodgkin's disease in 1997.Best executive in the history of television forever!- Producer
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Pioneering radio and TV reporter who was the dominant figure in American broadcast journalism during its early years. His dramatic, in-person coverage of the Anschluss (German union with Austria), the 1939 German-Soviet invasion of Poland, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, brought him widespread renown among the public and eternal esteem among his fellow journalists.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Producer
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The beloved Impresario of TV variety from 1948 to 1971, Ed Sullivan originally made his name as a newspaper sportswriter, radio broadcaster and theater columnist for the New York Daily News. His column focused primarily on Broadway shows and juicy items about its stars. On the new medium of TV, however, he became a pioneer master of ceremonies and entertainment showman.
Edward Vincent Sullivan and his twin brother, Daniel (who died at age 2), were born to a modest Irish-Catholic family on September 28, 1901, in Harlem. A major athlete at Port Chester High School, he lettered in track, football, basketball and baseball. His first professional experience was his local The Port Chester Daily Item, a local newspaper for which he had written sports news while in high school. He joined the paper full-time after graduation. He would land subsequent jobs as a sports reporter, and then various news-related jobs with such papers as The Associated Press, The Philadelphia Bulletin and The New York Bulletin. A sport writer and (later) editor for The Evening Graphic in 1927, Sullivan took over the Broadway column for The News after Walter Winchell left. That position would last 42 years.
Hired in 1932 by the CBS network as a rival of radio commentator Walter Winchell, future radio stars introduced on Sullivan's program included Jack Benny. Sullivan made his film debut as himself in Mr. Broadway (1933), which he also wrote. His subsequent screenplay and story involvements included the screwy comedy There Goes My Heart (1938) and the Universal musical Ma! He's Making Eyes at Me (1940).
So successful was he as Masters of Ceremony at the Harvest Moon Ball at Madison Square Garden, CBS hired him to do The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) ("Toast of the Town") just as TV sets were becoming a home staple. The show, which balanced amazing novelty acts with singing and comedy talents, both legendary and up-and-coming, was broadcast from CBS Studio 50 on Broadway in New York City. In 1967 the studio was aptly renamed the Ed Sullivan Theater. Although Sullivan himself had zilch stage or camera presence and had a frustrating habit of forgetting performers' names as he was about to present them, audiences were completely taken by his charming idiosyncrasies and mellow, guy-next-door approach. He and the show became a resounding success for a staggering 23 years.
Sullivan had a knack for identifying talent and his Sunday night variety platform became a springboard for a number of top stars and groups, including comics Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis and singers Elvis Presley and The Beatles. He also was color blind when it came to talent, generously promoting a number of black crossover acts, such as The Supremes and other Motown artists, when few other TV shows would. Sullivan appeared as himself in such films as Bye Bye Birdie (1963), The Patsy (1964) and The Singing Nun (1966), among others. The irrepressibly stiff, hunch-shouldered emcee was unmercifully parodied by a parade of impressionists over the decades, including Will Jordan, John Byner and David Frye.
Following his cancellation in 1971, Sullivan was seen infrequently hosting variety specials. He died in his beloved New York of esophageal cancer in 1974, three years after the cancellation of his series. The father of one daughter, Betty, Sullivan's wife Sylvia (Weinstein) Sullivan, whom he married in 1930, died the year before.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Vladimir K. Zworykin was born on 17 July 1888 in Russia. He was married to Katherine Polevitsky and Tatiana Vasilieff. He died on 29 July 1982 in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.Best inventor in the history of television forever!
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The gift of provoking laughter came early to Larry Gelbart and has never deserted him. His distinguished career as a writer of comedy reads like a history of the art over the last 40 years. His writing credits date back to the Golden Age of radio, thanks in part to his father. The elder Gelbart was a barber in Beverly Hills who made it a point to tell his clients, such as Danny Thomas, what a funny 15-year-old son he had. As a result of his father's being his unofficial agent, Larry became a professional comedy writer before finishing high school. Shortly after being signed by the William Morris Agency, he joined the writing staff of "Duffy's Tavern," working for the man generally considered to be the hardest taskmaster in radio, Ed Gardner. "Seventy writers went through the mill while I was there," recalls Gelbart. "I was lucky because I was young and everybody wanted me to make good. They were all my godfathers." Gelbart left "Duffy's Tavern," to write for the "Joan Davis Show." While doing that he was called into the Army. He served with Armed Forces Radio Service for one year and 11 days, but it was a most productive period. He wrote for the Army's "Command Performance," while continuing to write for Joan Davis and Jack Paar, who was then a summer replacement for Jack Benny. He then went on to write for Jack Carson and Bob Hope, both on radio and television, and he also contributed to the Red Buttons TV show. In 1953 he joined the staff of TV's Your Show of Shows (1950), writing skits for Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca in company with such fellow master wits as Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Neil Simon. For that series Gelbart won the Sylvania Award and two Emmy Awards. In the 1960s he began writing for the theater. He wrote "My L.A." and "The Conquering Hero," and with Burt Shevelove tried his hand at rewriting Plautus. The result was "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," a smash Broadway musical comedy starring Zero Mostel that earned Gelbart and Shevelove a 1962 Tony Award. When "Forum" moved to London, Gelbart and his family went with it. During his nine-year stay there, he wrote the comedy film The Wrong Box (1966), a play called "Jump," and several television scripts. Gelbart came back to Los Angeles to write the television series M*A*S*H (1972) He was responsible for 97 segments of that show, one of television's most literate and entertaining efforts. Four years later he again dipped into the classics and transformed Ben Johnson's "Volpone" into a Broadway success, "Sly Fox," directed by Arthur Penn and starring George C. Scott. Gelbart's screen credits include The Notorious Landlady (1962), Not with My Wife, You Don't! (1966), Oh, God! (1977), Neighbors (1981), Movie Movie (1978) (directed by Stanley Donen) and Tootsie (1982), which earned him an Academy Award nomination and best screenplay honors from the New York, Los Angeles and National Film Critics organization.Best writer in the history of television forever!- Producer
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David Sarnoff was one of the giants of 20th Century mass media as the head of Radio Corp. of America (RCA) and the National Broadcasting System (MBC). Sarnoff, who was of Jewish descent, was born on February 27, 1891 in Belarus in the old Russian Empire and emigrated with his family to the United States in 1900.
Sarnoff quit his job as an office boy with the Commercial Cable Co. when he was refused time off to observe Rosh Hashanah. In 1906, he was hired by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. of America and, in an "Only in America" Horatio Alger-like story, rose to become of the head of the firm through determination and hard work.
Sarnoff learned all he could about "wireless" (radio broadcasting) technology, serving at Marconi stations (radio stations) both on land and at sea. One of his posts was at the Wanamaker Department Store in New York City, where he and other Marconi operators followed radio traffic to determine the fate of the Titanic. He would later circulate the story that he was the first operator to actually receive a Titanic S.O.S. signal via wireless.
The industrious Sarnoff rose steadily in the company, eventually becoming chief inspector and contracts manager. He pioneered the use of radio on a railroad, music broadcasting (from Marconi's station at the Wanamaker Store), and long-distance wireless telephony. Wireless telephony convinced him of the viability of mass commercial radio broadcasting (transmission from a radio station to many receivers rather than the station-to-station "point-to-point" broadcasting that was the norm). He urged the company to develop a "Radio Music Box", a proposal that was put on the back burner during World War One.
The purchase of American Marconi by General Electric prepared the groundwork for his rise to the top of the electronic communications industry. G.E. rechristened the company the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) to serve as a holding company for its radio patents monopoly, To promote his idea of the Radio Music Box for the mass public, Sarnoff helped arrange the broadcast of the 1921 heavyweight title fight between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier. Reaching an audience of over a quarter of a million listeners, it helped proved the viability of "broadcasting", the transmission of a signal to multiple receivers. There was an audience out there, and Sarnoff was determined that RCA cash in, both from the production of radio sets and the creating content to be broadcast to those sets.
The radio medium started to explode as more "amateur" radio operators bought sets. As radio become more popular, Sarnoff's rise at RCA was assured since the commercialization of radio was now viable. RCA bought its first radio station in 1926, WEAF-New York, and established the National Broadcasting Co. (NBC), America's first radio network. It also bought the Victor Talking Machine Co., a major manufacturer of sound recordings, and renamed it RCA Victor.
Sarnoff became RCA's president in 1930. The success of NBC meant that it eventually was divided into two networks, Red and Blue, becoming the dominant force in commercial radio broadcasting. (The Blue Network eventually becoming the American Broadcasting Co. when it was spun-off under threat of anti-trust action during World War II.) As head of RCA and NBC, Sarnoff established himself as the major figure in the development of radio broadcasting in America and in television.
Under Sarnoff's leadership, RCA and NBC became leaders in the development of electronic television and color television, with RCA's equipment and standards dictating national standards. He also had a presence in the movies, with RCA providing the "R" in R.K.O. Pictures (Radio-Keith-Orpheum), which initially used RCA's patents for a sound system for motion pictures.
David Sarnoff retired as CEO of RCA in 1970 and died on December 12, 1971, at the age of 80. His mausoleum in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York is outfitted with a stained-glass window depicting a vacuum tube, an essential component in the development of radio and television broadcasting.Best pioneer in the history of television forever!- Producer
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David L. Wolper was born on 11 January 1928 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and director, known for L.A. Confidential (1997), Murder in the First (1995) and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971). He was married to Gloria Hill, Dawn Richard and Toni Carroll. He died on 10 August 2010 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Producer
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Sheldon Leonard was born in New York City's lower Manhattan, the son of Jewish parents. He studied acting at Syracuse University and, after graduating, landed a job on Wall Street. Following the Wall Street crash of 1929, he found himself unemployed and resolved to become a professional actor on the stage. The road was hard, since it took him five years to first appear on Broadway in "Hotel Alimony" (1934). While this production was universally slammed by the critics, the next plays he appeared in, "Having Wonderful Time" (1937) and "Kiss the Boys Goodbye" (1938), were unqualified successes, the former running for 372 performances.
Movie offers followed, and from 1939 he became one of Hollywood's most recognizable screen tough guys, the names of his characters evocative of the roles he played: Pretty Willie in Tall, Dark and Handsome (1941), Slip Moran in Lucky Jordan (1942), Lippy Harris in Jinx Money (1948), Jumbo Schneider in Money from Home (1953) and, famously, Harry the Horse in Guys and Dolls (1955). There was also an assortment of minor henchmen and western heavies named Blackie or Lefty, and he was Nick, the sneering, humorless barkeeper who tosses James Stewart into the snow in It's a Wonderful Life (1946).
