Popular '50s TV Star Gale Storm Has Died at age 87-- Archive Interview Online

Gale Storm became America's sweetheart, playing free-spirited "Margie Albright" on the sitcom My Little Margie, forever trying to keep her widowed father (Charles Farrell) out of (romantic) troubles. She followed up this series playing social director "Susanna Pomeroy" of the "S. S. Ocean Queen" on The Gale Storm Show aka Oh, Susanna.

Gale Storm was interviewed for three-and-a-half hours in Monarch Beach, CA.; the interview was conducted by Beth Eras on February 19, 1999.

Click here to watch Gale Storm's entire 7-part Archive Interview.

The Backstory: How Michael Jackson almost didn't make TV History in 1983

"...I shudder to think how close we came to not having that moment ever happen."


Although not yet online, here's a striking interview excerpt from the Archive of American Television's interview with legendary producer, Don Mischer, who co-produced and directed Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, where Michael Jackson mesmerized the audience with his tradmark "moonwalk." The interview was conducted November 7, 2008 by Beth Cochran.

"Suzanne de Passe had called me. She was a longtime associate of Berry Gordy and Motown Records and we started having meetings about doing a celebratory show about the 25th anniversary of Motown. I grew up on Motown music. The Temptations, the Tops, the Miracles, Smokey Robinson, it was just right down my alley. We started working on that.

It was a tough show to do. Many of the artists that appeared on that stage that night were suing Berry Gordy. Suzanne and I used to fight these battles about people wanting to do new material because many of them had left the Motown label and wanted to do new songs. Suzanne was so eloquent in talking to them. Our approach was: this is the 25th anniversary of Motown, it's a celebration of music that started in Detroit and has now swept the nation. It did so much for civil rights, for the merging of black and white music, “you must do your most famous Motown song. You can’t do a new song.” We said that to Marvin Gaye and to the Tops and the Temps and everybody else who was on that show.

We wanted to bring the Jackson 5 back together. Michael Jackson said, “I will consider coming back again with my brothers, but I want to do a new song.” Suzanne and I said, “look, we can’t do that. If you say no to Marvin Gaye and no to Lionel Ritchie, no to a new song, how are you going to say yes to Michael Jackson? We really, really can’t do this. It's not fair, it's got to be favored nations, everybody’s got to do the traditional stuff.” And it was like the Monday before the show which was being shot on a Friday, that we finally realized that it was too much to lose to not have the Jackson 5 reunite on the 25th anniversary of Motown. So we said, we’re going to at least have to consider it.

It's now the night before the Friday night taping. I’m in the truck. Michael shows up. We talk about how we’re going to do the Jackson 5. Michael always gives me hand cues about when to do certain things. “When I break my wrist I do this, when I point this way, I take my hat off and we, you know, whatever.” So Linda Ronstadt’s out there, Smokey’s out there, Diana Ross was just sitting in the audience, a bunch of runners and Pas sitting around. And Michael says, “okay, now let’s try the new song.”

Michael starts to do “Billie Jean” with the moonwalk. And I kick myself today: why didn’t I pop a piece of tape into a tape recorder in the truck and shoot this? I didn’t think about it. It was just another song, we were prepared not use. And man, it just electrified everyone! You know the rest of the story. He ended up doing it and it became one of the real remarkable moments in television. I shudder to think how close we came to not having that moment ever happen."

Rick Baker on the making of Michael Jackson's Thriller

The Archive interviewed make-up artist Rick Baker in 2003 about his work in film and television. Baker also worked on Michael Jackson's infamous Thriller music video, and talks about the star and the process of creating the "zombie" looks in this interview excerpt.





