| July 25 |
| 1894, character actor Walter Brennan was born in Swampscott Mass. He won three supporting actor Oscars before embarking on a successful TV career in the series The Real McCoys, The Tycoon & The Guns of Will Sonnett. He also made a few non-singing recordings, the most popular being "Old Rivers" and "Dutchman's Gold." He died of emphysema Sep 21, 1974 at age 80. In 1908, character actor Jack Gilford (below) was born Yankel Gellman in New York City. During the 1950s he was a victim of the McCarthy blacklisting which stalled his TV career until the early 1960s. But after that, he became a regular popular comic character actor on dozens of TV series and movies. He was most recognized for being the rubber-faced guy on the Cracker Jacks commercials for a dozen years from 1960-1972. He had a regular role on TV's Soap, The Duck Factory, Apple Pie, Paul Sand in Friends & Lovers,and the David Frost Revue. He died of stomach cancer June 2, 1990 at age 81. 1939, TV station W2XBS in New York City presented television's first musical comedy.The show was Topsy and Eva. 1946, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis began their partnership as a nightclub song and comedy act with a performance in Atlantic City. They split up in 1956. 1952, CBC/Radio Canada TV covered a Montreal Royals baseball game. It was the first experimental Canadian telecast. Regular programming began in September. In 1970, "(They Long to Be) Close to You" by the Carpenters topped the charts and stayed there for 4 weeks. In 1990, comic & TV star Roseanne Barr was booed off the field after she screeched a crotch-grabbing rendition of the national anthem at a Padres baseball game in San Diego. President Bush called the performance "disgusting.'' In 1992, actor Alfred Drake, who sang his way to stardom in the original Broadway production of "Oklahoma!" in 1943, died in New York at 77. Drake won a 1954 Tony Award for his role as a poet who becomes Emir of Baghdad for a day in "Kismet." In 1995, country singer Charlie Rich died in Hammond, Louisiana of a blood clot in the lungs. He was 62. Rich began as a rockabilly artist for Sun Records in Memphis in 1958, but didn't gain wide success until 1973 when his ballads "Behind Closed Doors" and "The Most Beautiful Girl" crossed over to the pop charts. In 1997, a jury found All in the Family star Carroll O'Connor not guilty of slandering Harry Perzigian, whom O'Connor accused of supplying his dead son the drugs on which he overdosed. Also in 1997, Autumn Jackson was convicted of trying to extort $40 million from Bill Cosby. In 2005. it was reported that disc jockey Joe O'Brien had been killed in a car crash at the age of 90. O'Brien spent 50 years in New York radio beginning in 1935. The pinnacle of his career was at WMCA during the 1960s as part of "The Good Guys" - a lineup of unforgettable Top 40 DJs. In 2006, Metallica put up four albums for sale on iTunes. The albums "Kill 'Em All", "Ride The Lightning", "Master of Puppets" and "...And Just For All" included previously unreleased tracks recorded in Seatle in 1989. Metallica had led the charge against the original Napster online file-sharing service. Today's Birthdays: Actress Estelle Getty (Golden Girls) is 85. Actress-singer Bobbie Eakes (All My Children, The Bold & the Beautiful) is 47. Actress Katherine Kelly Lang (The Bold & the Beautiful) is 47. Actor Matt LeBlanc (Joey, Friends) is 41. |