Having had his fill of acting in those kinds of parts, Leonard began a new career as a television producer in the 1950s and went on to become one of the most successful TV producer/directors of the 1950s and 1960s. Four of his productions (all on CBS)--The Danny Thomas Show (1953), Gomer Pyle: USMC (1964), The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961) (which won 21 Emmy Awards) and The Andy Griffith Show (1960)--were rated in the Top Ten. He had a further success with I Spy (1965), championing the cause of racial equality over the (initial) objections of the network by being the first series to have an African-American (Bill Cosby) in an equal co-starring dramatic role with a white actor. Leonard is also regarded as having invented the television spin-off.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Director
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Sidney Lumet was a master of cinema, best known for his technical knowledge and his skill at getting first-rate performances from his actors -- and for shooting most of his films in his beloved New York. He made over 40 movies, often complex and emotional, but seldom overly sentimental. Although his politics were somewhat left-leaning and he often treated socially relevant themes in his films, Lumet didn't want to make political movies in the first place. Born on June 25, 1924, in Philadelphia, the son of actor Baruch Lumet and dancer Eugenia Wermus Lumet, he made his stage debut at age four at the Yiddish Art Theater in New York. He played many roles on Broadway in the 1930s and also in the film ...One Third of a Nation... (1939). After starting an off-Broadway acting troupe in the late 1940s, he became the director of many television shows in the 1950s. Lumet made his feature film directing debut with 12 Angry Men (1957), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and earned three Academy Award nominations. The courtroom drama, which takes place almost entirely in a jury room, is justly regarded as one of the most auspicious directorial debuts in film history. Lumet got the chance to direct Marlon Brando in The Fugitive Kind (1960), an imperfect, but powerful adaptation of Tennessee Williams' "Orpheus Descending". The first half of the 1960s was one of Lumet's most artistically successful periods. Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), a masterful, brilliantly photographed adaptation of the Eugene O'Neill play, is one of several Lumet films about families. It earned Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Dean Stockwell and Jason Robards deserved acting awards in Cannes and Hepburn an Oscar nomination. The alarming Cold War thriller Fail Safe (1964) unfairly suffered from comparison to Stanley Kubrick's equally great satire Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), which was released shortly before. The Pawnbroker (1964), arguably the most outstanding of the great movies Lumet made in this phase, tells the story of a Holocaust survivor who lives in New York and can't overcome his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. Rod Steiger's unforgettable performance in the title role earned an Academy Award nomination. Lumet's intense character study The Hill (1965) about inhumanity in a military prison camp was the first of five films he did with Sean Connery. After the overly talky but rewarding drama The Group (1966) about young upper-class women in the 1930s, and the stylish spy thriller The Deadly Affair (1967), the late 1960s turned out to be a lesser phase in Lumet's career. He had a strong comeback with the box-office hit The Anderson Tapes (1971). The Offence (1973) was commercially less successful, but artistically brilliant - with Connery in one of his most impressive performances. The terrific cop thriller Serpico (1973), the first of his films about police corruption in New York City, became one of his biggest critical and financial successes. Al Pacino's fascinating portrayal of the real-life cop Frank Serpico earned a Golden Globe and the movie earned two Academy Award nominations (it is worth noting that Lumet's feature films of the 1970s alone earned 30 Oscar nominations, winning six times). The love triangle Lovin' Molly (1974) was not always convincing in its atmospheric details, but Lumet's fine sense of emotional truth and a good Blythe Danner keep it interesting. The adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1974), an exquisitely photographed murder mystery with an all-star cast, was a big success again. Lumet's complex crime thriller Dog Day Afternoon (1975), which Pauline Kael called "one of the best "New York" movies ever made", gave Al Pacino the opportunity for a breathtaking, three-dimensional portrayal of a bisexual man who tries to rob a bank to finance his lover's sex-change operation. Lumet's next masterpiece, Network (1976), was a prophetic satire on media and society. The film version of Peter Shaffer's stage play Equus (1977) about a doctor and his mentally confused patient was also powerful, not least because of the energetic acting by Richard Burton and Peter Firth. After the enjoyable musical The Wiz (1978) and the interesting but not easily accessible comedy Just Tell Me What You Want (1980), Sidney Lumet won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for his outstanding direction of Prince of the City (1981), one of his best and most typical films. It's about police corruption, but hardly a remake of Serpico (1973). Starring a powerful Treat Williams, it's an extraordinarily multi-layered film. In his highly informative book "Making Movies" (1995), Lumet describes the film in the following way: "When we try to control everything, everything winds up controlling us. Nothing is what it seems." It's also a movie about values, friendship and drug addiction and, like "Serpico", is based on a true story. In Deathtrap (1982), Lumet successfully blended suspense and black humor. The Verdict (1982) was voted the fourth greatest courtroom drama of all time by the American Film Institute in 2008. A few minor inaccuracies in legal details do not mar this study of an alcoholic lawyer (superbly embodied by Paul Newman) aiming to regain his self-respect through a malpractice case. The expertly directed movie received five Academy Award nominations. Lumet's controversial drama Daniel (1983) with Timothy Hutton, an adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's "The Book of Daniel" about two young people whose parents were executed during the McCarthy Red Scare hysteria in the 1950s for alleged espionage, is one of his underrated achievements. His later masterpiece Running on Empty (1988) has a similar theme, portraying a family which has been on the run from the FBI since the parents (played by Christine Lahti and Judd Hirsch) committed a bomb attack on a napalm laboratory in 1971 to protest the war in Vietnam. The son (played by River Phoenix in an extraordinarily moving, Oscar-nominated performance) falls in love with a girl and wishes to stay with her and study music. Naomi Foner's screenplay won the Golden Globe. Other Lumet movies of the 1980s are the melancholic comedy drama Garbo Talks (1984); the occasionally clichéd Power (1986) about election campaigns; the all too slow thriller The Morning After (1986) and the amusing gangster comedy Family Business (1989). With Q&A (1990) Lumet returned to the genre of the New York cop thriller. Nick Nolte shines in the role of a corrupt and racist detective in this multi-layered, strangely underrated film. Sadly, with the exception of Night Falls on Manhattan (1996), an imperfect but fascinating crime drama in the tradition of his own previous genre works, almost none of Lumet's works of the 1990s did quite get the attention they deserved. The crime drama A Stranger Among Us (1992) blended genres in a way that did not seem to match most viewers' expectations, but its contemplations about life arouse interest. The intelligent hospital satire Critical Care (1997) was unfairly neglected as well. The courtroom thriller Guilty as Sin (1993) was cold but intriguing. Lumet's Gloria (1999) remake seemed unnecessary, but he returned impressively with the underestimated courtroom comedy Find Me Guilty (2006) and the justly acclaimed crime thriller Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007). In 2005, Sidney Lumet received a well-deserved honorary Academy Award for his outstanding contribution to filmmaking. Sidney Lumet tragically died of cancer in 2011.Best director in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
Dick Wolf was born on 20 December 1946 in New York City, New York, USA. He is a producer and writer, known for Law & Order (1990), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) and Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001). He has been married to Noelle Lippman since 17 June 2006. They have two children. He was previously married to Christine Marburg and Susan Scranton.Best producer/writer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Music Department
- Composer
Renowned composer ("West Side Story", "Candide", "On The Town"), conductor, arranger, pianist, educator, author, TV/radio host, educated at the Boston Latin School and Harvard University (BA) with Walter Piston. Edward Burlingame Hill and A. Tillman Merritt. He studied piano with Helen Coates, Heinrich Gebhard and Isabelle Vengerova, at the Curtis Institute with Fritz Reiner, and at the Berkshire Music Center with Serge Koussevitzky (and became an assistant to Koussevitzky). He was assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1943-1944, and conductor of the New York Symphony, 1945-1948.
