Jane Wyatt on playing Margaret Anderson on Father Knows Best
I did understand wife and mother because I was a wife and mother. Margaret was much nicer than me. I can say that. But then she had all her lines written for her. I was much more independent than she was. She was a very nice person, I enjoyed playing her. And, she had a wonderful rapport with her children.

Barbara Billingsley on playing June Cleaver on Leave it to Beaver
Some people think she was namby-pamby. But no, she used to get teed off with the children. She didn’t always refer to the father as far as punishing is concerned. She was a loving, happy, stay-at-home mom, which I think is great. I’m not for every woman having to be out in the workplace. I had two children at home and I was working. But I think the one that stays home, if she’s doing a good job, it is the best job she’ll ever have, the most important.

Interview clip: Barbara Billingsley on June Cleaver’s wardrobe, high-heels, and pearls

Marion Ross on playing 50s mom Marion “Mrs. C.” Cunningham on Happy Days
Between my childhood in Minnesota, and the 50’s, it’s easy for me to relate to the kind of woman who gets everything she wants, but in a very charming, feminine way, because it’s just easier! That’s kind of the way I was raised and that’s what I saw in my own childhood how women love their husbands and protects her husband from the children. “Be good to your father.” He’s the head of the family, but he really isn’t, of course. She is the head of the family. But that’s the artifice. This is all pre-women’s lib. Now, I still think it’s a kind of a handy way to get things done. We conceal our strength.

Florence Henderson on playing Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch
I know that there were certain things that I brought to the role. I think it was my experience as a young parent and the fact that I understood kids. I felt close to them. I was really the only one on the set that was married, that had children and an ongoing relationship…. I would never wear an apron. I wanted to wear sexy nightgowns. I wanted to make her as human as possible.

Interview clip: Florence Henderson on playing Carol Brady

Mary Tyler Moore on playing Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show
The sponsors had a good deal more to say back then. We had to sleep in twin beds even though we were a married couple. We had to wear pajamas with the little pockets and a shirt. We were not allowed to say pregnant. You had to say “expecting a child” or “expecting a baby.” The big objection was the pants that I wore in The Dick Van Dyke Show. I had seen too many housewives on television who were vacuuming in high heels and a floral printed frock. I said, wait a minute, that’s not the way it really is and I wanted to be real. I wanted to represent something of me. And I was married and a mother, and I’ve walked around barefoot as I still do, and wore pants. So I brought that to the show. I also brought my sense of honesty, my sense of truth.

Diahann Carroll on playing single-mother Julia Baker on Julia
On television, Julia was the first non-conventional, educated, single mother who was outspoken. She dated. She raised her child…But no Black male was the argument. No father. No image for the children to relate to a father. That was a very loud criticism. It’s not that Julia and her son didn’t talk about situations. It may not have been his life, but we did talk about situations. Also, mother dated, and we brought the male into the house to say hello to the son. And, usually it was another professional Black that the young man was exposed to. So, I think that as we look back, that we’re very proud of that, that piece of work. It represented a new thought. It represented something that was subject to a great deal of criticism.

Interview clip: Diahann Carroll discusses Julia

Jean Stapleton on her favorite Edith Bunker “mother” moment on All in the Family
The anniversary episode was one was one of my favorites. Edith was to give marital advice to her daughter. That was great. She and Gloria felt that they should have a mother and daughter talk now that Gloria’s getting married. So of course Edith said nothing. Gloria supplied all of the issues and answered them while Edith would nod in approval “yes, yes of course.” Edith was very, very shy, very timid about discussing such things. It is very funny and very much in character.

