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There are generations that have never seen Sid Caesar become an automobile tire or Red Skelton stick his thumbs in his armpits and intone, "Two theagulls...," never journeyed with Ernie Kovacs to a surrealistic world of his warped imagination. Here seventeen comic talents are profiled (with photographs): their early years, marriages and personal challenges, anecdotes about them, the characters they created, their styles, and often representative dialogue or sketch descriptions. There is a listing of all television shows in which each comic starred (giving length, network, air dates). The comics include Lucille Ball, Milton Berle, Carol Burnett, Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Tim Conway, Jackie Gleason, Danny Kaye, Ernie Kovacs, Olsen and Johnson, Martha Raye, Soupy Sales, Red Skelton, Dick Van Dyke, Flip Wilson, Jonathan Winters, and Ed Wynn.
This work indexes books, dissertations and journal articles that mention television shows. Memoirs, autobiographies, biographies, and some popular works meant for fans are also indexed. The major focus is on service to researchers in the history of television. Listings are keyed to an annotated bibliography. Appendices include a list of websites; an index of groups or classes of people on television; and a list of programs by genre. Changes from the second edition include more than 300 new shows, airing on a wider variety of networks; 2000-plus references (more than double the second edition); and a large increase in scholarly articles. The book provides access to materials on almost 2300 shows, including groundbreaking ones like All in the Family (almost 200 entries); cult favorites like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (200-plus entries); and a classic franchise, Star Trek (more than 400 entries for all the shows). The shows covered range from the late 1940s to 2010 (The Walking Dead). References range from 1956 to 2013.
Books recommended for undergraduate and college libraries listed by Library of Congress Classification Numbers.
A rich account that combines media-industry history and cultural studies, Their Own Best Creations looks at women writers' contributions to some of the most popular genres of postwar TV: comedy-variety, family sitcom, daytime soap, and suspense anthology. During the 1950s, when the commercial medium of television was still being defined, women writers navigated pressures at work, constructed public personas that reconciled traditional and progressive femininity, and asserted that a woman's point of view was essential to television as an art form. The shows they authored allegorize these professional and personal pressures and articulate a nascent second-wave feminist consciousness. Annie Berke brings to light the long-forgotten and under-studied stories of these women writers and crucially places them in the historical and contemporary record.
Discusses the careers of such women as Gracie Allen, Lucille Ball, Whoopi Goldberg, Roseanne, and Ellen DeGeneres and the impact they had on comedy.
At first glance, Lloyd Hamilton was a large, baby-faced comic who walked like a duck. To the trained eye, Hamilton demonstrated keen timing and an inventive mind, providing wry humor rich in emotion during his 20 year career. Perhaps most importantly, Hamilton was greatly admired by his fellow comics, receiving praise from the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. This book explores Hamilton's life and work, beginning with his conservative, middle-class childhood and continuing through the comic's entry into show business as a theatre extra, his most memorable role as half of silent comedy's "Ham and Bud" duo, and his first feature film, The Darker Self. The author examines Hamilton's private life and alcoholism and the decline of his health and career, which led to his death at the age of 43. The book includes exclusive photographs from the Hamilton family, a filmography with detailed plot descriptions, many behind-the-scenes facts, and an analysis of Hamilton's critical lost feature film A Self-Made Failure.
A compendium of outrageous, hilarious or just plain shocking trivia about everything from history and politics to arts, religion, technology and much more. For years, the Chicago Tribune’s “10 Things You Might Not Know” column has been informing and entertaining readers on a diverse range of subjects. This volume collects the best of these columns, offering readers obscure, fascinating facts on universal topics that will appeal to everyone from sports fans to history buffs, foodies, and more. Expertly researched and thoroughly entertaining, 10 Things You Might Not Know About Nearly Everything contains a plethora of surprising trivia on numerous topics, with an especially close look into Chicago-area history and facts. For example, in Zion, Illinois it was once illegal to spit, eat oysters, wear tan-colored shoes, or whistle on Sundays. 10 Things You Might Not Know About Nearly Everything will leave readers brighter, wittier, and curious to learn more about myriad subjects and stories they will never forget.
From the conga line to West Side Story to Ricky Martin, how popular performance prompted American audiences to view Latinos as a distinct (and distinctly non-white) ethnic group