When you think of the late Jack Klugman, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Maybe it’s his iconic portrayal of Oscar Madison, one-half of the TV version of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple (the other filled by Tony Randall). Perhaps his Broadway appearances, his starring role on the television series Quincy, M.E. or […]
Today, the idea of anyone other than Patrick Stewart portraying Captain Jean-Luc Picard seems almost unthinkable. Yet when Star Trek: The Next Generation was being assembled in 1987, Stewart was far from the obvious choice, and the search for the actor who would command the new Enterprise took some interesting turns, all of which we’re […]
In one of his final interviews, voice actor Eric Bauza reflected on his love of animation, the characters who shaped his childhood and the extraordinary career that allowed him to bring them to life. When I spoke with Eric Bauza on July 22, 2026, ahead of the release of Coyote vs. Acme, there was no […]
Walter Koenig, who brought the young Russian navigator Pavel Chekov to life on Star Trek and in the original-cast films, has died at the age of 90. Born in Chicago in 1936 and raised in New York, Koenig studied psychology at UCLA before training at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Early television appearances included Combat!, Mr. Novak, […]
Television may have come of age in the 1950s, but the medium had already spent much of the 1940s giving audiences a taste of what was to come. Milton Berle was making people laugh on Texaco Star Theatre, while The Ed Sullivan Show was introducing viewers to an extraordinary assortment of entertainers. Kids were tuning […]
The extraordinary life of the actor who made America laugh by losing his temper, told through his own words, contemporary newspaper accounts and an exclusive interview with television historian Geoffrey Mark, who is also the author of The Lucy Book. If there’s one thing generations of television viewers remember about Gale Gordon, it’s his temper. […]
The author of the acclaimed The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series returns to the world of Sheldon Cooper, revealing the surprising stories behind the hit prequel and the people who brought it to life in Young Sheldon: The (Juicier-Than-Meemaw’s-Brisket) Inside Story of the Hit Comedy. When Jessica Radloff […]
News of the passing of writer/producer Ron Koslow, creator of television’s Beauty and the Beast, the romantasy series starring Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman, has touched me in a very personal way. During its original run, I considered myself lucky to have had the opportunity not only to speak with, but to get to know, […]
There’s something about The Brady Bunch that has kept generations of viewers coming back to that familiar house, those six kids and the family that somehow managed to work through just about every problem in under 30 minutes. More than half a century after the series premiered in 1969, the Bradys remain a part of […]
By the time he had been signed to play patriarch Ward Cleaver on the classic TV series Leave It to Beaver, Hugh Beaumont had been walking quite the challenging tightrope between playing movie tough guys — including private detective Michael Shayne in five movies between 1946 and 1947 — while also serving as a minister […]