Detailed Description:
Rick Baker was interviewed for nearly two hours in Glendale, CA. He talked about his desire to become a doctor when he grew up, and having an epiphany that the doctor he actually wanted to be was “Dr. Frankenstein,” so he could make monsters. He described his youthful interest in monster magazines and model kits and discussed producing his own 8mm version of Frankenstein. He talked about the influence of television in his formative years and how being in front of the “box” led him to his career path, discovering the world of make-up through the horror/ sci-fi television series of the 1960s and the “Million Dollar Movie” which ran classic films. He talked about his first professional job, when he was a teenager, at the (Art) Clokey Studios, where he was a puppet designer for the stop-motion animation series Davey and Goliath. He talked about writing a letter to his mentor, legendary make-up artist Dick Smith, who invited him to his house and showed him his make-up lab and taught him the tricks of the trade. He spoke about their continued association that culminated in Baker’s assisting Smith on the feature film The Exorcist. He talked about the Emmy-Award-winning work he did (with Stan Winston) on the landmark television movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, in which the lead character ages to 110 years old. He discussed how, due to the fact that he was not in the union, he was paired with Winston and how their collaboration was complicated due to their divergent techniques. He described his memorable work on the Cantina sequence in the movie blockbuster Star Wars. He spoke about his groundbreaking, Academy-Award winning work for An American Werewolf in London, which featured werewolf metamorphosis sequences that did not rely on optical effects. Additionally, Baker talked about his work on Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video, the series Beauty and the Beast, and the feature film Ed Wood, in which he transformed Martin Landau into Bela Lugosi. The interview was conducted by Stephen J. Abramson on February 24, 2003.

Longtime CBS Executive Anne Nelson Has Died-- Archive Interview Now Online

Anne Nelson, who worked at CBS for over sixty years, died at the age of 86. In her Archive interview, conducted on July 25, 1999, she discussed the many shows and talents that she came in touch with in her long association with the network. After many years of title changes and promotions throughout her tenure at CBS, she was named Vice President of the CBS Television Business Affairs Department in 1998.



Interview description:

Ms. Nelson talked about working with the CBS network since she graduated from college in 1945. She discussed her many promotions in the Business Affairs department, including becoming Director of Talent Administration in 1973. She discussed many shows she was involved with, either for radio or television, including I Love Lucy, The Red Skelton Show, Gunsmoke, Hawaii Five-O and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She also discussed the contract negotiations she was a part of involving such talent as Judy Garland, Carol Burnett, and Norman Lear. She also spoke about the challenges of being one of the only women in a predominately male business.

The Tonight Show's Ed McMahon Has Died at age 86-- Archive Interview Online

Ed McMahon will forever be associated with The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and his trademark "Herrrrrre's Johnny" introduction, but in a career that spanned nearly 60 years, he was also known for his annual work with Jerry Lewis' MDA Telethon and as the host of Star Search and (with Dick Clark) TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes. Here are some excerpts from McMahon's 2002 Archive interview in which he talks about The Tonight Show.

On his role as the sidekick of "The Tonight Show":
That role, the way I was able to do it, in my mind, I loved it. And second bananas go back to Greek Drama, way back to the golden age of Greece, they had second bananas, the friend of the boss, throwing little jabs in, you know. Having a counterpoint, something different and that was my role and [Carson] let me do it and it was wonderful.

On not overstepping his bounds:
Oftentimes I see shows where the guy intrudes, but he shouldn’t have intruded. You know my attitude about being the second banana was to be in when needed and out of the way when not needed. And that’s an art form.

On the "art form" in action:
Johnny always had a cigarette lighter on his desk. And he’s doing a piece of material, [off] a sheet of paper, and he’s doing jokes, and he goes down the first page and [it's] very mild, it’s not clicking at all. The second page, about the second joke, it’s really not working. The audience is not buying it, and it’s not funny. Very bravely— I have to be brave, cause he may have the biggest joke in the world later on— I pick up the cigarette lighter, I light it... and here’s the boss doing a piece of comedy material that eight writers have written, and he may have a lot of stuff in here that he can’t wait to get to and its dying, but I take a chance, and he holds it [over] and lets it burn, just lets it burn. And the audience is going crazy, they’re dying. And he looks at me, and he reaches over, he picks up the wastepaper basket and very gingerly, now it’s really on fire, he lifts up the top of the wastepaper basket, and just as he does, Doc Severinson on the trumpet plays "Taps." Now eight writers in a room for a week wouldn’t come up with that bit, that just happened, but that’s how you feel each other, how you know. The bit is dying, there’s no place to go, how do you solve it? Again me nailing the boss, you know.... so the audience loved that.