He was music advisor to the Israel Philharmonic from 1948-1949, and a member of the faculty at the Berkshire Music Center from 1948 (though he did take leaves of absence), and head of the conducting department there in 1951. He was Professor of Music at Brandeis University, 1951-1956; and co-conductor of the New York Philharmonic, 1957-1958, and music director there after 1958. He won an Emmy award for his televised Young People's Concerts. He was guest conductor of symphony orchestras in the USA and Europe, and conducted the Israel Philharmonic seven times between 1947 and 1957. He toured the US with Koussevitzky in 1951, and was the first American to conduct at the La Scala Opera House in Milan, in 1953. He was awarded the Sonning Prize in Denmark, and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
He joined ASCAP in 1944, and his chief musical collaborators included Betty Comden, Adolph Green, John Latouche, and Stephen Sondheim. His song compositions include "New York, New York", "Lonely Town", "Some Other Time", "I Can Cook, Too", "I Get Carried Away", "Lucky to Be Me", "Ohio", "A Quiet Girl", "It's Love", "A Little Bit in Love", "Wrong Note Rag", "Glitter and Be Gay", "El Dorado", "The Best of All Possible Worlds", "Maria", "Tonight", "Something's Coming", "I Feel Pretty", "Cool", "America", and "Gee, Officer Krupke".Best music composer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Animation Department
Growing up in Portland, Oregon, Matt Groening did not particularly like school, which is what originally turned him towards drawing. In the mid-1980s, he moved to Los Angeles and started drawing a comic strip named "Life in Hell", which eventually became published in the newspaper where he worked. In 1988, James L. Brooks, looking for a filler in the television show, The Tracey Ullman Show (1987), turned towards a framed "Life in Hell" strip on his wall and contacted Groening. The animated shorts that Groening created were The Simpsons (1989).Best producer/writer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Aaron Sorkin grew up in Scarsdale, a suburb of New York City where he was very involved in his high school drama and theater club. After graduating from Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater, Sorkin intended to pursue a career in acting. It took him only a short time to realize that his true love, and his true talent, lay in writing. His first play, "Removing All Doubt", was not an immediate success, but his second play, "Hidden in This Picture", debuted in 1988 at the West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theater Bar. A longer version of "Hidden in This Picture", called "Making Movies", opened at the Promenade Theater in 1990. Despite his youth and relative inexperience, Sorkin was about to break into the spotlight. In 1989, he received the prestigious Outer Critics Circle award as Outstanding American Playwright for the stage version of A Few Good Men (1992), which was later nominated for a Golden Globe. The idea for the plot of "A Few Good Men" came from a conversation with his older sister, Deborah. Deborah was a Navy Judge Advocate General lawyer sent to Guantanamo Bay on a case involving Marines accused of killing a fellow Marine. Deborah told Aaron of the case and he spent the next year and a half writing a Broadway play, which later led to the movie. Sorkin has gone on to write for many movies and TV shows. Besides A Few Good Men (1992), he has written The American President (1995) and Malice (1993), as well as cooperating on Enemy of the State (1998), The Rock (1996) and Excess Baggage (1997). In addition, he was invited by Steven Spielberg to "polish" the script of Schindler's List (1993). Sorkin's TV credits include the Golden Globe-nominated The West Wing (1999) and Sports Night (1998).Best producer/writer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
David Kelley might be described as living the American Dream, 1990s' style: write a screenplay, move to Hollywood, make millions and marry a movie star. A former Boston lawyer, in the last decade, he switched careers to become a successful television producer whose shows are recognized for their quality as well as receiving top ratings. David Kelley was born in 1956 and is originally from Maine. He attended Princeton University and Boston University Law School. He married actress Michelle Pfeiffer in November 1993. They have two children: Claudia Rose Kelley, born in March 1993, who was adopted by Ms. Pfeiffer eight months before their marriage, and John Henry, born in August 1994. Claudia Rose Kelley was christened and given Mr. Kelley's name at the couple's wedding ceremony. Mr. Kelley was an associate at Fine & Ambrogne in 1983 when he wrote a film script based on some of his legal experiences. Through a family friend, he got the script optioned and acquired an agent in 1986. It was produced in 1987, as a film titled From the Hip (1987), starring Judd Nelson, Elizabeth Perkins, and John Hurt. At the same time, producers Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher (creators of the successful police drama Hill Street Blues (1981)) were planning a new series set in a law firm, and looking for writers with legal backgrounds. They saw Mr. Kelley's script and invited him to Los Angeles to discuss writing a single script for L.A. Law (1986). The meeting was so successful that Mr. Kelley joined the show's staff as a story editor. The next year, he became executive story editor, and after Terry Fisher left the show, he became the supervising producer. Steven Bochco left L.A. Law (1986) after the third season, and Mr. Kelley took over as executive producer, while continuing to write many of the scripts himself. Mr. Kelley has since produced more critically acclaimed and successful shows. He served as creative consultant on Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989), which was produced by Steven Bochco, and as executive producer and writer for Picket Fences (1992). He is the executive producer of Chicago Hope (1994). He is part of the television production division of Twentieth Century Fox, which has been owned by Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate, The News Corporation Ltd., since 1985.- William Paley was born on 27 September 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was married to Babe Paley and Dorothy Jones Hart . He died on 26 October 1990 in New York City, New York, USA.Best executive in the history of television forever!
- Actress
- Director
- Producer
Betty Thomas was born July 27, 1947 in St. Louis, Missouri, graduating from Ohio University with a BA in fine arts. Initially sidetracked, Betty first taught school in Chicago but found herself restricted and needing more of an open forum for self-expression than a classroom. She found herself drawn inextricably to comedy. After toiling as a waitress, she became part of the Second City improvisational troupe where she made use of her towering (6' 1") imposing features in aggressive routines and sketches. True to form, she made her film debut in the sketch satire Tunnel Vision (1976) which parodied TV programming. The movie is lesser known today for its satirical bite and more for its exceptional cast of up-and-coming comedy artists at the time including Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman, John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Gerrit Graham, Howard Hesseman, and the team of Al Franken and Tom Davis. Other innocuous comedies/spoofs followed such as Chesty Anderson U.S. Navy (1976), Used Cars (1980), and Coming Attractions (1978) which, at the very least, helped to bulk up her comedy resume. She also appeared as a regular on The Fun Factory (1976), which was three parts quiz show, silly sketches, and audience participation.
Ironically, Betty achieved her stardom not in comedy but in hard-hitting drama. Doing a complete about face as tough-talking Officer Lucille Bates on the hit police series Hill Street Blues (1981), she displayed both grit and vulnerability as she stood nose-to-nose alongside the rest of the male-oriented precinct. She was nominated for six Emmys in all and won the "Best Supporting Actress" trophy in 1985. Some equally compelling mini-movie roles came along with this success. In the late 1980s, Betty made an abrupt and concentrated move into TV and film directing, one of her last acting roles being that of the butch, underhanded scoutmaster (and Shelley Long's misery-inducing nemesis) in the obvious comedy film Troop Beverly Hills (1989).
Betty received her bookend Emmy award while directing the cable sitcom Dream On (1990). She never lost her taste for comedy satire, however. One of her major box office successes would come with the spot-on parody The Brady Bunch Movie (1995). She has continued in this lighter vein of late, guiding the one-man promotion machine Howard Stern to a surprisingly entertaining critical hit with Private Parts (1997), which was based on his memoirs, the Jennifer Love Hewitt film Can't Hardly Wait (1998), I Spy (2002), an updated remake of the 1960s TV series, and Surviving Christmas (2004). In recent years she has directed TV movies and episodes of such series as "Audrey" and "Grace and Frankie."Best director in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
Lawrence Gene David is an American comedian, writer, actor, director, and television producer. He and Jerry Seinfeld created the television sitcom Seinfeld, on which David was head writer and executive producer for the first seven seasons. He gained further recognition for the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm, which he created and stars in as a semi-fictionalized version of himself. He has written or co-written the stories of every episode since its pilot episode in 1999.
David's work on Seinfeld won him two Primetime Emmy Awards in 1993, for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Comedy Series. Formerly a comedian, he went into television comedy, writing and starring in ABC's Fridays, and writing briefly for Saturday Night Live. He has been nominated for 27 Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. He was voted by fellow comedians and comedy insiders as the 23rd greatest comedy star ever in a 2004 British poll to select "The Comedian's Comedian", and received the Laurel Award for TV Writing Achievement by the Writers Guild of America in 2010.
Since 2015, he has made recurring guest appearances on Saturday Night Live, where he impersonates 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.Best producer/writer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Paul Dini is an American animator and writer known for his contributions to DC Comics, including Batman: The Animated Series, Gotham Girls and fan favorite character Harley Quinn. He also worked on Batman: Arkham Asylum and it's sequel Batman: Arkham City as well as a 2003 animated pilot based on Zatanna starring Tara Strong. He is seen as the curator of the DC Animated Universe alongside Bruce Timm.Best animator in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Mark Goodson was born on 14 January 1915 in Sacramento, California, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for Family Feud (1976), Tattletales (1974) and Password (1973). He was married to Suzanne Russell Waddell, Virginia McDavid and Bluma Neveleff. He died on 18 December 1992 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Barbara Hall was born on 17 July 1961 in Chatham, Virginia, USA. She is a writer and producer, known for I'll Fly Away (1991), Joan of Arcadia (2003) and Homeland (2011).Best producer in the history of television forever!- Actress
- Producer
- Executive
Angela Lansbury was born in 1925 into a prominent family of the upper middle class living in the Regent's Park neighborhood of London. Her father was socialist politician Edgar Isaac Lansbury (1887-1935), a member of both the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and the Labour Party. Edgar served as Honorary Treasurer of the East London Federation of Suffragettes (term 1915), and Mayor of Poplar (term 1924-1925). He was the second Communist mayor in British history, the first being Joe Vaughan (1878-1938). Lansbury's mother was Irish film actress Moyna Macgill (1895-1975), originally from Belfast. During the first five years of Angela's life, the Lansbury family lived in a flat located in Poplar. In 1930, they moved to a house located in the Mill Hill neighborhood of north London. They spend their weekends vacationing in a farm located in Berrick Salome, a village in South Oxfordshire.
In 1935, Edgar Lansbury died from stomach cancer. Angela reportedly retreated into "playing characters", as a coping mechanism to deal with the loss. The widowed Moyna Macgill soon became engaged to Leckie Forbes, a Scottish colonel. Moyna moved into his house in Hampstead.
From 1934 to 1939, Angela was a student at South Hampstead High School. During these years, she became interested in films.. She regularly visited the local cinema, and imagined herself in various roles. Angela learned how to play the piano, and received a musical education at the Ritman School of Dancing.
In 1940, Lansbury started her acting education at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art, located in Kensington, West London. She made her theatrical debut in the school's production of the play "Mary of Scotland" (1933) by Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959). The play depicted the life of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587, reigned 1542-1567), and Lansbury played one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting.
Also in 1940, Lansbury's paternal grandfather, George Lansbury, died from stomach cancer. When the Blitz started, Moyna Macgill had reasons to fear for the safety of her family and few remaining ties to England. Macgill moved to the United States to escape the Blitz, taking her three youngest children with her. Isolde was already a married adult, and was left behind in England.
Macgill secured financial sponsorship from American businessman Charles T. Smith. She and her children (including Angela) moved into Smith's house in Mahopac, New York, a hamlet in Putnam County. Lansbury was interested in continuing her studies, and secured a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing. From 1940 to 1942, Lansbury studied acting at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art, located in New York City. She appeared in performances organized by the school.
In 1942, Lansbury moved with her family to a flat located in Morton Street, Greenwich Village. She soon followed her mother in her theatrical tour of Canada. Lansbury secured her first paying job in Montreal, singing at the nightclub Samovar Club for a payment of 60 dollars per week. Lansbury was 16 years old at the time, but lied about her age and claimed to be 19 in order to be hired.
Lansbury returned to New York City in August, 1942, but Moyna Macgill soon moved herself and her family again. The family moved to Los Angeles, where Moyna was interested in resurrecting her film career. Their first home there was a bungalow in Laurel Canyon, a neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills.
Lansbury helped financially support her family by working for the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles. Her weekly wages were only 28 dollars, but she had a secure income while her mother was unemployed. Through her mother, Lansbury was introduced to screenwriter John Van Druten (1901-1957), who had recently completed his script of "Gaslight" (1944). He suggested that young Lansbury would be perfect for the role of Nancy Oliver, the film's conniving cockney maid. This helped secure Lansbury's first film role at the age of 17, and a seven-year contract with the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She earned 500 dollars per week, and chose to continue using her own name instead of a stage name.
