Recent Interviews

We have over 900 interviews in our collection, most of which are available for viewing online. See the most recently uploaded interviews below.

Frank Biondo

Tue, 03/30/2021

In his three-hour interview, Frank Biondo talks about his childhood in Brooklyn, joining the Navy, and being a bond clerk on Wall Street before going to school for TV production and learning to be a camera operator. He discusses his early jobs in production at WTTV in Washington, D.C. and WBZ in Boston before getting hired by NBC in New York. He describes being a camera operator at the 1964 World's Fair, at the United Nation's General Assembly sessions, on the show Supermarket Sweep...

Lee Holdridge

Wed, 03/17/2021

In his two-hour-and-forty-minute interview, Lee Holdridge talks about his parents' influence on his career and moving to Boston at an early age to study music. He discusses his early paid composing jobs, doing arrangements for RCA records, being a dance arranger for Broadway shows, working with mentor Milt Okun and Placido Domingo, and his involvement with music education outreach at the LA Opera. He speaks in depth about his passion for opera and writing full-length...

Nina Shaw

Wed, 02/24/2021

In her two-and-a-half-hour interview, Nina Shaw describes growing up in Harlem, New York and attending Barnard College and Columbia Law School, and recalls how she became interested in pursuing a career as an entertainment lawyer. She speaks of her time at O'Melveny & Myers, working with clients Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin of Tandem Productions/T.A.T. Communications, comments on the contributions of Lear and Yorkin to creating the business of syndication, and talks of ...

Whoopi Goldberg

Wed, 02/17/2021

In her two-hour-plus interview, Whoopi Goldberg talks about growing up in Chelsea, Manhattan, and describes the plays ("The Great White Hope," starring James Earl Jones) and films (In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier) that made an impact on her when she was young. She details how she left New York to begin her career as a performer and outlines the development of the topics and characters for her one-woman show, "The Spook Show." She explains how Mike Nichols...

Charles Floyd Johnson

Tue, 11/24/2020

In his three-and-a-half-hour interview, Charles Floyd Johnson discusses his early interest in the entertainment industry and attending Howard University for both undergraduate studies and for law school. He talks of being drafted in the Vietnam War and working at Fort Dix, and later working as a lawyer for the U.S. Copyright Office in Washington, D.C. He recalls his move to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of acting and details how he got a job in the Universal mailroom...

Ted Sarandos

Thu, 10/15/2020

In his two-hour interview, Ted Sarandos talks about growing up in Phoenix, his early journalistic ambitions, and his childhood love of television. He discusses how he began working at video stores and his post-college career at video distribution companies and overseeing revenue share deals. He talks about coming to the attention of Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, their first meeting, and how he came to be hired as Netflix’s Chief Content Officer. Sarandos discusses the company’s...

Dr. John Leverence

Fri, 09/18/2020

In his four-hour interview Dr. John Leverence talks about growing up in Kansas City, MO and the impact television had on him at a young age. He discusses pursuing a Masters in English and Literature from the University of Chicago and then receiving a PhD in Popular Culture from Bowling Green University where he also taught media studies. He discusses moving to California to teach at Cal State Long Beach in their Radio-TV department, and learning about the Television Academy from a former...

Tracey Ullman

Fri, 09/11/2020

In her three-hour-and-fifteen-minute interview Tracey Ullman talks about growing up in England and how she started doing impersonations as a kid. She discusses attending a performing arts school starting at the age of 12, leaving school at 16 to be a dancer in Berlin, and how she made the transition into acting. She details how she came to be cast in the improvised play “Four in a Million” and how that led to her being cast on a BBC sketch comedy show. She talks about her years as a pop star...

Sandra Gimpel

Thu, 08/13/2020

In her three-and-a-half-hour interview, Sandra Gimpel talks about growing up in Los Angeles and the influence her father, a gymnast, had on her, including inspiring her early interest in fitness and dance. She talks about beginning her professional career as a dancer, and how she came to dance in fifteen Elvis Presley movies. Gimpel describes the experience of working with Elvis, including the time that the casts spent together off-set. She then discusses how she came to work in stunts,...