On how he and Carson kept their working relationship spontaneous:
I would meet Johnny before the show in his dressing room for about 7 minutes. We would never, ever talk about the show. We’d talk about anything else, you know, currently [now in 2002, it would be] will the Pope retire in Poland and will there be a replacement? And he’d have something funny to say about that. There’d be something funny, you know, maybe they’ll move the Vatican to Warsaw, it’ll look nice in Warsaw, you know. It rains a lot, but, you know it’d be a joke or something. That’s what we would do before the show. Never, ever, you do this, I’ll do that, I’m going to say this...

On Carson's use of McMahon to see how the show was going:
Johnny would do his monologue and do the golf swing and we’d go to the commercial and then I would be standing at the mike you know, watching him, him watching me, you know he would also like play to me to see how it was going, you know I was his thermometer. You know, is this going good? You know, he’d look over at me.

On Johnny Carson's acceptance of McMahon's role:
We never discussed it. There was never any complements, there was never any criticism. He never said you’re doing a good job, he never said you’re doing something I don’t like. In 30 years, that never came up.

On his trademark introduction of Carson:
The first time I introduced him I came up with that gimmick of the "heeeeere’s" elongating the here’s, I thought of that that afternoon. That day October 1st 1962, I thought of it, and nobody told me to do it, I didn’t ask anybody's permission, I just didn’t feel like saying "Here’s Johnny Carson"— didn’t seem like enough for me. It should be bigger than that, it should be more explosive, more expansive, more lights, more fireworks. So I came up with the idea of expanding "here’s," and I knew I was right cause the next morning, when I got to work, when I came in, everybody I met was saying, "heeeeere’s Johnny," because they knew we had scored, you know, it’d been a hit, and everybody on the staff, everybody in the hall, you know, the pages all the people that you’d run into walking through NBC in New York, were repeating it, I said I know I got something. So I kept doing it, no one told me to stop.

Click here for Ed McMahon's full 8-part interview.

Editor Sidney M. Katz Has Died-- Archive Interview Online Soon

Sidney M. Katz, who received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Cinema Editors in February, has died at the age of 91. His career spanned over sixty years, and among his television highlights were the series See It Now, Omnibus, and The Defenders (for which he won an Emmy Award).

Some excerpts from his February 14, 2009 interview:

Q: What advice would you give to someone going into editing today?
I’d say, it’s a fun sport, you’re going to have to take a lot, you’re going to take a beating growing up and it’s all worth it when you get there. And I think it’s a great profession and it’s hard one to get into today and it has its rewards. If you enjoy it, stick with it, if you don’t, find something you like.

Q: What has been the highlight of your career?
Well, I think getting an Emmy for one, getting the nominations and above all this lifetime achievement came out of the blue and at my stage of life, I find this very exciting. I mean, it’s topped everything and I didn’t expect it.

Q: How would you like to be remembered?
Well, just as an editor who helped-- and it’s true, I’ve helped, I’ll bet you at least fifty people. Ah, start cutting when they were assistants and kept at it, and worked with them and polished them up and today, I have a whole group of editors out there who I think I’m responsible for making them. And the other night when I went to that nominees thing, I was shocked when I walked in, this young man come up to me and he said, Sid Katz I want to thank you. He said I remember you teaching me to cut and I’ll never forget you. And I thought that was the biggest thing.

Happy Father's Day

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences celebrated TV Dads on Thursday June 18th and the Archive of American Television was there to catch a few of the "adored and endeared" fathers on the press line. Among the beloved patriarchs present were Stephen Collins, Bryan Cranston, Jon Cryer, Patrick Duffy, Michael Gross, Bill Paxton, Dick Van Dyke, Dick Van Patten, and Reginald VelJohnson.

Below, the Archive talks with Big Love's Bill Paxton on how his character fits in with the TV dads of earlier eras and Family's Ties' Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter talk about the family values of their show and the fun they had on the set.