In 1945, Lansbury married actor Richard Cromwell (1910-1960), who was 15 years older than she. The troubled marriage ended in a divorce in 1946. The former spouses remained friends until Cromwell's death.
In 1946, Lansbury started a romantic relationship with aspiring actor Peter Shaw (1918-2003), who was 7 years older than her. Shaw had recently ended his relationship with actress Joan Crawford (c. 1908-1977). The new couple started living together, while planning marriage. They wanted to be married in the United Kingdom, but the Church of England refused to marry two divorcees. They were married in 1949, in a Church of Scotland ceremony at St. Columba's Church, located in Knightsbridge, London. After their return to the United States, they settled into Lansbury's home in Rustic Canyon, Malibu. In 1951, both Lansbury and Shaw became naturalized citizens of the United States, while retaining their British citizenship.
Meanwhile, Lansbury continued appearing in MGM films. She appeared in 11 MGM films between 1945 and 1952. MGM at times loaned Lansbury to other film studios. She appeared in United Artists' "The Private Affairs of Bel Ami" (1947), and Paramount Pictures' "Samson and Delilah" (1949). In 1948, Lansbury made her debut in radio roles, followed by her television debut in 1950.
In 1952, Lansbury requested the termination of her contract with MGM, instead of its renewal. She felt unsatisfied with her film career as an MGM contract player. She then joined the East Coast touring productions of two former Broadway plays. By 1953, Lansbury had two children of her own and was also raising a stepson. She and her family moved into a larger house, located on San Vincente Boulevard in Santa Monica. In 1959, she and her family moved into a house in Malibu. The married couple were able to send their children to a local public school.
Meanwhile she continued her film career as a freelance actress, but continued to be cast in middle-aged roles. She regained her A-picture actress through well-received roles in the drama film "The Long, Hot Summer" (1958) and the comedy film "The Reluctant Debutante" (1958). She also appeared regularly in television roles, and became a regular on game show "Pantomime Quiz" (1947-1959).
In 1957, Lansbury made her Broadway debut in a performance of "Hotel Paradiso". The play was an adaptation of the 1894 "L'Hôtel du libre échange" ("Free Exchange Hotel"), written by Maurice Desvallières (1857-1926) and Georges Feydeau (1862-1921). Lansbury's role as "Marcel Cat" was critically well received. She continued appearing in Broadway over the next several years, most notably cast as the verbally abusive mother in "A Taste of Honey". She was cast as the mother of co-star Joan Plowright (1929-), who was only four years younger.
In the early 1960s, Lansbury was cast as an overbearing mother in "Blue Hawaii" (1961). The role of her son was played by Elvis Presley (1935-1977), who was only 10 years than her. The film was a box office hit, it finished as the 10th-top-grossing film of 1961 and 14th for 1962 on the "Variety" national box office survey. It gained Lansbury renewed fame, at a difficult point of her career.
Lansbury gained critical praise for a sympathetic role in the drama film "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1960), and the role of a manipulative mother in the drama film "All Fall Down" (1962). Based on her success in "All Fall Down", she was cast in a similar role in the Cold War-themed thriller "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962). She was cast as Eleanor Iselin, the mother of her co-star Laurence Harvey (1928-1973), who was only 3 years younger than she. This turned out to be one of the most memorable roles in her career. She received critical acclaim and was nominated for a third time for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The award was instead won by Patty Duke (1946-2016).
Lansbury made a comeback in the starring role of Mame Dennis in the musical "Mame" (1966), by Jerome Lawrence (1915-2004) and Robert Edwin Lee (1918-1994). The play was an adaptation of the novel "Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade" (1955) by Patrick Dennis (1921-1976), and focused on the life and ideas of eccentric bohemian Mame Dennis. The musical received critical and popular praise, and Lansbury won her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Lansbury gained significant fame from her success, becoming a "superstar".
Her newfound fame led to other high-profile appearances by Lansbury. She starred in a musical performance at the 1968 Academy Awards ceremony, and co-hosted the 1968 Tony Awards. The Hasty Pudding Club, a social club for Harvard students. elected her "Woman of the Year" in 1968.
Lansbury's next theatrical success was in 1969 "The Madwoman of Chaillot" (1945) by Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944). The play concerns an eccentric Parisian woman's struggles with authority figures. Lansbury was cast in the starring role of 75-year-old Countess Aurelia, despite her actual age of 44. The show was well received and lasted for 132 performances. Lansbury won her second Tony Award for this role.
In 1970, Lansbury's Malibu home was destroyed in a brush fire. Lansbury and her husband decided to buy Knockmourne Glebe, an 1820s Irish farmhouse, located near the village of Conna in rural County Cork.
Her film career reached a new height. She was cast in the starring role of benevolent witch Eglantine Price in Disney's fantasy film "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (1971). The film was a box-office hit; it was critically well received, and introduced Lansbury to a wider audience of children and families.
In 1972, Lansbury returned to the British stage, performing in London's West End with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1973, Lansbury appeared in the role of Rose in London performances of the musical "Gypsy" (1959) by Arthur Laurents. It was quite successful. In 1974, "Gypsy" went on tour in the United States. with the same cast. For her role, Lanbury won the Sarah Siddons Award and her third Tony Award. The musical had its second tour in 1975.
Tired from musicals. Lansbury next sought Shakespearean roles in the United Kingdom. From 1975 to 1976, she appeared as Queen Gertrude in the National Theatre Company's production of Hamlet. In November 1975, Lansbury's mother Moyna Macgill died at the age of 79. Lansbury arranged for her mother's remains to be cremated, and the ashes scattered near her own County Cork home.
In 1976, Lansbury returned to the American stage. In 1978, Lansbury temporarily replaced Constance Towers (1933-) in the starring role of Anna Leonowens (1831-1915) in The King and I. While Towers was on a break from the role, Lansbury appeared in 24 performances.
In 1978, Lansbury appeared in her first film role in seven years, as the novelist and murder victim Salome Otterbourne in the mystery film "Death on the Nile" (1978). The film was an adaptation of the 1937 novel by Agatha Christie (1890-1976); Otterbourne was loosely based on real-life novelist Elinor Glyn (1864-1943). The film was a modest box-office hit, and Lansbury befriended her co-star Bette Davis (1908-1989).
In 1979, Lansbury was cast in the role of meat pie seller Mrs. Lovett in the musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (1979), by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler (1912-1987). The musical was loosely based on the penny dreadful serial novel "The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance" (1846-1847), which first depicted fictional serial killer Sweeney Todd. Lansbury remained in the role for 14 months, and was then replaced by Dorothy Loudon (1925-2003). Lansbury won her fourth Tony Award for this role. She returned to the role for 10 months in 1980.
Lansbury's next prominent film role was that of Miss Froy in "The Lady Vanishes" (1979), a remake of the 1938 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). She was next cast in the role of amateur sleuth Miss Jane Marple in the mystery film "The Mirror Crack'd" (1980), an adaptation of the novel "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side" (1962) by Agatha Christie. The novel was loosely inspired by the life of Gene Tierney (1920-1991). The film was a modest commercial success. There were plans for at least two sequels, but they ended in development hell.
In 1982, Lansbury was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, She appeared at the time in the new play "A Little Family Business" and a revival of "Mame", but both shows were commercial failures. In film, Lansbury voiced the witch Mommy Fortuna in the animated fantasy film "The Last Unicorn" (1982). The film was critically well received, but was not a box-office hit.
Lansbury played Ruth in the musical comedy "The Pirates of Penzance" (1983), a film adaptation of the 1879 comic opera by William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900). The film was a box office bomb, earning about 695,000 dollars.
Lansbury's next film role was that of Granny in the gothic fantasy film "The Company of Wolves" (1984), based on a 1979 short story by Angela Carter (1940-1992). Lansbury was cast as the grandmother of protagonist Rosaleen (played by Sarah Patterson), in a tale featuring werewolves and shape-shifting. The film was critically well received, but barely broke even at the box office.
At about that time, Lansbury appeared regularly in television films and mini-series. Her most prominent television role was that of Jessica Fletcher in the detective series "Murder, She Wrote" (1984-1996). Jessica was depicted as a successful mystery novelist from Maine who encounters and solves many murders. The character was considered an American counterpart to Miss Marple. The series followed the "whodunit" format and mostly avoided depictions of violence or gore.
The series was considered a television landmark for having an older female character as the protagonist. It was aimed primarily at middle-aged audiences, but also attracted both younger viewers and senior citizen viewers. Ratings remained high for most of its run. Lansbury rejected pressure from network executives to put her character in a relationship, as she believed that Fletcher should remain a strong single female.
In 1989, Lansbury co-founded the production company Corymore Productions, which started co-producing the television series with Universal Television. This allowed Lansbury to have more creative input on the series. She was appointed an executive producer. By the time the series ended in 1996, it tied with the original "Hawaii Five-O" (1968-1980) as the longest-running detective drama series in television history.
Her popularity from "Murder, She Wrote" made Lansbury a much-sought figure for advertisers. She appeared in advertisements and infomercials for Bufferin, MasterCard and the Beatrix Potter Company.
Lansbury's highest-profile film role in decades was voicing the character of singing teapot Mrs. Potts in Disney's animated fantasy film "Beauty and the Beast" (1991). Lansbury performed the film's title song, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.
During the late 1980s and 1990s, Lansbury lived most of the year in California. In 1991, she had Corymore House, a farmhouse at Ballywilliam, County Cork, built as her new family home. She spend Christmases and summers there.
Following the end of "Murder, She Wrote", Lansbury returned to a career as a theatrical actress. She temporarily retired from the stage in 2001, to take care of her husband Peter Shaw, whose health was failing. Shaw died in 2003, from congestive heart failure at the couple's Brentwood, California home. Their marriage had lasted for 54 years (1949-2003).
Lansbury felt at the time that she could not take on any more major acting roles, but that she could still make cameos. She moved back to New York City in 2006, buying a condominium in Manhattan. Her first prominent film role in years was that of Aunt Adelaide in the fantasy film "Nanny McPhee" (2005). She credits her performance in the film with pulling her out of depression, a state of mind which had lasted since her husband's death.
Lansbury returned to performing on the Broadway stage in 2007, after an absence of 23 years. In 2009, she won her fifth Tony Award. She shared the record for most Tony Award victories with Julie Harris (1925-2013). In the 2010s, she continued regularly appearing in theatrical performances. In 2014, she returned to the London stage, after an absence of nearly 40 years.