Video clip: watch the brilliant scene Jean Stapleton references here:

Shirley Jones on being TV music group mom Shirley Partridge on The Partridge Family
She was a working mom, but wanted her children to have values. The show business thing was secondary. And they made a point of that, because the first couple of shows, the pilot in particular, they were dealing very much with the show-business angle, “where are we going to perform? Let’s rehearse every day.” And finally [producer] Bob Claver said, “we’re going to tone down the show business angle. We’re going to make them real people. We’re going to have stories about teenage sweethearts in school, and we’re going to have stories about Shirley maybe dating one of the local guys. There will always be a song, but the show won’t be built around that performance.” I think that helped because it made us real people. And it also got every teenager in America thinking that they could do this. “We can go to school and we can have a band. And we can get a bus.” The sad part is that every once in a while, I would find some young 16, 15, 14-year-old, sitting on my lawn, just off a bus from Iowa or Michigan or someplace, saying, “I’ve come to be in The Partridge Family. I can play the instrument.” They’d literally run away from home. I just had to tell them the truth and say, “listen, this is a television show. We don’t have a band. It’s all make-believe.”

Interview clip: Shirley Jones on Shirley Partridge

Phylicia Rashad on playing Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show
She had a very normal relationship. She understood the difference in all their personalities. It was a very loving relationship, and there was discipline. She was very, very patient, but very disciplined. She understood the value of discipline. And they, as parents, understood the importance of being on the same page with those people.

Interview clip: Phylicia Rashad on working on The Cosby Show

Patricia Heaton on playing Debra Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond
Debra’s a horrible homemaker, that was what was so wonderful about her is that she couldn’t cook, and a lot of times with the kids it was just like “whatever.” I think there’s a whole movement in our country since Martha Stewart came on the scene of being a perfect and making every small daily task a work of art, which there’s some benefit to trying to lift the mundane out of its mundaneness and making it something because every act of care that you do for your family is actually sort of a sacred thing. But when you’re packing a lunch every morning, you’re not going to cut the sandwich into smiley shapes and starfish, you just throw in that prepackaged crap in their bag and stick it in their backpack. So, I think she tried, but she was like every mom that has it up to here with everything. …But I think she was a good mother, yeah, definitely.

Interview clip: Patricia Heaton discusses the Everybody Loves Raymond family dynamic

Happy Mother’s Day!

The program was so successful on Wednesday evenings that a Thursday installment was added for a two-year run on ABC. Between the NBC and ABC versions, there were a total of 650 shows produced – the series missed only three live telecasts in its eleven year run, due to coverage of political conventions.

Fred Coe directed several of the early episodes, and went on to produce several Golden Age favorites including Playhouse 90 and Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse. Sidney Lumet directed 1958’s two-part production of “All the King’s Men:”

E.G. Marshall starred in several productions, including a memorable 1950 “Macbeth” and Jack Klugman not only acted in the series, but also wrote 1958’s “Code of the Corner:”

Noteworthy writers tapped for the series included Truman Capote, Rod Serling (who penned 1955’s “Patterns” starring Ed Begley, Sr.) JP Miller, and Horton Foote, whose play “Only the Heart” was performed on Kraft Television Theatre in 1948:

Part of the magic, and the difficulty of the productions stemmed from the fact that they were live. The blocking and staging had to be precise, and if someone flubbed a line or missed a cue, there were no retakes. Makeup artist Dick Smith recalls the challenges of aging a character on live television, specifically, Nancy Marchand’s “Queen Elizabeth” in the 1951 production “Of Famous Memory:”

Kraft loved the show because cheese sales skyrocketed – a 1947 study by ad agency J. Walter Thompson showed that McLaren’s Imperial Cheese, which was advertised solely on Kraft Television Theatre, was regularly selling out at grocery stores. RCA (parent company of NBC) loved the show because quality programming was a draw for people to buy television sets, which RCA manufactured.

Kraft Television Theatre finally came to the end of its eleven-year-run in 1958, as serialized dramas and sitcoms with continuing storylines became the fashion. The show was briefly reconfigured as Kraft Mystery Theatre in April 1958 and went off the air for good five months later in September. Though the program was not shot on film, kinescopes remain of several of the most lauded productions, including “Patterns,” and the Titanic tale, “A Night to Remember.”

