Blog Post From Yankees Batboy to "Roots: The Next Generations" - Thad Mumford Broke New Ground If you had asked a young Thad Mumford what he wanted to be when he grew up, he would not have predicted that he’d one day become the prolific writer of television shows like M*A*S*H and A Different World . As a kid, Mumford wanted nothing more than to be a New York Yankees’ player. While he never...
Blog Post Forgotten Lines, Laughing Fits, and Wrong Envelopes: A Brief History of the Television Blooper LA LA-gate! On February 26, 2017, if you were watching the end of the broadcast of the 89th Academy Awards, you were rewarded with seeing a bit of history. If you’re reading this I can’t imagine you don’t know, but Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were handed the wrong envelope, and thus announced...
Blog Post Presidents' Day! Celebrate Presidents' Day with our Google Cultural Institute exhibit: American Presidential Inaugurations!
Blog Post Mary, Rhoda, and Phyllis: TV's First Realistic Female Friends Hearing the news of Mary Tyler Moore’s passing in January really stung. Her contributions to the art forms of television and comedy are incalculable. The characters from The Mary Tyler Moore Show (and The Dick Van Dyke Show , for that matter) are as familiar as family. Mary Richards and her friends...
Blog Post He's Catching Up to the 2000 Year-Old Man: Carl Reiner Turns 96! Happy 96th birthday, Carl Reiner!
Blog Post The Mary Tyler Moore Show Finale at 40 Forty years ago, on March 19, 1977, the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show took their final bow. The series finale, “The Last Show” saw the gang at WJM facing a new station manager and a round of surprise firings. Show creators Allan Burns and James L. Brooks brought back every writer who had...
Blog Post TV Tunes: Some Thoughts on the Theme Song Television theme songs, at their best, trigger an almost Pavlovian response in the viewer. After seven years, when one heard, “Woke up this morning…” one became instantly primed for the superb writing, fine acting, and sometimes horrifying violence of The Sopranos . The jaunty I Love Lucy theme...