In 2015, Lansbury received her first Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress. At age 89, she was among the oldest first-time winners. Also in 2015, November 2015 was awarded the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.
In 2017, she was cast as Aunt March in the mini-series "Little Women". The mini-series was an adaptation of the 1868-1869 novel of the same name by Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888). The series lasted for 3 episodes, and was critically well received.
In 2018, Lansbury gained her next film role in Disney's fantasy film "Mary Poppins Returns" (2018), a sequel to "Mary Poppins". Lansbury was cast in the role of the Balloon Lady, a kindly old woman who sells balloons at the park. The films was a commercial hit, earning about 350 million dollars at the worldwide box office.
In 2019, Lansbury performed at a one-night benefit staging of Oscar Wilde's play "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895). a farce satirizing Victorian morals. She was cast in the role of society lady Lady Bracknell, mother to Gwendolen Fairfax.
By 2020, Lansbury was 95 years old, one of the oldest-living actresses. She has never retired from acting, and remains a popular icon.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Jerry Weintraub was born on 26 September 1937 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and actor, known for The Avengers (1998), The Firm (1993) and The Next Karate Kid (1994). He was married to Jane Morgan and Janice Ivy Greenberg. He died on 6 July 2015 in Santa Barbara, California, USA.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky on June 28, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York. He served in WWII, and afterwards got a job playing the drums at nightclubs in the Catskills. Brooks eventually started a comedy act and also worked in radio and as Master Entertainer at Grossinger's Resort before going to television.
He was a writer for, Your Show of Shows (1950) Caesar's Hour (1954) and wrote the Broadway show Shinbone Alley. He also worked in the creation of The 2000 Year Old Man (1975) and Get Smart (1965) before embarking on a highly successful film career in writing, acting, producing and directing.
Brooks is famous for the spoofs of different film genres that he made such as Blazing Saddles (1974), History of the World: Part I (1981), Silent Movie (1976), Young Frankenstein (1974), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), High Anxiety (1977), Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995), and Spaceballs (1987).Best writer in the history of television!- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
As Danny Elfman was growing up in the Los Angeles area, he was largely unaware of his talent for composing. It wasn't until the early 1970s that Danny and his older brother Richard Elfman started a musical troupe while in Paris; the group "Mystic Knights of Oingo-Boingo" was created for Richard's directorial debut, Forbidden Zone (1980) (now considered a cult classic by Elfman fans). The group's name went through many incarnations over the years, beginning with "The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo" and eventually just Oingo Boingo. While continuing to compose eclectic, intelligent rock music for his L.A.-based band (some of which had been used in various film soundtracks, e.g. Weird Science (1985)), Danny formed a friendship with young director Tim Burton, who was then a fan of Oingo Boingo. Danny went on to score the soundtrack of Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), Danny's first orchestral film score. The Elfman-Burton partnership continued (most notably through the hugely-successful "Batman" flicks) and opened doors of opportunity for Danny, who has been referred to as "Hollywood's hottest film composer".Best music composer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Music Department
For the past twenty years, award-winning creator, executive producer and writer Chuck Lorre has conquered the entertainment industry with hit shows like Grace Under Fire (1993), Dharma & Greg (1997), Roseanne (1988) and Cybill (1995) as well as the number 1 comedy on television and four year People's Choice Award winner, Two and a Half Men (2003) and sophomore series The Big Bang Theory (2007). A native of Long Island, Lorre got his start as a guitarist/singer, touring the country and writing several hundred pop songs that, as he puts it, "helped keep him out of the big time" (Debbie Harry's top 40 hit "French Kissin' in the USA" being the lone exception). After more than a decade on the road, Lorre decided to turn his attention to television. He began writing animation scripts for DIC and Marvel Productions, as well as writing and producing the themes and scores for such animated series as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987).
A spec primetime script soon led to freelance work on the syndicated comedy Charles in Charge (1984) and eventually to a staff job on the NBC sitcom My Two Dads (1987), starring Paul Reiser. Lorre's big break came in 1991, when he became a supervising producer on the ABC/Carsey-Werner hit comedy Roseanne (1988). Over the next two seasons, during which he was upped to co-executive producer, Lorre helped bring the show to the height of its critical and popular acclaim, shattering one sacred cow after another in the process.
Since then, Lorre has dominated network television by single-handedly keeping the multi-camera sitcom alive in creating hit series that generate mass appeal. He continues to break television records with Two and a Half Men (2003) as it is the number one off-network sitcom in syndication for the 2007-2008 season among households, which consistently ranks number one on a weekly basis and is the fastest-growing A-tier sitcom in syndication history since the introduction of barter ratings in the 1988-89 season. During this season, the rebroadcast of the show has delivered more viewers than first-run episodes of nearly every other sitcom. He is also responsible for creating an online buzz when he established the unprecedented idea to illustrate his thoughts by airing messages for a split second on his vanity card at the end of his shows.
In January 2009, Lorre kicked off the New Year when he was honored with the NATPE Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award for exhibiting extraordinary passion, leadership, independence and vision in the process of creating television programming and in evoking the spirit of Brandon Tartikoff's generosity. In February, Lorre was presented with the 2009 Television Showman of the Year Award at the 46th Annual ICG Publicists Awards Ceremony, which recognizes individuals whose creative accomplishments reflect the finest qualities of what has traditionally been defined as showmanship. In March 2009, Lorre was awarded with his Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his life-long contribution of both public and peer appreciation that has forever added to the entertainment industry. Lorre will also be presented with the David Angell Humanitarian Award on behalf of the American Screenwriters Association for demonstrating his charitable efforts at the Venice Family Clinic. The David Angell Humanitarian Award is presented to an individual in the entertainment industry who contributes to global well being through their donation of time, expertise, or other support to improve the human condition. This award is an annual reminder of David Angell's legacy of kindness and selflessness, and a celebration of friends and colleagues in the entertainment industry who share those gifts.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Oprah Gail Winfrey , often known simply as Oprah, is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African-American of the 20th century, was once the world's only black billionaire, and the greatest black philanthropist in U.S. history. By 2007, she was sometimes ranked as the most influential woman in the worldBest producer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Zwick moves deftly between the roles of writer, director and producer. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his direction of the 1989 critically acclaimed Civil War drama, Glory. He received his second Golden Globe nomination as a director for Legends of the Fall. Zwick received an Academy Award as one of the producers of Shakespeare in Love, as well as a second nomination for Traffic. He wrote, directed and produced the feature film The Last Samurai. Zwick continues to work with his partner, Marshall Herskovitz, at their company Bedford Falls where they created Thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, Once and Again and Blood Diamond.Best producer/writer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Actress
- Production Manager
The woman who will always be remembered as the crazy, accident-prone, lovable Lucy Ricardo was born Lucille Desiree Ball on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York, the daughter of Desiree Evelyn "DeDe" (Hunt) and Henry Durrell "Had" Ball. Her father died before she was four, and her mother worked several jobs, so she and her younger brother were raised by their grandparents. Always willing to take responsibility for her brother and young cousins, she was a restless teenager who yearned to "make some noise". She entered a dramatic school in New York City, but while her classmate Bette Davis received all the raves, she was sent home; "too shy". She found some work modeling for Hattie Carnegie's and, in 1933, she was chosen to be a "Goldwyn Girl" and appear in the film Roman Scandals (1933).
She was put under contract to RKO Radio Pictures and several small roles, including one in Top Hat (1935), followed. Eventually, she received starring roles in B-pictures and, occasionally, a good role in an A-picture, like in Stage Door (1937) or The Big Street (1942). While filming Too Many Girls (1940), she met and fell madly in love with a young Cuban actor-musician named Desi Arnaz. Despite different personalities, lifestyles, religions and ages (he was six years younger), he fell hard, too, and after a passionate romance, they eloped and were married in November 1940. Lucy soon switched to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where she got better roles in films such as Du Barry Was a Lady (1943); Best Foot Forward (1943) and the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy vehicle Without Love (1945). In 1948, she took a starring role in the radio comedy "My Favorite Husband", in which she played the scatterbrained wife of a Midwestern banker. In 1950, CBS came knocking with the offer of turning it into a television series. After convincing the network brass to let Desi play her husband and to sign over the rights to and creative control over the series to them, work began on the most popular and universally beloved sitcom of all time.
With I Love Lucy (1951), she and Desi promoted the 3-camera technique now the standard in filming sitcoms using 35mm film (the earliest known example of the 3-camera technique is the first Russian feature film, "Defence of Sevastopol" in 1911). Desi syndicated I Love Lucy. Lucille Ball was the first woman to own her own studio as the head of Desilu Productions.
Lucille Ball died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, age 77, of an acute aortic aneurysm on April 26, 1989 in Los Angeles, CA.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Linda Bloodworth-Thomason was born on 15 April 1947 in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, USA. She is a writer and producer, known for Designing Women (1986), Bridegroom (2013) and Evening Shade (1990). She has been married to Harry Thomason since 23 July 1983.Best producer/writer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Executive
Marcy Carsey was born on 21 November 1944 in Weymouth, Massachusetts, USA. She is a producer and executive, known for The Cosby Show (1984), Roseanne (1988) and Let's Go to Prison (2006). She was previously married to John Jay Carsey.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Diane English was born on 18 May 1948 in Buffalo, New York, USA. She is a writer and producer, known for Murphy Brown (1988), The Women (2008) and Double Rush (1995). She was previously married to Joel Shukovsky.Best writer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Director
Mimi Leder was born on 26 January 1952 in New York City, New York, USA. She is a producer and director, known for The Morning Show (2019), On the Basis of Sex (2018) and Deep Impact (1998). She has been married to Gary Werntz since 26 January 1986. They have one child. She was previously married to Allen Garfield.Best director in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Actor
- Producer
Author, producer, and composer who earned a Bachelor of Science degree from CCNY, then a Purple Heart during World War II while serving in the US Army. Joining ASCAP in 1955, his chief musical collaborators included George Bassman and Harry Warren. His popular-song compositions include "Marty" and "Middle of the Night".Best writer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Editor
- Writer
Fred W. Friendly was born on 30 October 1915 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and editor, known for CBS Reports (1959), General Electric Theater (1953) and Montgomery Speaks His Mind (1959). He was married to Ruth Weiss Mark and Dorothy Greene. He died on 3 March 1998 in New York City, New York, USA.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Don Hewitt was born on 14 December 1922 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and director, known for 60 Minutes (1968), Who's Who (1977) and Douglas Edwards with the News (1948). He was married to Marilyn Berger, Frankie Hewitt and Mary Weaver. He died on 19 August 2009 in Bridgehampton, New York, USA.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
Mike Judge is an American actor, animator, film director, screenwriter, and television producer.