In the classic episode, Ricky is hosting a TV show and needs someone to do a commercial spot. Lucy begs to do it, but Ricky refuses, even after Lucy pulls apart their television set, climbs inside and demonstrates what a fine spokeswoman she would be. She schemes her way onto the show, and does take after take of the ad for the cure-all tonic “Vitameatavegamin,” which contains 23% alcohol. The more takes she does, the better the product tastes, and the harder it is for Lucy to stay on script:

Madelyn Pugh Davis and Bob Carroll, Jr. wrote “Lucy Does a TV Commercial” and shared just how many takes the scene really took to shoot – a whopping one:

The episode ranked #2 on TV Guide’s List of Top 100 TV Episodes of All Time, beaten only by The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s “Chuckles Bites the Dust.” Here’s hoping you don’t pop out at your parties this weekend — it will make you quite “unpoopular”!

Here are some selections from Stewart’s three-hour Archive interview from 1998:

On the genesis of The Price is Right:

On Fiftieth Street and Seventh Avenue in New York there used to be a store which auctioned silverware, glassware, watches, jewelry … and everyday during the lunch hour that place was packed. People would just walk in and bid for the goods. I used to stop by there and watch the stuff and I thought to myself, ‘anybody who pays a nickel more than the retail price has been taken, but anybody who gets it for even a nickel less has got a bargain.’ And that became the core of The Price Is Right.

On how celebrity panelists were selected for To Tell The Truth:

In its original form, we had different visions of making this cross examination more than just entertainment. So as a consequence, we had a couple of reporters whose names escape me right now but they were literally reporters that people knew about. One guy was sort of an entertainment writer for one of the big New York newspapers. We also brought in people like Ralph Bellamy because he was doing Man Against Crime, a fictional detective, but at least he was cross-examining … We ended up with people like Orson Bean and Kitty Carlisle and the classic panelists Peggy Cass, who were there to have some fun and make a good time of it.

On how the Quiz Show Scandals changed game shows:

They brought in what they called Standards and Practices. The first guys hired back in 1958 or ’59, whenever it was, they brought in some ex-FBI men … an FBI guy came in and he oversaw the shows to make sure that nothing crooked was going on. The new thing that was innovated was that all contestants and all producers had to sign certain waivers of sorts saying you wouldn’t cheat and so on. There was that. The physical setup between contestants and production help had to be completely separate. We now had to have contestants briefed in another building at one time, couldn’t be in the same building. And in the studio, the quarters were set up so that there could be no contact except for the person who was the contestant getter, nobody else could be near a contestant.

On creating Password:

On creating Pyramid:

That had a strange development. Originally, we had a pilot that we made for CBS and it was called On The Line. There was a pyramid shape with a series of lines across the pyramid. I think there were ten lines. The bottom row had ten squares, then nine, eight, seven, six, on up to one. It was a different kind of game but we played a game with it. We made the pilot and it was just a so-so pilot. Fred Silverman, who has been said ’shoots from the hip,’ looked at it, didn’t care for it, and said, ‘we’ll do something else.’ I was trying to take advantage of the fact that they needed a show and I brought in some run-through of another show which he liked, and we were working on that in different run-throughs and then one day I got an idea of how to convert that pyramid of ten into another kind of show of quick communication. Although we were scheduled to run-through this new idea I showed Silverman this new version of the old pilot. ‘I kind of like it,’ he said, ‘but I don’t like the front game, the end game is okay.’ So I change that — the network guys do this, they don’t know what they’re looking for and they don’t recognize it so they’re not sure, so they keep sending you back to do it again, again, and again. Finally, one day I show him these two pieces together. Matter of fact, Bill Cullen was helping me demonstrate it, he was one of the players. The next thing I knew I walked into Bud Grant’s office. Bud was the head of daytime television, Silverman was the head of nighttime. I was hanging around CBS to find out whether we’re going to make the schedule and then I noticed in Bud Grant’s office where they have this board of shows, it said ‘Ten Thousand Dollar Pyramid.’ I said, ‘what the hell is that?’ He says, ‘you’re on the air.’

