Bawden James - Conversations with Legendary Television Stars

Conversations with Legendary Television Stars

CONVERSATIONS WITH LEGENDARY TELEVISION STARS

Interviews from the First Fifty Years

James Bawden and Ron Miller

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Copyright 2019 by The University Press of Kentucky

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bawden, James, interviewer editor. | Miller, Ron, 1939 interviewer, editor.

Title: Conversations with legendary television stars : interviews from the first fifty years / James Bawden and Ron Miller.

Description: Lexington : The University Press of Kentucky, 2019. | Series: Screen classics | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019015002| ISBN 9780813177649 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813177663 (pdf) | ISBN 9780813177656 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Television broadcastingUnited States. | Television actors and actressesUnited StatesInterviews. | Television personalitiesUnited StatesInterviews.

Classification: LCC PN1992.3.U5 C68 2019 | DDC 791.4502/80922dc23

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting
the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

For my brother, Harry Bawden, and his wife, Martha, for putting up with me all these years.

James Bawden

In memory of four dear departed friends: the novelist Con Sellers, who showed me how to write and market short stories and articles to national magazines while I was still a college student; the great humorist Gerald Nachman, a pal and colleague for half a century; that whimsical wit Murry Frymer, a dear man and brilliant columnist; and the CBS publicist Axel Peterson, who helped me set up many of my interviews in this volume and became a beloved friend along the way.

Ron Miller

Contents

Introduction: How Television Created
Its Legendary Stars

Introduction

How Television Created Its Legendary Stars

Ron Miller

Since the late 1950s, when virtually every household finally possessed at least one TV set, television has been the dominant North American entertainment medium, replacing radio and severely impacting our moviegoing habits. Thats one of the primary reasons James Bawden and I decided early in our separate journalism careers to seek assignments covering the exciting world of television.

Of course, Jim and I were already intense movie fans, so it was a pleasure to discover that so many of the stars who had captivated us in our boyhood years were now working mainly in televisionand might actually be available to us for interviews should we wind up on the TV beat. It also was pretty obvious to us that the movie stars of the future were very likely to come from a television backgroundthe great new training ground for the next wave of comedians, action heroes, and musical stars of the big screen. In fact, that trend was already in progress when we started covering TV, and former TV stars like Clint Eastwood, Goldie Hawn, and Annette Funicello were now marquee names at the local bijou. Half a century or so later, its amazing how many of those stars who started on TV are now considered legendary icons of film.

Many actors who transitioned from movies to television had been bigname stars of the 1930s and 1940s whose box office appeal had faded as they aged, but who still had considerable name value for the TV screen: Lucille Ball, Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Wyman, Loretta Young, Robert Cummings, Robert Young, Ann Sothern, Jane Wyatt, and many more.

Some were veteran performers who had been on stage, screen, or radio before coming to television, but had never become big box office stars. Still, their rich show business experience made them ideal performers for television in those days when the medium was still live, before filmed or videotaped programs. Suddenly, TV was making enormous stars out of them: Jackie Gleason, Sid Caesar, Danny Thomas, Raymond Burr, James Arness, Jack Webb, and the comic who became Mr. Television for a whole generationMilton Berle.

Radio disc jockey Dick Clark became a TV star with his local Philadelphia program American Bandstand when it went network and he began to introduce the rock and pop music stars of the 1950s and 1960s to a huge national daytime audience. Meanwhile, the parents of those young viewers were tapping their feet in rhythm with polka king Lawrence Welk, a regional orchestra leader from the sweet band era who became a phenomenon when he launched televisions The Lawrence Welk Show, with its champagne music and acts like the comely Lennon Sisters.

Singing cowboys Gene Autry and Roy Rogers had followed the example of William Hopalong Cassidy Boyd by shifting from the movie screen to television with great financial success. TV soon had so many westernsmore than thirty in one seasonthat the genre eventually suffocated itself from overexposure on TV, collapsing on the big screen as well. However, James Arness, who had been an awkward supporting player in movies since The Farmers Daughter in 1947, bloomed into a major TV star as Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, a show that came over from radio and ran for more than twenty seasons on TV. The TV western genre provided a safe haven for faded movie stars like John Payne (The Restless Gun), Dale Robertson (Tales of Wells Fargo), Rory Calhoun (The Texan), and Ward Bond (Wagon Train) while producing new ones like Clint Eastwood (Rawhide), Steve McQueen (Wanted Dead or Alive), and both James Garner and Roger Moore (Maverick). Michael Landon, who had played the title role in the absurdly popular teen drive-in movie I Was A Teenage Werewolf in 1957, became one of the most durable of all TV stars in the western Bonanza, followed by the frontier saga Little House on the Prairie.

More than a few onetime movie stars migrated to TV soap operas, like Macdonald Carey, who became a long-running regular on Days of Our Lives. Jack Paar, who had managed only small roles as an actor in movies, became an enormous TV star as the host of The Tonight Show. Noel Neill, who had been the big screens first Lois Lane in the 1940s serials