In 1962, Judge was born in Guayaquil, the largest city of Ecuador and the country's main port. His parents were expatriate Americans. His father was archaeologist William James Judge and his mother was librarian Margaret Yvonne Blue. At the time of Mike's birth, William Judge was working for a non-profit organization which promoted agricultural development in Ecuador.
Around 1969, the Judge family returned to the United States, and settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mike spend most of his school years in Albuquerque. He received his secondary education at St. Pius X High School, a private, Roman Catholic high school located in Albuquerque. The school was named after Pope Pius X (1835-1914, term 1903-1914), who is venerated as a saint,
Following his graduation from high school, Judge enrolled at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). The UCSD is a public land-grant research university, located in San Diego, California. Judge was interested in a science career, and followed science studies. In 1985, Judge graduated with a Bachelor of Science in physics. From 1985 to 1987, Judge held various jobs relating to either physics or mechanical engineering. He was dissatisfied with his work life, because he found that these jobs were boring.
In 1987, Judge was hired by Parallax Graphics, a startup video card company. Its headquarters were located in Santa Clara, California. Santa Clara is located at the center of Silicon Valley, and houses the headquarters of several high-tech companies. Parallax only had about 40 employees. Judge quit following only 3 months of work, because he disliked the company's corporate culture and his co-workers. In later interviews, Judge claimed that his co-workers reminded him of the Stepford Wives. His negative experiences contributed to his unflattering portrayal of Silicon Valley in his television career.
Judge next attempted to start a new career as a musician, serving as bass player in a blues band. For a couple of years, Judge was part of a music group headed by blues guitarist Anson Funderburgh (1954-). In the early 1990s, Judge worked alongside singer and drummer Doyle Bramhall (1949-2011). Bramhall was a well-known figure in the Texas music scene. During his musical career, Judge was taking graduate math classes at the University of Texas at Dallas.
In 1989, Judge was shown animation cels on display, and became fascinated with animation. Judge purchased a Bolex 16 mm film camera, and started working on his own animated short films. The amateur animator worked from his home at the time, located in Richardson, Texas. His short films were initially on display in local animation festivals.
In 1991, Judge developed "Milton", a series of short films satirizing the typical life of office workers. Judge voiced all the characters. The films were acquired by Comedy Central, and showcased Judge's talents to a wider audience. In 1992, Judge created the animated short "Frog Baseball", depicting two cruel and stupid teenagers. The short film was featured in the television series "Liquid Television" (1991-1995), which showcased works by independent animators. The network MTV was sufficiently impressed with the short film to order an animated television series featuring its main characters.
Judge's first work as a television producer was the animated series "Beavis and Butt-Head" (1993-1997), a satirical, scathing commentary on modern society. Besides producing the series, Judge voiced the two protagonists. He also wrote and directed most of its episodes. The series was considered quite controversial in its own era, but was commercially successful. In its initial incarnation, it lasted for 7 seasons, and 200 episodes. Judge gave permission for the use of supporting character Daria Morgendorffer in the spin-off series "Daria" (1997-2002), which was also successful. Judge was otherwise not involved in the production of the spin-off.
In 1997, Judge directed the animated feature film "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America". It featured the protagonists in a road trip across the United States. It earned about 63 million dollars in the North American box office, and was critically well-received as a satire of youth culture.
Judge's next television series was the animated sitcom "King of the Hill" (1997-2010), which was broadcast by the Fox Broadcasting Company. For this series, Judge's partner and co-creator was the experienced comedy writer Greg Daniels (1963-). Daniels was previously a screenwriter on the popular animated sitcom "The Simpsons". Daniels had written several episodes in seasons 5 to 7 (1993-1996), and some of them were considered among the highlights of the series. For "King of the Hill", the duo of creators decided to maintain a relatively realistic depiction of modern life. Much of the humor derived from depicting the frustrations and absurdities of an otherwise mundane existence. "King of the Hill" was both a critical and commercial hit, and commercial hit. It lasted for 13 seasons and 259 episodes.
In the late 1990s, Judge wrote and directed the live-action film "Office Space" (1999). It was loosely based in his own "Milton" series of animated short films,, but featured additional characters. The film under-performed at the box office, only earning about 12 million dollars from its worldwide release. However the film sold surprisingly well in the home video market, and became a cult hit.
In 2003, Judge and fellow animator Don Hertzfeldt (1976-) co-founded the annual film festival "The Animation Show". It showcased animated short films from various eras, with its initial goal being to cover "everything from forgotten classics to the very latest in computer animation". In its first year, the touring festival visited over 200 movie theaters in North America.
Judge's third feature film was the dystopian science fiction comedy "Idiocracy" (2006). It depicted a soldier from the early 21st century who spends 500 years in suspended animation. He awakes in the 26th century, in a future world which has fully embraced anti-intellectualism. The film never received a wide theatrical release, and only earned 495,000 dollars at the box office. However it sold very well in the home video market, and became a cult film.
In 2008, Fox decided to cancel "King of the Hill" despite the series' decent ratings. At the time it was the 105th most watched series on American television. The final group of episodes were broadcast over the following 2 years.
In 2009, Judge directed his fourth (and so far last) feature film. It was the live-action comedy film "Extract". It features a successful flavoring-extracts company who has to deal with a lawsuit by an injured employee, with the schemes of a female con-artist, and with the sexual frustration and impaired judgment of its owners. The film earned about 11 million dollars at the box office, and was critically well-received.
In 2009, Judge developed his third television series, the animated comedy "The Goode Family" (2009) for ABC. Compared to "King of the Hill", this series contained more political satire. The series failed to find an audience, and some critics considered that its humor more properly belonged in the 1990s than the 2000s. It only lasted 1 series and 13 episodes, canceled by ABC due to its low ratings. It was the first series created by Judge to be considered a failure.
In 2011, "Beavis and Butt-Head" was revived for another season, with Judge as a producer and an updated setting. The 8th season only lasted for 2 months (October 27-December 29, 2011) and 2011. The opening audience attracted an audience of 3,3 million viewers. Ratings fell during the season, and the final episode only had 900,000 viewers. MTV decided not to order a 9th season.
Judge next developed his fourth television series, the live-action comedy "Silicon Valley" (2014-2019). The original premise was to focus on the competitive business environment of the Silicon Valley. Following the first season's success, "Silicon Valley" continued in the long-term. The series lasted for 6 seasons and 53 episodes. The series received critical acclaim for its "hilarious" take on the business world and modern technology, and was nominated for several awards. Conversely, a number of critics felt that a number of its characters were stereotypical nerds, and lacked proper character development.
While "Silicon Valley" was still ongoing, Judge developed his fifth television series. It was the animated documentary series "Mike Judge Presents: Tales from the Tour Bus" (2017-2018), which focused on the oral history of professional musicians and their associated musical genres. It presented anecdotes concerning the featured musicians, "as told by their families, band-mates, and close associates". The series lasted 2 seasons and 16 episodes .The series was critically acclaimed, but never attracted a large audience.
In its relatively short run, this series featured biographies of (in order of presentation): Johnny Paycheck (1938-2003), Jerry Lee Lewis (1935-), George Jones (1931-2013), Tammy Wynette (1942-1998), Billy Joe Shaver (1939-2020), Waylon Jennings (1937-2002), Blaze Foley (1949-1989), George Clinton (1941-), Rick James (1948-2004), Bootsy Collins (1951-), James Brown (1933-2006), Morris Day (1957-), and Betty Davis (1945-).
In 2021, Judge was 58-years-old. He has never fully retired, though he has yet to make a television comeback. His professional career in television has lasted 30 years so far, and he has gained a reputation for innovative series concepts.Best writer in the history of television forever!- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Mary Tyler Moore was born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on December 29, 1936. Moore's family relocated to California when she was eight. Her childhood was troubled, due in part to her mother's alcoholism. The eldest of three siblings, she attended a Catholic high school and married upon her graduation, in 1955. Her only child, Richard Meeker Jr., was born soon after.
A dancer at first, Moore's first break in show business was in 1955, as a dancing kitchen appliance - Happy Hotpoint, the Hotpoint Appliance elf, in commercials generally broadcast during the popular sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952). She then shifted from dancing to acting and work soon came, at first a number of guest roles on television series, but eventually a recurring role as Sam, Richard Diamond's sultry answering service girl, on Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1956), her performance being particularly notorious because her legs (usually dangling a pump on her toe) were shown instead of her face.
Although these early roles often took advantage of her willowy charms (in particular, her famously-beautiful dancer's legs), Moore's career soon took a more substantive turn as she was cast in two of the most highly regarded comedies in television history, which would air first-run for most of the '60s and '70s. In the first of these, The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), Moore played Laura Petrie, the charmingly loopy wife of star Dick Van Dyke. The show became famous for its very clever writing and terrific comic ensemble - Moore and her fellow performers received multiple Emmy Awards for their work. Meanwhile, she had divorced her first husband, and married advertising man (and, later, network executive) Grant Tinker.
After the end of The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), Moore focused on movie-making, co-starring in five between the end of the sitcom and the start of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), including Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), in which she plays a ditsy aspiring actress, and an inane Elvis Presley vehicle, Change of Habit (1969), in which she plays a nun-to-be and love interest for Presley. Also included in this mixed bag of films was a first-rate television movie, Run a Crooked Mile (1969), which was an early showcase for Moore's considerable talent at dramatic acting.
After trying her hand at movies for a few years, Moore decided, rather reluctantly, to return to television, but on her terms. The result was The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), which was produced by MTM Enterprises, a company she had formed with Tinker, and which later went on to produce scores of other television series. Moore starred as Mary Richards, who moves to Minneapolis on the heels of a failed relationship. Mary finds work at the newsroom of WJM-TV, whose news program is the lowest-rated in the city, and establishes fast friendships with her colleagues and her neighbors. The sitcom was a commercial and critical success and for years was a fixture of CBS television's unbeatable Saturday night line-up. Moore and Tinker were determined from the start to make the sitcom a cut above the average, and it certainly was - instead of going for a barrage of gags, the humor took longer to develop and arose out of the interaction between the characters in more realistic situations. This was also one of the earliest television portrayals of a woman who was happy and successful on her own rather than simply being a man's wife. The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) is generally included amongst the finest television series ever produced in America.