On how game show production changed since he began his career:

Since I haven’t been in it for a few years, I don’t know exactly, but I’ll tell you how part of it changed. The part that’s changed is … I’ll use the word respect. There was a certain respect that the network people or syndicators had for the producers of game shows. In other words, they dealt with them on a rather, even equal keel and said, ‘you have something that has some value, let’s talk about it.’ What I hear today is that when you go to a network or to a cable operation or to a syndicator, they couldn’t care less about the idea of the show. ‘You do business our way or we don’t do business.’ There are stories of syndicators and especially cable operators who say, ‘okay, we’ll take this show we own, we’ll give you some money.’ It’s all gone. Where’s the entrepreneur? What‘s the point in trying to be creative if it doesn’t belong to you? So the business part has changed a lot.

Watch Bob Stewart’s Full Archive Interview.

Prior to Ellen, broadcast television had dabbled in storylines about homosexuality. The 1972 ABC Movie of the Week “That Certain Summer” focused on the relationship between partners “Doug Salter” (Hal Holbrook) and “Gary McClain” (Martin Sheen) and was the first television movie to bring a homosexual relationship to the forefront. Billy Crystal’s “Jodie Dallas” on the 1977 series Soap was openly gay, yet a supporting character. 1981’s Love, Sidney featured Tony Randall playing “Sidney Shorr,” a gay man living with friend Laurie and her daughter, but the series avoided mention of “Sidney’s” personal life and largely only hinted at his sexual orientation. With “The Puppy Episode,” “Ellen Morgan” became the first broadcast, prime-time, sitcom character to openly discuss her homosexuality, and also have it woven into subsequent storylines in the show.

There was quite a build-up in the weeks leading up to the hour-long episode, which coincided with DeGeneres’ real-life revelation about her own sexuality. Oprah Winfrey guest-starred as “Ellen’s” therapist, Laura Dern as “Ellen’s” crush Susan, and Steven Eckholdt as “Ellen’s” college buddy, Richard. Here’s the pivotal scene of the episode:

“The Puppy Episode” aired in Season 4 and took some effort to get on the air. In the summer of 1996, DeGeneres told Disney Executive Dean Valentine that she wanted her character to come out:

According to Disney Exec Michael Eisner, he, too had a conversation with DeGeneres, and shares his take on the episode and remainder of the series:

Valentine explains the production process on “The Puppy Episode”once the decision was made to have “Ellen Morgan” come out:

Ellen lasted for one more season after “The Puppy Episode” aired, ending in 1998. Since Ellen, several network shows have featured gay and lesbian leads and/or continuing romantic storylines with gay characters: Will & Grace, Brothers & Sisters, Desperate Housewives, Pretty Little Liars, Glee … and cable has seen The L Word and now LOGO network which features LGBT programming.

Though Ellen left the air over a decade ago, DeGeneres began hosting talk-show Ellen: The Ellen Degeneres Show in 2003, which is syndicated nationally and still going strong. Sometimes Oprah appears as a guest on that show, too.

Born April 27, 1922 in South Philadelphia, Klugman got his start in acting in the drama department of the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon). Klugman soon moved to New York to pursue theater, securing roles in several off-Broadway plays and getting his big break in the 1948 Broadway production of “Mr. Roberts.” From there, Klugman began dabbling in the new medium of television, making appearances in the early 1950s on Actors Studio, (where he was directed by Yul Brynner), and on anthology dramas Studio One, Playhouse 90, and the 1955 Producers’ Showcase production of “The Petrified Forest,” opposite Bogey and Bacall. Klugman also wrote several scripts for Kraft Television Theatre in the late 1950s:

Klugman wasn’t restricted to theater and television, though. He appeared as “Juror #5″ in the 1957 film Twelve Angry Men, and continued to do theater, television, and film projects throughout his career. He was back on-stage in 1959’s “Gypsy” with Ethel Merman, and on TV again in the 1960s for four appearances on Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. In 1964, Klugman had a memorable role in “The Blacklist” episode of The Defenders, for which he won an Emmy:

Also in 1964, Klugman starred as the superintendent of a movie studio in his first sitcom, the short-lived Harris Against the World. Then in 1966, Klugman made his first appearance in Neil Simon’s stage play, “The Odd Couple:”

Garry Marshall was looking to make a television series of the play, which Klugman agreed to do after some initial resistance. He resumed his stage role of “Oscar Madison” for the sitcom, which ran from 1970-75:

