TV Confidential with Ed Robertson

TVC 682.4: Burt Kearns, author of SHEMP! The Biography of The Three Stooges' Shemp Howard: The Face of Film Comedy, talks to Ed and guest co-host Chuck Harter about some of the more notable roles in Shemp Howard's diverse career as a solo actor, including Private Buckaroo (1942), a musical comedy featuring Harry James, The Andrews Sisters, and Mary Wickes that Burt says is as close to a star vehicle that Shemp ever had; why Shemp rejoined The Stooges in 1946, after Curly's debilitating stroke; and why rejoining the Stooges gave Shemp an immortality that he may not have achieved had he remained on his own. SHEMP! is available through Applause Books.

TVC 682.5: Burt Kearns, author of SHEMP! The Biography of The Three Stooges' Shemp Howard: The Face of Film Comedy, talks to Ed and guest co-host Chuck Harter about how the repeated blows to the head that Shemp Howard, Curly Howard, and Larry Fine all took during the many live appearances that The Three Stooges made every year during their annual hiatus from Columbia Pictures resulted in cerebral hemorrhages that proved to be fatal for all three actors. SHEMP! is available through Applause Books.

We'll be back with a brand new edition of TV Confidential later this week. In the meantime, please enjoy this clip from March 2012 in which Tony, Donna and Ed remember "A House Divided," the famous episode of Dallas that launched the "Who Shot J.R.?" phenomenon of 1980. "A House Divided" originally aired Mar. 21, 1980.

We'll be back with a brand new edition of TV Confidential later this week. In the meantime, please enjoy this clip from March 2013 in which Tony, Donna, and Ed remember the first nationally televised broadcast of the Academy Awards ceremony, which took place on Mar. 19, 1953 during This Week in TV History.

TVC 681.1: Music journalist A. Scott Galloway joins Ed as TV Confidential remembers the life and legacy of Grammy Award-winning recording artist Roberta Flack. Scott interviewed Flack in 1988 for her comeback album, Oasis, plus he wrote a very eloquent essay on his Facebook page that captures why the news of her death struck a chord with music lovers around the world, particularly those of us who grew up listening to her songs playing on the radio throughout the 1970s. Roberta Flack passed away Monday, Feb. 24 at the age of eighty-eight. Topics this segment include how Flack was a "full, 360-degree" artist; her tireless activism on behalf of gay rights, women's rights, people's rights, and liberty as an American human being; how Clint Eastwood changed the trajectory of Flack's life and career by integrating "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" in the pivotal love sequence between Eastwood and Donna Mills in Play Misty for Me; and how the success of Oasis was a "buoyant, wonderful surprise."

TVC 681.2: From October 2010: Charles Fox, the Grammy Award-winning and Emmy Award-winning composer who co-wrote "Killing Me Softly with His Song" along with Norman Gimbel, talks to Ed about the phone call he received from Roberta Flack in 1972, asking if she could perform "Killing Me Softly," and how that call changed Charles' life. Nearly forty years later, Flack wrote the foreword to Charles' memoir, Killing Me Softly: My Life in Music (Scarecrow Press, 2010). Roberta Flack passed away Monday, Feb. 24 at the age of eighty-eight.

TVC 681.2a: From January 2012: Television writer/producer Larry Brody takes Ed and his listeners behind the scenes of Police Story (NBC, 1973-1979), the Emmy Award-winning police anthology series created by Joseph Wambaugh and executive produced by David Gerber. Larry received one of his first breaks in television working with Gerber. Topics this segment include Gerber's peculiar mandate that discouraged writers on his shows from ever allowing characters to show any positive emotion. Joseph Wambaugh passed away Friday, Feb. 28 at the age of eighty-eight. Also in this segment: A remembrance of Gene Hackman, the Academy Award-winning actor who was found dead in his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, along with his wife Betsy Arakawa, on Wednesday, Feb. 26.

TVC 681.3: Ed welcomes back singer/actress Linda Purl (Happy Days, Matlock, The Office). Linda is about to star in Crazy Mama, a riveting one-woman play that not only sheds light on the issue of mental illness with Southern-style humor and directness, but will feature Linda playing sixteen different characters. Ed asks Linda what first attracted her to the play and how she approaches to taking on the various personalities she must assume over the course of the story, plus Linda shares a few memories about working with Garry Marshall, including the many ways that Marshall kept the cast of Happy Days grounded despite the show's enormous success. Written by Sharon Scott Williams and directed by Linda's fellow Happy Days alumnus Anson Williams, Crazy Mama makes its world premiere at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura, California on Wednesday, Mar. 26 through Sunday, Apr. 6. For tickets and more information, call (805) 667-2900 or go to RubiconTheatre.org. Linda Purl will also perform at the Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood, California for one night only, Sunday, Mar. 16, beginning at 7:30pm. Click here for tickets and more information.

TVC 681.4: Part 2 of a conversation that began last week with Anne Serling and Jodi Serling, the daughters of Rod Serling, and Marc Scott Zicree, longtime television writer/producer and the author of The Twilight Zone Companion. Dec. 25, 2024 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Rod Serling, while the 2024-2025 television season marks the 65th anniversary of the premiere of The Twilight Zone on CBS. In this segment, Anne and Jodi share a few examples of the "many moments of helpless hilarity" that they often experienced while growing up with their dad; Marc talks about how Serling, like many good writers, "listened more than he talked"; while Anne and Jodi both discuss Serling's experience as a teacher at Ithaca College in New York, and how he often learned more from his students that they did from him. Both The Twilight Zone Companion and Anne's book, As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling, are available wherever books are sold.

TVC 681.5: Anne Serling and Jodi Serling, the daughters of Rod Serling, and Marc Scott Zicree, author of The Twilight Zone Companion, share some final thoughts with Ed about the legacy of Rod Serling, including how Serling never "saw the signpost up ahead" with regard to the tremendous impact that his writing continues to have. Both The Twilight Zone Companion and Anne's book, As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling, are available wherever books are sold.