TV Confidential with Ed Robertson

We're taking a few days off for the holidays, but we'll be back with brand new editions of TV Confidential in the new year. In the meantime (and in light of Dick Van Dyke's 99th birthday last week), please enjoy this Blast from the Past featuring an excerpt from our September 2016 conversation with Vince Waldron, author of The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book. In this segment Vince talks about why Reiner and Sheldon Leonard cast Dick Van Dyke because he embodied all three aspects of the Rob Petrie character: the introverted writer, the devoted husband and caring father, and the ability to break out and perform sketches when needed.

TVC 670.1: Ed welcomes Nick Nugent, author of The Knight Rider Companion: Abridged Edition, everything you wanted to know about the classic TV series starring David Hasselhoff, Edward Mulhare, and the voice of William Daniels. Topics this segment include how series creator Glen Larson’s original concept for Knight Rider was much different from what we eventually saw portrayed in the NBC series; why Knight Rider was essentially about a show about a character—a character that just happened to be a car; and why the original mythology of Knight Rider continues to resonate with millions of fans today.The Knight Rider Companion Abridged Edition is available from Black Pawn Pass and includes new and updated interviews with series creator Glen Larson, series stars David Hasselhoff, William Daniels, and Rebecca Holden, and many other key personnel; an updated Hall of Fame Autograph Guide, Vehicle States Guide, Knight Rider Fonts Guide, Knight Rider Logos Guide, Knight Equipment Guide, and a complete series episode guide; several pages of one-of-a-kind artwork created exclusively for the abridged edition.

TVC 670.2: Ed welcomes back film and television historian Steve Randisi (The Merv Griffin Show: The Inside Story, Behind the Crimson Cape: The Cinema of George Reeves). Steve’s latest book, Penny Singleton: A Biography, chronicles the life and career of the actress who not only achieved worldwide fame in the 1930s and ’40s at the star of the Blondie movie series from Columbia Pictures (and, later, to TV audiences as the voice of Jane Jetson on the original Jetsons TV series and, later, the Jetsons movie), who but who made history in 1958 when she became the first female president of an AFL-CIO union, the American Guild of Variety Artists. Topics this segment includes how much of Singleton’s personal history as an entertainer coincides with the history of show business at large in the 20th century. Penny Singleton: A Biography is available from Bear Manor Media.

TVC 670.3: Steve Randisi, author of Penny Singleton: A Biography, talks to Ed how about Singleton came to adopt her screen name; why Singleton had a lot of the Blondie character as a person; and why the Blondie movies continue to endure after ninety years. Penny Singleton: A Biography is available from Bear Manor Media.