Moore ended the sitcom in 1977, while it was still on a high point, but found it difficult to flee the beloved Mary Richards persona - her subsequent attempts at television series, variety programs, and specials (such as the mortifying disco-era Mary's Incredible Dream (1976)) usually failed, but even her dramatic work, which is generally excellent, fell under the shadow of Mary Richards. With time, however, her body of dramatic acting came to be recognized on its own, with such memorable work as in Ordinary People (1980), as an aloof WASP mother who not-so-secretly resents her younger son's survival; in Finnegan Begin Again (1985), as a middle-aged widow who finds love with a man whose wife is slowly slipping away, in Lincoln (1988), as the troubled Mary Todd Lincoln, and in Stolen Babies (1993), as an infamous baby smuggler (for which she won her sixth Emmy Award). She also inspired a new appreciation for her famed comic talents in Flirting with Disaster (1996), in which she is hilarious as the resentful adoptive mother of a son who is seeking his birth parents. Moore also acted on Broadway, and she won a Tony Award for her performance in "Whose Life Is It Anyway?"
Widely acknowledged as being much tougher and more high-strung than her iconic image would suggest, Moore had a life with more than the normal share of ups and downs. Both of her siblings predeceased her, her sister Elizabeth of a drug overdose in 1978 and her brother John of cancer in 1991 after a failed attempt at assisted suicide, Moore having been the assistant. Moore's troubled son Richie shot and killed himself in what was officially ruled an accident in 1980. Moore was diagnosed an insulin-dependent diabetic in 1969, and had a bout with alcoholism in the early 1980s. Divorced from Tinker in 1981 after repeated separations and reconciliations, she married physician Robert Levine in 1983. The union with Levine proved to be Moore's longest run in matrimony and her only marriage not to end in divorce. Despite the opening credits of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), in which she throws a package of meat into her shopping cart, Moore was a vegetarian and a proponent of animal rights. She was an active spokesperson for both diabetes issues and animal rights.
On January 25, 2017, Mary Tyler Moore died at age 80 at Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut, from cardiopulmonary arrest complicated by pneumonia after having been placed on a respirator the previous week. She was laid to rest during a private ceremony at Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield, Connecticut.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Director
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Jeremy Podeswa is an award winning feature film and television director who has been nominated four times for the Best Director Emmy, for HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" and "Game of Thrones" (twice), and for the Tom Hanks/ Steven Spielberg produced "The Pacific". He has also been nominated four times for the Directors Guild of America Award.
He has also recently directed episodes of "3 Body Problem" (Netflix), from the creators of GoT, and "The New Look" (Apple) starring Juliette Binoche. And he was Executive Producer and Director on the HBOMax limited series "Station Eleven" earning a Directors Guild of America nomination. The show was nominated for 7 Emmy Awards.
He has directed for many of the most ground breaking cable television series and mini-series, including for HULU "The Handmaid's Tale"; for HBO, "Game of Thrones", "True Detective", "The Newsroom", "Here and Now", "Boardwalk Empire", "True Blood", "Rome", "Six Feet Under", "Carnivale" and "The Pacific"; for Apple "The Mosquito Coast" and "The New Look"; for Showtime, "The Loudest Voice", "On Becoming a God in Central Florida", "Homeland", "Ray Donovan", "The Borgias", "The Tudors", "Dexter", "Weeds", "Queer as Folk", "The L Word"; for AMC "The Walking Dead"; for F/X "American Horror Story: Asylum and Coven"; and for TNT the mini-series "Into the West" (produced by Steven Spielberg and nominated for 16 Emmy Awards).
Other credits include the television movie "After the Harvest", starring Sam Shepard, winner of the Directors Guild of Canada Award for Best Direction.
He has also written and directed three award winning feature films: Fugitive Pieces (Samuel Goldwyn Films, Opening Night, Toronto International Film Festival) starring Stephen Dillane and Rosamund Pike; The Five Senses (Fine Line Distribution, Directors' Fortnight, Cannes Film Festival) starring Mary Louise Parker; and Eclipse (Berlin and Sundance Festivals).Best director in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
David Susskind was born on 19 December 1920 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), Eleanor and Franklin (1976) and Ages of Man (1966). He was married to Joyce Davidson and Phyllis Briskin. He died on 22 February 1987 in New York City, New York, USA.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Alan Taylor is an American film and television director from San Francisco known for directing episodes of HBO shows such as The Sopranos, Deadwood, Game of Thrones, and Sex in the City. He directed the feature films Thor: The Dark World, Palookaville, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Many Saints of Newark, and Terminator Genisys.Best director in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Additional Crew
Grant Tinker was born on 11 January 1926 in Stamford, Connecticut, USA. He was a producer, known for Going Places (1973), The Lily Tomlin Special (1975) and Great Television Moments: What We Watched (1993). He was married to Brooke Knapp, Mary Tyler Moore and Ruth Prince Byerly. He died on 28 November 2016 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Best executive in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Ted Turner was born on November 19, 1938 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA as Robert Edward Turner III. He is the founder of CNN, Turner Broadcast System (TBS) and Turner Network Television (TNT). He was previously married to Jane Fonda, Jane Shirley Smith and Judy Nye. He started in the business as a writer and producer but had a bigger vision.Best executive in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Music Department
Jeffrey Jacob Abrams was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles, the son of TV producer parents. At 15, he wrote the music for Don Dohler's Nightbeast (1982). In his senior year of college, he and Jill Mazursky teamed up to write a feature film, which became Taking Care of Business (1990). He went on to write and produce Regarding Henry (1991) and Forever Young (1992). He also co-wrote Gone Fishin' (1997) with Mazursky. Along with other Sarah Lawrence alumni, he experimented with computer animation and was contracted to develop pre-production animation for Shrek (2001).
Abrams worked on the screenplay for Armageddon (1998) and co-created (as well as composing the opening theme of) Felicity (1998), which ran for four seasons. He founded the production company Bad Robot in 2001 with Bryan Burk. He created and executive-produced Alias (2001) and Lost (2004), composing the theme music for both, and co-writing episodes of "Lost". He also co-wrote and produced thriller Joy Ride (2001). He made his feature directing debut with Mission: Impossible III (2006), reinvigorating the series. He produced the hit mystery film Cloverfield (2008) and co-created Fringe (2008).
He directed the Star Trek (2009) reboot, proving successful with fans and newcomers to the franchise. He next directed Super 8 (2011), co-produced by Steven Spielberg and produced Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011). He returned to direct the follow-up to his reboot, Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). Disney and Lucasfilm announced J.J. as their choice for director of the first episode in the new 'Star Wars' trilogy, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015). He initially resisted, as he didn't want to travel away from his family to London, but Kathleen Kennedy convinced him that his voice would be the best to reinvigorate this franchise, as he had done with two others before. He also produced Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) and Star Trek Beyond (2016), and executive-produced Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017). When it was announced that Colin Trevorrow would no longer direct Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019), it was announced that J.J. would return to complete the trilogy he started.Best producer/creator in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Actress
- Director
Deborah Kaye Allen was born in Houston, Texas, to African-American parents, Vivian Elizabeth (Ayers), a poet and art director, and Andrew Arthur Allen, an orthodontist. As a child, Debbie, her older brother, Andrew (called Tex), and her older sister, actress Phylicia Rashad, lived in Mexico to escape US racism. Their mother decided to live there to give the Allen children a brief experience of not having to endure the chronic racism and segregation that was typical of Texas during the 1950s. Debbie and Phylicia are fluent in Spanish.
Debbie graduated from Jack Yates Senior High School in Houston, TX in 1967. She graduated cum laude from Howard University in 1971 with a BFA in Classical Greek Literature, Speech, and Theater from Howard University. She used her experiences from attending Historically Black College Howard to inform her production and direction of the TV show A Different World (1987).
Although her parents divorced, Debbie remained extremely close to her father until his death. With Phylicia she has production company "D.A.D." which stood for "Doctor Allen's Daughters". Her Pulitzer-nominated poet mother Vivian is, the artistic and free spirit that has influenced and encouraged the remarkable creativity that so marks Allen as a performer.Best choreographer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Yvette Lee Bowser was born on 9 June 1965 in the USA. She is a producer and writer, known for Living Single (1993), Unprisoned (2023) and Dear White People (2017). She is married to Kyle Bowser. They have two children.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Stephen J. Cannell was raised in Pasadena, California. His father ran an interior design firm. From an early age, Stephen suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia, which made it nearly impossible from him to do well in school, he either flunked or was held back many times. Even though one of the courses he had trouble with was English, he wrote in one of his yearbooks that it was his ambition to be an author. After a lot of work, he managed to graduate from high school and attend the University of Oregon. He worked for his father's design firm while he wrote television scripts and story ideas after work. He sold his first story ideas to Mission: Impossible (1966) and his first script to It Takes a Thief (1968). His first steady job in television was as a story editor on Adam-12 (1968). He created a character named Jim Rockford for a script he wrote for the series Toma (1973), a show he was producing at the time. That script was rejected by ABC, so it was rewritten and eventually became the pilot for the classic NBC series, The Rockford Files (1974). From there, it becomes nearly impossible to list all of his work. He has either written or co-written over 300 television scripts, created or co-created over two dozen television series, formed a successful production company, wrote best-selling police novels and even acted in his own and other producers' shows. He has won an Emmy, two Writer's Guild Awards, two Edgar Award Nominations and has a star on the Hollywood Blvd. Walk of Fame. Despite his many accolades, his first love continued to be writing. A co-worker of his on "Rockford", writer and The Sopranos (1999) creator David Chase, was once quoted as saying no person he ever met seemed to love writing as much as Stephen J. Cannell.Best writer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
David Crane was born on 13 August 1957 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Friends (1994), Dream On (1990) and Episodes (2011).Best writer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Additional Crew
Rebecca Eaton was born on 7 November 1947 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. She is a producer, known for Sherlock (2010), Downton Abbey (2010) and Little Dorrit (2008).Best producer in the history of television forever!- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Graduate of Woodridge High School in Peninsula, Ohio.