CBS’ Fred Silverman tried to sell Klugman on a few other series after The Odd Couple ended, but it wasn’t until the chance to play muckraking medical examiner Quincy, M.E. came along in 1976 that Klugman agreed to helm another TV show. Quincy lasted eight seasons, through 1983:

Klugman appeared in the 1987 film I’m Not Rappaport with Ossie Davis and Walter Matthau, but was suffering from throat cancer and soon underwent surgery to remove his right vocal cord. His voice was quieted to just above a whisper, and Klugman worked hard to train his remaining cord to pick up the slack. He returned to acting at the urging of friend Tony Randall for a one-time stage performance of “The Odd Couple” in New York in 1991. The production was a huge success, leading to Klugman and Randall teaming up for productions of “Three Men On a Horse,” and “Sunshine Boys” on Broadway throughout the 1990s.

Klugman has continued to act in small roles here and there, most recently as “Sam” in the 2010 horror film Camera Obscura. He’s a proven success in film, television, and theater, and his perseverance in resurrecting his voice after surgery is about as inspirational as it gets. Happy 90th birthday, Jack! Here’s to many, many more!

Watch Jack Klugman’s full Archive interview.

Click below to check it out:

Tenacious D got their start on television, with their cult series produced by Mr. Show’s Bob Odenkirk that aired on HBO from 1997-2000. The show in many ways set the stage for other comedy musical acts that have followed – most notably New Zealand’s “Flight of the Conchords.”

Music video distribution has certainly come a long way in the past thirty years. MTV used to be the go-to place for exclusives and promoting videos. In his 2011 interview, Executive Tom Freston talked to us about the difficulty of even creating a network to celebrate music and music videos:

Now we’ve moved to video teasers on the internet as the promotion of choice. The times they are a changin’.

“Rize of the Fenix” is set to be released on May 15, 2012.

Here’s a description of the play from the Pasadena Playhouse website:

“Catherine Sloper, who stands to inherit a fortune from her ailing physician father, is a plain-looking young woman living under his malevolent scrutiny, as well as his well-meaning but cold-hearted demeanor. Dr. Sloper disapproves of Catherine’s passionate suitor Morris Townsend, certain that the penniless young man has proposed marriage to win Catherine’s inheritance. Catherine’s too much in love to consider this potential betrayal, and when circumstances lead her to misinterpret Morris’s intentions, THE HEIRESS reaches an unforgettable conclusion that brilliantly supports the richly psychological nuance brought to the preceding romance.”

Chamberlain talks about playing Dr. Kildare in his 2012 Archive interview. Let us know how Dr. Sloper compares!

For more info and to purchase tickets, click here.

Watch Richard Chamberlain’s full Archive interview here.

FOX had trickled into the airwaves six months earlier with only 95 stations, striving to project a distinctive, younger image than the established broadcast networks. FOX’s first offering on October 9, 1986 was in late night: The Late Show starring Joan Rivers. Rivers had been the permanent guest host for NBC’s Tonight Show with Johnny Carson since 1983 and burned some bridges when she moved to FOX:

When FOX lept into prime-time in April of 1987, it did so with only one day of programming – Sunday. The first shows included four comedies: Married … With Children, The Tracey Ullman Show, Mr. President, and Duet; and one drama, 21 Jump Street.

From The Tracey Ullman Show soon came The Simpsons, not only the longest-running American sitcom in television history, but also the longest-running prime-time, scripted series. Executive Producer James L. Brooks on the birth of The Simpsons:

Co-creator Stephen J. Cannell on the genesis of 21 Jump Street:

FOX soon succeeded in their goal to be the “young” network, with several other hits coming down the pipeline: Arsenio Hall got his own talk show later in 1987, and FOX scored a huge hit in 1990 with the teen drama Beverly Hills 90210 from super-producer Aaron Spelling:

Tonight FOX takes a look back at some of its hits, beginning with a re-airing of the pilot of Married … with Children at 7pm, followed by an encore of the 500th episode of The Simpsons. Then Fox celebrates its 25 years on air with stars that made the network famous, including: a reunion with the cast of That 70’s Show; Keenan Ivory Wayans, Marlon Wayans and Shawn Wayans of In Living Color; Randy Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Seacrest and Steven Tyler from American Idol; Kiefer Sutherland from 24 and Touch; Seth MacFarlane from Family Guy, The Cleveland Show and American Dad; Christina Applegate, David Faustino, Ed O’Neill and Katey Sagal from Married…With Children; Calista Flockhart from Ally McBeal; Gabrielle Carteris, Shannen Doherty, Jason Priestley and Ian Ziering from Beverly Hills, 90210; Patrick Warburton from The Tick, and Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny and creator Chris Carter from The X-Files.

Happy anniversary, FOX!

Here are some selections from his 2008 Archive interview:

On playing a psychiatrist on As the World Turns and how the role differed from “Barnabas Collins:”

It was maybe a couple of weeks, about three or four, maybe half a dozen episodes. I was pretty good at it. On Dark Shadows I was intimidated by the character, in a sense, although it fit me perfectly. I didn’t know that at the time, and I thought, “Oh, how do you play a vampire?” I was very unsettled about that one, but the doctor, other than just being nervous, like any other actor for his first crack at it, it was not that difficult, and I fit into it very well.

On getting his Masters in Directing at the Yale School of Drama:

I was a directing major there, but we all had to do parts anyway. Everybody had to do acting at one time or another. I’d already gone through acting, all kinds of teachers, and I was a perpetual student. I was going to everybody in those days. I had to go through it again and they gave me all these huge roles to play at Yale and it led to getting into the American Shakespeare Festival where I worked with Katharine Hepburn, and John Houseman was the director at the time. We had some very good people there at that time. That was 1956 or ‘57.

On getting cast on Dark Shadows:

That was through a friend of mine, Ron Sproat, who was at Yale with me, and he was a play-writing student. We knew each other and we were friendly and so forth and so on, and it turned out that he was one of the writers for Dark Shadows, so when they were searching for somebody he suggested that they get me.

On “Barnbas Collins:”

I was pretending I was an Englishman, going back to the original family in England, if you remember. The very first scene: “Tell Mrs. Stoddard that her cousin from England…” And I was just in the cemetery down the street, (laughter) been there for two centuries, but I said I was from England. My English accent is really kind of a fake stage one, perfect for the part, because he was lying anyway, and I was pretty good at it as a liar.

On his makeup for “Barnabas:”

It got down to a routine, but of course when I was an old man I had to go in at 4:00. They played me as an old man in my real age, supposedly, a couple of times. Dick Smith came in and I had to be there at 4:00 in the morning. It took four or five hours, at least, to get this makeup on. I had to do it for three or four days, too.

On Dark Shadows short run on television:

Dark Shadows had a short life, one of the shortest-lived of all of the great soap operas. It just had incredible reruns. But it never kept developing. It was a very short run. If it weren’t for the fact that they recorded it, it would’ve been long forgotten by now. It was just fortunate … That was what saved Dark Shadows was the fact that they had the tape, because actually, in fact, it was very short lived. There are soaps I can remember as a child when I had my appendix out listening to a soap. They’re still going! 60, 70 years ago. Imagine Dark Shadows if it were still going 70 years! Gosh.

On what he tapped into to play “Barnabas:”

I was supposed to be somebody who had been chained in jail for 25, 30, or 40 years. That’s as far as our imaginations go anyway. A person that’s been put away for 45 or 50 years or whatever in a prison and they come back into your life, I mean it’s pretty scary. They were just let loose, and it’s scary for them. It’s somebody that’s been tortured by a coffin … I remember the big scene with my father and all that business and, “You’re a vampire, you’ve got to do this, do this…” But I was put in, buried, and so the only way you can get the feeling from it is from scenes in your own life that happened that are similar, and it’s knowing people who had been so evil or been so screwed up that they’re ugly. There’s always ugly people in our lives. But I tried to be a nice guy, good guy.

Watch Jonathan Frid’s full Archive Interview.

Read his obituary in USA Today.