Susan Olsen Gets Down with Her Bad Show By Ronald Sklar “It was a spectactular turd,” says Susan Olsen. She speaks of the infamous Brady Bunch Variety Hour, which inexplicably ran on ABC-TV for a very short time in 1976 and 1977. Olsen played Cindy Brady, the youngest of the clan, on the original series from … Continue reading
Tommy James It’s A New Vibration By Ronald Sklar We know what you’re thinking. Not another Christmas album! But with this one, consider this HUGE plus: it’s a Tommy James Christmas album, and all the standards (like “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”) actually sound like a Tommy James song. Talk about your Christmas miracles! I … Continue reading
Greg Kinnear Has a Flash of Inspiration by Ronald Sklar “I’m not gonna lie to you, it didn’t grab me,” Greg Kinnear says about his first hear-tell of the concept for the Universal film Flash of Genius (originally called Windshield Wiper Man). However, after doing his due diligence, Kinnear found the David-versus-Goliath story to be … Continue reading
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet Best of Ricky and Dave (Shout! Factory-2008) Bafflingly, America has yet to have it up to here with reality programming. We can argue until the Survivors come home about “what is reality?” but the genre is entering its second decade, and there seems to be no happy ending in sight. … Continue reading
Hiya, Kids!! A ’50s Saturday Morning (Shout! Factory-2008) A little song. A little dance. A little seltzer down your pants. This DVD takes you to those wonderful bygone days when marketers first got wet for the impressionable 1.3 bazillion baby boomers under age ten. You can just hear the “ka-ching” in every candy bar and … Continue reading
Father Knows Best Season One (1954) (Shout! Factory-2008) A fresh look at Father Knows Best does nothing to answer that chicken-or-the-egg dilemma which has haunted us for over a half century: was family life in the 1950s really this stable, or did television devise a set of standards for happy living so impossible to attain that it could … Continue reading
Leslie Jordan Pink Carpet Story by Ronald Sklar Emmy-award-winning actor Leslie Jordan is perhaps best known as Karen’s arch nemesis, Beverley Leslie, on Will and Grace. However, his association with that groundbreaking series only fortified his own true Hollywood story. He had been “in” as an out actor since he got off the bus in Hollywood … Continue reading
Madison Hildebrand What Makes Madison Run? By Ronald Sklar Real estate agent (and mogul) Madison Hildebrand, the guy with the million-dollar smile, walks us through high-powered negotiating and breathtaking Malibu properties on Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing. If the stakes weren’t high enough when times are good, current real-estate market woes make this compelling series even more … Continue reading
Rebecca Schull On the Naked Stage by Ronald Sklar It never fails to shock us when a beloved TV character takes a sharp left turn and makes daring choices. Rebecca Schull, for instance. Her name may not be instantly recognizable, but she has that face that makes you feel like you’ve seen it a million … Continue reading
A Very Brady Musical Lloyd Schwartz and Hope Juber Reimagine the Family Business by Ronald Sklar For the producers of The Brady Bunch, it was more like Family Affair. Creator Sherwood Schwartz (who also gave the world Gilligan’s Island) worked closely with his son, Lloyd, and still does. However, for those five sunshine-day seasons on ABC, the Schwartz team lived, … Continue reading