"The Norman Lear Collection" Released on DVD

Comprising the first seasons of seven of Norman Lear's classic TV series, plus such extras as the newly-discovered All in the Family pilot "Justice for All," Sony releases "The Norman Lear Collection." Among the "season ones" included in the set: All in the Family; Good Times; The Jeffersons; Maude; Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (first 25 episodes only); One Day at a Time; and Sanford & Son. There are over six hours of bonus materials, including featurettes on all the shows.

"I was a part of a giant collaboration. That's the best thing I do, collaborate...." says the now 86-year-old Lear on the brief introduction to the set ("Don't Miss This"). In the first All in the Family featurette ("Those Were the Days: The Birth of All in the Family" [TRT 27:00]) Lear discuses how he and his father were the models for Archie and Mike and outlines the making of the pilot including the casting and characterizations of the leads. In the second All in the Family featurette ("The Television Revolution Begins: All in the Family Is on the Air" [TRT 30:40]) Lear talks about how the network wanted to air the second filmed show first (worried that the pilot script was too inflammatory), plus, in new and vintage interviews, we hear from from Lear, Carroll O'Connor, and the rest of the cast on the acceptance and popularity of the show, its characters and themes. Each of the series on the set have corresponding featurettes that similarly discuss their approach to social themes— a hallmark of all of Lear's shows.

The best part about the set is to compare the two pilots and the premiere episode of All in the Family— all of which used the same script, with some changes. The most significant difference was the re-casting of Mike and Gloria, until Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers got the parts for the series premiere. PHOTO: Norman Lear (at the DVD launch party held at the Paley Center for Media) speaks to Dan Wingate, Technical Specialist at Sony Pictures Entertainment, who uncovered the lost original pilot to All in the Family.

Watch the trailer for the DVD here.


Norman Lear discusses his thoughts on what constitutes the best of television, in his Archive of American Television interview:



Click her to watch the Archive's entire interview with Norman Lear.

Land of the Lost- the Archive interview with Sid&Marty Krofft

"Land of the Lost" starring Will Ferrell opens in theaters tomorrow. The film is based on the children's television series created by Sid and Marty Krofft, which followed a family thrown back in time to another world inhabited by dinasours.
The brothers were the creative force behind many other cult favorites, including "H.R. Pufnstuff", "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters", "Lidsville" and many others.

"Land of the Lost" was on the air from 1974-1977. Many writers involved in "Star Trek" also worked on the show, including archive interviewee D.C. Fontana. As they mention in this interview excerpt, there were many production challenges with this show which included both stop-motion animation, puppets, and live-action.



Detailed Interview Description:
Sid and Marty Krofft (Children’s Show Creators)

Sid and Marty Krofft were interviewed for three-and-a-half hours in Sherman Oaks, CA. The brothers recounted their early years in a puppeteering family and spoke about working with Judy Garland and appearing on The Dean Martin Show. After success in designing the live-action costumes for Banana Splits, they created their first television series, H.R. Pufnstuf, which launched them into childrens’ television. During the interview, they also talked about the origin of their other cult-favorite programs including: Lidsville, The Bugaloos, Lost Saucer, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, and Land of the Lost. The interview was conducted by Karen Herman on July 27, 2000.

Andy Richter's First Day on the "Tonight Show"

Yes, tonight is Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show debut, but lest we forget Andy Richter will be joining him as the show's announcer/comedy-bit contributor. Although NBC has eschewed the word sidekick in their press announcement, Richter's previous Late Night tenure was certainly reminiscent of Ed McMahon's Tonight Show role of faithful sidekick. On his start with The Tonight Show, the Archive offers advice to Andy from our interview with Ed in 2002.



On his role as the sidekick of "The Tonight Show":
That role, the way I was able to do it, in my mind, I loved it. And second bananas go back to Greek Drama, way back to the golden age of Greece, they had second bananas, the friend of the boss, throwing little jabs in, you know. Having a counterpoint, something different and that was my role and [Carson] let me do it and it was wonderful.

On not overstepping his bounds:
Oftentimes I see shows where the guy intrudes, but he shouldn’t have intruded. You know my attitude about being the second banana was to be in when needed and out of the way when not needed. And that’s an art form.

