A memoir in which actor Carroll O'Connor recalls his life, discussing his service in the merchant marine during World War II, his education and early career in Dublin, and his years on "All in the Family"; and sharing the painful story of his son's cocaine addiction and suicide.
Covering the years 1945-2018, this alphabetical listing provides details about 2,923 unaired television series pilots, including those that never went into production, and those that became series but with a different cast, such as The Green Hornet, The Middle and Superman. Rarities include proposed shows starring Bela Lugosi, Doris Day, Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Orson Welles, Claudette Colbert and Mae West, along with such casting curiosities as Mona Freeman, not Gale Storm, as Margie in My Little Margie, and John Larkin as Perry Mason long before Raymond Burr played the role.
This updated and expanded anthology offers an engaging overview of one of the oldest and most ubiquitous forms of television programming: the sitcom. Through an analysis of formulaic conventions, the contributors address critical identities such as race, gender, and sexuality, and overarching structures such as class and family. Organized by decade, chapters explore postwar domestic ideology and working-class masculinity in the 1950s, the competing messages of power and subordination in 1960s magicoms, liberated women and gender in 1970s workplace comedies and 1980s domestic comedies, liberal feminism in the 1990s, heteronormative narrative strategies in the 2000s, and unmasking myths of gender in the 2010s. From I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners to Roseanne, Cybill, and Will & Grace to Transparent and many others in between, The Sitcom Reader provides a comprehensive examination of this popular genre that will help readers think about the shows and themselves in new contexts. For access to an online resource created by Mary Dalton, which includes interviews with contributors and course lectures, visit: The Sitcom Reader: A Companion Website @ https://build.zsr.wfu.edu/sitcomreader
The 1970s: Vietnam, Watergate, inflation, and social unrest. Those were the days! On January 12, 1971, a new television series premiered that would address such topics in a comical and satirical manner. The series would sit at the top of the ratings for the majority of its run, redefining the structure of situation comedy, and would go on to be one of the most influential sitcoms in television history. All in the Family dominated the airwaves in the 1970s and reflected an ever-changing society during one of America’s most challenging decades. David Maska assesses the entire series, season by season, and how it continued to evolve and fit into television’s landscape from its inception in the late 1960s as a pilot that nobody wanted to touch, through its celebrated run as the number one show in America, and finally its demise as Archie Bunker’s Place in the early 1980s. With an annotated episode guide for all 13 total seasons (over 300 episodes!), this is a book you can keep next to you for reference while you watch and enjoy this classic series.
An in-depth telling of the Norman Lear's seven-decade career that Publishers Weekly calls a "lovingly detailed portrait" and "a fitting tribute to a consequential figure in television history.” Beginning in the 1970s, writer and producer Norman Lear forever altered the television landscape with such groundbreaking situation comedies as All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, and One Day at a Time. For over half a century his body of work boldly tackled race, class, sexuality, politics, and religion—topics previously considered too taboo to be the subject of comedy on the small screen. Norman Lear: His Life and Times is the unforgettable story of an extraordinary seven-decade career. Veteran author and entertainment journalist Tripp Whetsell offers an intimate portrait of Lear that is the product of years of research and numerous interviews. Whetsell shows how Lear created the gold standard for television comedies, producing shows that were the first to give underrepresented members of society an authentic prime-time voice, while encouraging audiences to confront their own humanity and shortcomings. In the process, he explores one of television’s most transformative periods, detailing Lear’s legacy as one of its chief architects and catalysts. This affectionate and candid tribute combines show-business history with an illuminating consideration of the inner workings of “the man in the white hat”—a figure who singlehandedly redefined an entire medium by reflecting the world around him.
"[An] engrossing survey of the history of childbirth." —Stephen Lowman, Washington Post Making and having babies—what it takes to get pregnant, stay pregnant, and deliver—have mystified women and men throughout human history. The insatiably curious Randi Hutter Epstein journeys through history, fads, and fables, and to the fringe of science. Here is an entertaining must-read—an enlightening celebration of human life.
In twelve essays on such diverse Smithsonian Institution holdings as the Hope Diamond, the Wright Flyer, wooden Zuni carvings, and the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth lunch counter that became a symbol of the Civil Rights movement, Exhibiting Dilemmas explores a wide range of social, political, and ethical questions faced by museum curators in their roles as custodians of culture. Focusing on the challenges posed by the transformation of exhibitions from object-driven “cabinets of curiosities” to idea-driven sources of education and entertainment, the contributors—all Smithsonian staff members—provide a lively and sometimes provocative discussion of the increasingly complex enterprise of acquiring and displaying objects in a museum setting.