Roger Ebert, Celebrating his 40th Anniversary as a Film Critic, Returns to Action

The Archive has now posted its interview with Roger Ebert, conducted in 2005 on the set of Ebert & Roeper in Chicago. Click here to access his entire interview.

Roger Ebert, the first person to win the Pulitizer Prize for Film Criticism, is celebrating his 40th anniversary as film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.

He is making progress on his health and as stated on his website, he expects to attend his Ninth Annual Overlooked Film Festival which runs today through April 29, if only as an audience member ("friends and colleagues will take onstage Q&A duties").

As Ebert writes in a letter on his website rogerebert.com: "I think of the festival as the first step in my return to action.... I plan to gradually increase my duties in the months to come."

Interview description:
Ebert spoke about his interest in the movies while growing up and his work as a youth, freelance writing on various publications up through his college years. He talked about joining the Chicago Sun-Times in 1966 and being named the paper’s film critic in early 1967, a post that eventually earned him the first Pulitizer Prize given for film criticism. He briefly talked about his early experiences on television before he was teamed with Gene Siskel on the local WTTW movie review series Opening Soon at a Theatre Near You. Ebert noted the many incarnations of the show, which went national on PBS and then was nationally syndicated, becoming the familiar Siskel and Ebert. He talked about working with his longtime colleague and sometime rival Gene Siskel, who co-hosted the show until his death in February 1999. Ebert described the transitional period that followed until Richard Roeper was offered the job “across the aisle” from him on the renamed Ebert and Roeper in July 2000. Ebert talked about various aspects of the series including the thumbs up/ thumbs down grading system, the use of movie clips on the show, and the impact the show has had on the movies. Throughout the interview, Ebert showed his passion for the movies and his respect for them as an art form. The interview was conducted by Gary Rutkowski on November 2, 2005.

Dennis Franz's Archive Interview Is Now Online!

Multi-Emmy Award-winning actor Dennis Franz's 2-1/2 hour interview is now online. Franz was awarded four Emmy Awards for playing "Andy Sipowicz" on NYPD Blue.


In part 4 of his interview, Franz talks about working on NYPD Blue.
CLICK ON THE ARROW IN THE PLAYER ABOVE TO VIEW.

Click here to view Dennis Franz's entire interview.

Interview Description:
Franz talked about his early years breaking into theater, including his work performing as a regular member of the Organic Theater Company in Chicago in the early 1970s. He described acting in several films of Robert Altman and Brian DePalma and his association with each of these directors early in his career. He spoke about his work on Hill Street Blues: describing his storylines and acting with the ensemble. He discussed the short-lived baseball comedy-drama series Bay City Blues, its subsequent cancellation, and his return to Hill Street Blues as another character. He commented on the spin-off series Beverly Hills Buntz, an attempt at the time, Franz states, for the creation of a “dramedy,” which was twice reworked. He spoke in great detail about the role for which he is most associated “Andy Sipowicz” (by Franz’s count his 28th role as a cop) on NYPD Blue: his suggestions for his character (including an idea to introduce a mixed relationship for him, which was rejected), his reaction to the nudity and violence on the show, what he felt distinguished the show from other cop shows, working with writer-producer David Milch, and working with the many ensemble actors. The interview was conducted by Stephen J. Abramson on October 12, 2006.

"To Tell The Truth" Panelist and Broadway Actress Kitty Carlisle Hart Has Died

Kitty Carlisle Hart, best known for her long run as a regular panelist on To Tell The Truth (from 1957 to 1991 in its various runs), and who acted in film with the likes of the Marx Brothers and Bing Crosby, has died at age 96. Ms. Hart remained active doing a one-woman show, "My Life On the Wicked Stage," in recent years.



Kitty Carlisle Hart was interviewed in 2005 by the Archive of American Television in conjunction with New York Women in Film & Televison. Her complete interview, can be viewed at Academy Headquarters in North Hollywood.


Interview Description:
Ms. Hart talked about her early musical training in violin and piano. She reminisced about some of her appearances in movies in the 1930s, including working with Bing Crosby and her insistence on using her own singing voice in the Marx Brothers vehicle A Night at the Opera. She spoke fondly of her years as a regular panelist on the long-running game show To Tell the Truth. She talked about other television appearances and later films including Woody Allen’s Radio Days. She also spoke about her late husband, playwright Moss Hart who she said was the love of her life and “made a party by just stepping in the room.” The interview was conducted by Peggy Daniel in a joint venture with Women in Film, on November 8, 2005.

UPDATE: 4/26/07 KITTY CARLISLE HART'S 2-PART INTERVIEW IS NOW POSTED ON GOOGLE VIDEO. HERE ARE THE LINKS:
Interview with Kitty Carlisle Hart Part 1 of 2
Interview with Kitty Carlisle Hart Part 2 of 2

TV Set Photos From Bakelite to Plasma: TV Through the Ages

Here's a fun site, courtesy of WIRED magazine, with photos of televisions and television technology from the 1920s to today. You can access it by clicking the link below.

From Bakelite to Plasma: TV Through the Ages

Actress Ruby Dee's Interview is Now Online

Actress Ruby Dee's Archive of American Television interview is now online.