Attended Kent State University (1970-73) in Kent, Ohio, to focus on attaining an art degree. While at Kent State Mothersbaugh met Jerry Casale and Bob Lewis, who ultimately joined him in forming the 1970-80s avant-garde band Devo.
Awarded an honorary doctorate degree (2008) from Kent State in humane letters. Dr. Mothersbaugh has reciprocated KSU in diverse fashion as is his style-- gifting it with music & art, as well as time-- which is spent touting the Kent State experience through public promotions & media spots.Best music composer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Executive
Fred Silverman was born in 1937, and quickly grew up into the television business. After starting out in the mail-room of ABC-TV in the late 1950s, he rose to director of program development at WGN-TV, Chicago in the early '60s. One day, he abandoned his car during a snowstorm and boarded a plane for New York, where he gained a position as head of Daytime Programming at CBS-TV. In 1970, he became the programming head of CBS, where he programmed such hits as The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), All in the Family (1971), M*A*S*H (1972), The Jeffersons (1975), Kojak (1973) and The Sonny and Cher Show (1976). In 1975, he left for ABC-TV, where he worked closely with Michael Eisner and Brandon Tartikoff. He developed such new hits as Laverne & Shirley (1976), The Love Boat (1977), Donny and Marie (1975) and Soap (1977). By the end of the 1977-8 season, ABC was number one, Daytime and Nigttime. In 1978, he joined NBC as President and CEO. His presence helped stem the audience erosion of the prior 5 years with new programs such as Diff'rent Strokes (1978), Real People (1979) and Hill Street Blues (1981). During his tenure, he made program commitments that led to St. Elsewhere (1982) and Cheers (1982), promoted Brandon Tartikoff to President of Entertainment and laid the groundwork for NBC's turnaround in the 80s. Management changes at parent RCA led to Silverman's departure in June, 1981 and his replacement by Grant Tinker. Silverman formed "The Fred Silverman Company" and became an independent producer. Among his successes were "Perry Mason Movies", Matlock (1986), In the Heat of the Night (1988), Jake and the Fatman (1987) and Diagnosis Murder (1993). Silverman remains in the independent production business and also does program consulting.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Beth Sullivan is known for Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993), Ponderosa (2001) and The Trials of Rosie O'Neill (1990).Best writer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Known primarily as a TV actor, he starred as a nightclub singer on the popular The Danny Thomas Show (1953).
He also served TV behind the cameras partnering with Sheldon Leonard and Aaron Spelling to create such shows as Dick Van Dyke's show, The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), The Andy Griffith Show (1960) and Mod Squad (1968).
He was also dedicated to building the St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, which he founded in 1962.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Graham Chapman was born on January 8, 1941 in Leicester, England while a German air raid was in progress. Graham's father was a chief police inspector and probably inspired the constables Graham often portrayed later in comedy sketches. Graham studied medicine in college and earned an M.D., but he practiced medicine for only a few years.
At Cambridge, he took part in a series of comedy revues and shortly after completing his medical studies at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Graham realized what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to perform comedy. In 1969, Graham along with University friends John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and American Terry Gilliam formed their own comedy group called Monty Python. Their BBC TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), which aired a short while later was a an instant hit. Their often self-referential style of humor was delightfully original but completely accessible to most audiences in the UK.
Before the show appeared on public television in the US, many people assumed that Americans would find Monty Python much too British to consider it funny. But PBS never had a larger audience than when stations began to air it during the early 1970s. The classic routines have since become standard college humor.
So enduring was the Python humor that fans know entire sketches such as "The Pet Shop," "Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink," "Argument Clinic," and "Penguin on the Telly." Graham was a standout of the group with his tall, blond profile and his zany characters (one of the more memorable was Colonel Muriel Volestrangler, a vaguely military-type character who would stop a sketch because it was "much too silly").
Graham was openly gay long before it was socially acceptable, and was open about his long-term relationship with writer David Sherlock, who lived with him for 24 years. He even adopted and raised a teenage runaway named John Tomiczek. Graham played the title role in the movie Life of Brian (1979) as well as King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). By the late 1970s, most of the Python members were pursuing independent movie projects and the group was slowly fading into obscurity after their last successful effort The Meaning of Life (1983). Also in 1983, Graham co-wrote and starred in the movie Yellowbeard (1983), which received negative reviews.
In 1988, Graham began working on another series when his health began to decline. A longtime alcoholic, who suffered liver damage before he stopped drinking for good in 1977, Graham began to have trouble concentrating at work. In November 1988, a routine visit to a dentist revealed a malignant tumor on one of his tonsils which was surgically removed. A visit to the doctor a few months later revealed another tumor on his spine which had to be removed which confined him to a wheelchair. During most of 1989, he underwent a series of surgical operations and radiation therapy but for every tumor that was found and removed, another would form either along his spine or in his throat. By July 1989, his cancer was declared terminal and that he would not survive the year, yet he continued to pursue treatments which included chemotherapy. In his wheelchair, he attended the September 1989 taping for the Monty Python's 20th anniversary special. But on October 1, he was hospitalized after a massive stroke which turned into a hemorrhage. He died at the Maidstone hospital at age 48 on October 4, 1989 from complications of the stroke as well as throat and spinal cancer.Best writer in the history of television forever!- Actor
- Writer
- Music Department
Eric Idle is an English comedian, actor, author, singer, playwright, director, and songwriter. co-creator of Monty Python on TV, stage, and five films, including The Life of Brian and The Holy Grail, which he later adapted for the stage with John Du Prez as Monty Python's Spamalot, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2005, a Grammy, a Drama Desk Award, and playing for almost five years on Broadway. They also wrote the comic oratorio Not the Messiah, He's a Very Naughty Boy, in 2007, which played round the world and at The Hollywood Bowl and was filmed live at The Royal Albert Hall, and a musical play What About Dick? available soon on iTunes. He created and directed the first mockumentary The Rutles for NBC, starred as Ko-Ko in the English National Opera version of The Mikado in London and Houston, and appeared last year in The Pirates of Penzance in Central Park and in Not the Messiah at Carnegie Hall. He is also one of the conceivers of the musical Seussical. In 2012 he appeared live in front of a billion people worldwide singing his song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life at the Closing Ceremony of the London Olympics. Last year he created, directed, and appeared in the sold-out final Monty Python reunion show One Down Five to Go at London's O2 Arena for 10 nights, whose final performance was broadcast live round the world.
He has also acted in several movies, including Nuns on the Run, Splitting Heirs, Casper, Shrek the Third, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; and written two novels, The Greedy Bastard Diary and Pass the Butler, a West End play.Best writer in the history of television forever!- Animation Department
- Director
- Writer
Starting as a cel washer, Chuck Jones worked his way up to animator and then director at the animation division of Warner Bros. He is famous for creating such beloved cartoon characters as Wile E. Coyote, Henery Hawk, Pepé Le Pew, Marvin the Martian, Ralph Wolf, Road Runner, Sam Sheepdog, Sniffles, and many others, as well as adding to the development of Warner favorites such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and countless others.
His most famous cartoons tend to have been created with writer Michael Maltese. Jones' autobiography, published by Simon & Schuster "Chuck Amuck"--a pun on his Daffy Duck short Duck Amuck (1953)--gives a very amusing account of his life. It is liberally sprinkled with hundreds of cartoons with some color plates.Best animator in the history of television forever!- Writer
- Producer
- Actress
Michelle King was born on 11 May 1962 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is a writer and producer, known for The Good Wife (2009), Evil (2019) and The Good Fight (2017). She is married to Robert King.Best producer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Christopher Lloyd was born on 18 June 1960 in Waterbury, Connecticut, USA. He is a producer and writer, known for Modern Family (2009), Frasier (1993) and Flushed Away (2006). He was previously married to Arleen Sorkin.Best writer in the history of television forever!- Director
- Additional Crew
- Script and Continuity Department
Noted TV series director Gail Mancuso grew up in suburban Cook County, Illinois. Mancuso began her career as an usher of the set of several television talk shows. Later, became a script supervisor for the Showtime Cable Network comedy "Brothers". In 1989, she began serving as associate director for the ABC-TV sitcom series "Roseanne". After one of the show's directors left in 1991, she had the chance to become one of the main directors and continued until the show's eighth season. She went on to direct episodes of many television series like the long-running NBC-TV sitcom "Friends", and the ABC sitcoms "Dharma and Greg" and "Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place". In 2007, Gail began working on the CBS-TV sitcom series "Rules of Engagement". She has also directed episodes of ABC-TV's "30 Rock" and NBC-TV's "Scrubs". In 2008, she won a Gracie Award for her work on "30 Rock". In 2011, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for her "Modern Family" episode "Slow Down Your Neighbors". In 2012, she reunited with "Roseanne" co-stars Roseanne Barr and John Goodman, both of whom she directed on "Roseanne", in the pilot episode of "Downwardly Mobile", which was commissioned by NBC-TV, but ultimately did not get picked up by the network. In 2013, she won the Emmy Award for directing episode "Arrested" on "Modern Family". Gail is happily married to Brian Downs, a doctor; they have three children. The family divides its' time between their homes in Valencia, California and River Forest, Illinois.Best director in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Director
- Additional Crew
Thomas Schlamme was born on 22 May 1950 in Houston, Texas, USA. He is a producer and director, known for The West Wing (1999), Sports Night (1998) and Tracey Takes On... (1996). He has been married to Christine Lahti since 4 September 1983. They have three children.Best director/producer in the history of television forever!- Director
- Actor
- Producer
Timothy Van Patten was born on 10 June 1959 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He is a director and actor, known for Boardwalk Empire (2010), The Sopranos (1999) and The Pacific (2010). He has been married to Wendy Susan Rossmeyer since 23 May 1996. They have three children.Best director in the history of television forever!- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
W.G. Snuffy Walden was born on 13 February 1950 in Louisiana, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for The West Wing (1999).Best music composer in the history of television forever!- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Alan Ball is an American writer, director, and producer who is known for writing the acclaimed film American Beauty and creating the HBO series True Blood starring Anna Paquin. He also wrote the films Towelhead and Uncle Frank. He also created Here and Now, Six Feet Under, and Banshee. He won awards for American Beauty and True Blood.Best producer/writer/creator in the history of television forever!