On the "art form" in action:
Johnny always had a cigarette lighter on his desk. And he’s doing a piece of material, [off] a sheet of paper, and he’s doing jokes, and he goes down the first page and [it's] very mild, it’s not clicking at all. The second page, about the second joke, it’s really not working. The audience is not buying it, and it’s not funny. Very bravely— I have to be brave, cause he may have the biggest joke in the world later on— I pick up the cigarette lighter, I light it... and here’s the boss doing a piece of comedy material that eight writers have written, and he may have a lot of stuff in here that he can’t wait to get to and its dying, but I take a chance, and he holds it [over] and lets it burn, just lets it burn. And the audience is going crazy, they’re dying. And he looks at me, and he reaches over, he picks up the wastepaper basket and very gingerly, now it’s really on fire, he lifts up the top of the wastepaper basket, and just as he does, Doc Severinson on the trumpet plays "Taps." Now eight writers in a room for a week wouldn’t come up with that bit, that just happened, but that’s how you feel each other, how you know. The bit is dying, there’s no place to go, how do you solve it? Again me nailing the boss, you know.... so the audience loved that.

On how he and Carson kept their working relationship spontaneous:
I would meet Johnny before the show in his dressing room for about 7 minutes. We would never, ever talk about the show. We’d talk about anything else, you know, currently [now in 2002, it would be] will the Pope retire in Poland and will there be a replacement? And he’d have something funny to say about that. There’d be something funny, you know, maybe they’ll move the Vatican to Warsaw, it’ll look nice in Warsaw, you know. It rains a lot, but, you know it’d be a joke or something. That’s what we would do before the show. Never, ever, you do this, I’ll do that, I’m going to say this...

On Carson's use of McMahon to see how the show was going:
Johnny would do his monologue and do the golf swing and we’d go to the commercial and then I would be standing at the mike you know, watching him, him watching me, you know he would also like play to me to see how it was going, you know I was his thermometer. You know, is this going good? You know, he’d look over at me.

On Johnny Carson's acceptance of McMahon's role:
We never discussed it. There was never any complements, there was never any criticism. He never said you’re doing a good job, he never said you’re doing something I don’t like. In 30 years, that never came up.

On his trademark introduction of Carson:
The first time I introduced him I came up with that gimmick of the "heeeeere’s" elongating the here’s, I thought of that that afternoon. That day October 1st 1962, I thought of it, and nobody told me to do it, I didn’t ask anybody's permission, I just didn’t feel like saying "Here’s Johnny Carson"— didn’t seem like enough for me. It should be bigger than that, it should be more explosive, more expansive, more lights, more fireworks. So I came up with the idea of expanding "here’s," and I knew I was right cause the next morning, when I got to work, when I came in, everybody I met was saying, "heeeeere’s Johnny," because they knew we had scored, you know, it’d been a hit, and everybody on the staff, everybody in the hall, you know, the pages all the people that you’d run into walking through NBC in New York, were repeating it, I said I know I got something. So I kept doing it, no one told me to stop.

Here's a link to Ed McMahon's entire 8-part Archive interview.

Producer of Classic TV, Richard Lewis, Has Died

Richard Lewis, who was responsible for producing several classics of television's Golden Age, has died at the age of 89. Richard Lewis was interviewed by the Archive by Karen Herman on March 8, 1999.

Link to Los Angeles Times obituary (scroll down on page).

His Archive interview is online at this link.

Interview Description:

Richard Lewis was interviewed for five hours in Somers, NY. Lewis discussed his early career as a director and later show creator in radio. He talked about his transition to television as a producer (which included Blind Date) and his role in the creation of the popular and long-running western series Wagon Train as well as his work on the acclaimed anthology series Alcoa Premiere. He also discussed producing several successful pilots for such series as Leave It To Beaver, Bachelor Father, and McHale's Navy. He talked about becoming the Vice President of MCA's Revue Television, which later became Universal Television. He detailed producing one of the first television movies, The Borgia Stick, and his becoming an independent producer of feature films shortly thereafter.