Interview Description:
In her 4-part (each 30-minute segment is posted separately) oral history interview, actress Ruby Dee describes her start in feature filmsand on Broadway. She describes the experience of being an African-American lead actress working in series television — a rarity in the 1950s and 60s. She discusses her early work in television, such as her regular role in the 1955 soap opera This Is Nora Drake. She talks about her continued work in television in the 1960s on the anthology series Actor’s Choice, Camera Three, and Play of the Week, as well as the drama series The Nurses, East Side/West Side, and The Defenders. She talks about her regular roles on the series The Guiding Light (as “Martha Frazier”) and Peyton Place (as “Alma Miles”)and her numerous roles in television movies and miniseries in the 1970s including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Roots: The Next Generations. She speaks of her collaborations with her husband of many years (and Archive interviewee) Ossie Davis, including their radio show With Ossie and Ruby (1981-82). The interview was conducted May 15, 2000 by Harold Dow.

Click here to access all four parts.



In part 3 of her interview (above), Ms. Dee discusses her involvement in the Civil Rights movement. (Please excuse the opening image -- Google Video hasn't found a way to choose a first frame.)
CLICK THE ARROW TO PLAY THE SEGMENT.

"Boston Legal" Flashes Back to a 50-Year-Old Dramatic Television Classic

Last night's episode of Boston Legal found William Shatner flashing back to a role he played during television's Golden Age.

"The Defender," shown on the dramatic anthology series Studio One, in two parts on February 25 and March 4, 1957, starred Ralph Bellamy and William Shatner as a father-son legal team who defend a man who Bellamy is convinced is guilty but who Shatner thinks deserves the best defense they can give him. The show was written by one of the period's most acclaimed authors, Reginald Rose, who was also responsible for "Twelve Angry Men." Variety said that the show "struck hard at the emotions with gripping tensity" and was "starkly realistic."


The plot of "The Defender" was grafted onto Boston Legal when a man walks into "Crane, Poole, and Schmidt" with explosives strapped to him demanding a mock re-trial of the case in the office's conference room. The man says that Denny Crane and his father got his mother's killer off with courtroom trickery. The episode employed the black & white kinescope of the "live" Studio One show with a youthful Shatner in one of his earliest television appearances. "Son of the Defender" was written by Phoef Sutton & David E. Kelley and directed by Bill D'Elia.


William Shatner discussed his appearance on Studio One: "The Defender" in his Archive of American Television interview (at 15 minutes in to part 3).

Produced by Herbert Brodkin and directed by Robert Mulligan, "The Defender" was adapted into the critically acclaimed, Emmy-winning series The Defenders (1961-65, CBS), starring E. G. Marshall and a pre-Brady Bunch Robert Reed.

Reginald Rose was interviewed for Jeff Kisseloff's authoritative oral history The Box: An Oral History of Television 1920-61 and was profiled in the October 2002 issue of Emmy Magazine.

TV Executive Thomas W. Moore Has Died

Archive interviewee Tom Moore, former program chief of ABC (1957-63), ABC president (1963-68) and independent producer (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, the Body Human series), died at the age of 88 on March 31.

Here are some excerpts from his interview:

On ABC’s Monday Night Football.
We started Monday Night Football in 1970. Pete Rozelle had NBC and CBS, where do we put ABC? Well, it started out with a luncheon, and it was Friday Night Football. That was what we were going to buy. It wasn’t going to be Monday Night at all. I was very strong on Monday at that time and didn’t want to pre-empt programming after nine o’clock for football.

On ABC’s Wide World of Sports.
I believe the first Wide World of Sports event was a Drake Relay and it was terrible. It was a very inexpensive sports program cause we paid very little for rights to anything. But it began to pick up when we saw it had a combination in February of that year of skiing in New Hampshire, and water surfing in Hawaii in the same show. And then we got a big rating on that and it took off.

On bringing The Flintstones to television.
John Mitchell was head of Screen Gems, which was totally owned by Columbia Pictures. John was a terrific salesman. They made a deal with a pair of guys Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. They called us and said, “We would like to show you something and Joe Barbera will be there.”….We went up there and the room is completely filled with storyboard. Joe Barbera started in one corner at the top and went around the room and performed the whole pilot and it was a rip-off almost entirely of Honeymooners. The characters, the relationships, the whole damn thing -- it was just Honeymooners all over again. If you can believe it, we agreed to that thing. Now, the commitment on animation is a long time and you have to make it way ahead. We committed to it for next year, eight thirty on Friday night.

On The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
There was this book called The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman, by Ernest Gaines and we’d, we bought an option on it. ABC gave us the money to do the script. The script was done by Tracy Keenan Wynn whom I had never heard of then, except he was a grandson of Ed Wynn and his father was Keenan Wynn, and Tracy wrote a script that I thought was just the best doggone thing that I’d ever seen. I got to work and was casting the thing when ABC’s Barry Diller, told me it’s fraught with too many dangers and we’re not going to make it. I took it to Bobby Wood at CBS who in the meantime had hired Freddy Silverman as the Head of Programming and Freddy was as enthusiastic about it as I was and CBS cast Cicely Tyson and she was magnificent in it. We made that picture for $1.2 million dollars, and I tried to talk Bobby into letting me go to two hours and a half. Freddy wanted to but Bob didn’t want to; that messed up his schedule. But it, it won great acclaim, it is now still a classic in that it is shown at schools and colleges and everywhere else.

On how he’d like to be remembered.
I would like to be remembered as one of the pioneers in this business who made contributions that were substantial, that I was always square with people even when I lost and I want to be remembered as somebody who never intentionally set out to harm anybody.

Moore was interviewed by the Archive of American Television in January of 2003.

The complete five-and-a-half hour interview, in which he discusses his long and distinguished career, can be viewed at Academy Headquarters in North Hollywood, CA.

ADDENDUM: (POSTED 4/6/2007) THOMAS MOORE'S INTERVIEW HAS NOW BEEN POSTED ONLINE. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW.