Steve Allen, the co-creator and first host of The Tonight Show, largely was responsible for late-night television as we know it.
Remember Johnny Carson’s Carnac the Magnificent? Well, take a look at Allen’s The Question Man (below).
“Steve Allen was the generator of a lot of ideas that were ahead of its time,” says Billy Crystal in CNN’s documentary series The Story of Late Night.
The six-part series is a historical deep dive into the origins of the genre that still resonates today as well as a love letter to the medium. It has been overseen by Bill Carter, a man who knows a thing or two about late-night, as the former New York Times media correspondent and author of The War for Late Night and The Late Shift.
Carter is currently a CNN contributor and his involvement helped Cream Productions, the Toronto-based production company behind CNN...
Remember Johnny Carson’s Carnac the Magnificent? Well, take a look at Allen’s The Question Man (below).
“Steve Allen was the generator of a lot of ideas that were ahead of its time,” says Billy Crystal in CNN’s documentary series The Story of Late Night.
The six-part series is a historical deep dive into the origins of the genre that still resonates today as well as a love letter to the medium. It has been overseen by Bill Carter, a man who knows a thing or two about late-night, as the former New York Times media correspondent and author of The War for Late Night and The Late Shift.
Carter is currently a CNN contributor and his involvement helped Cream Productions, the Toronto-based production company behind CNN...
- 4/30/2021
- by Peter White
- Deadline Film + TV
Joan Rivers was widely considered the first female late-night host when she began hosting Fox’s The Late Show in October 1986.
However, nearly forty years before Rivers took that job, there was another woman who had, in fact, pioneered the genre and become the first late-night host: Faye Emerson.
Emerson, who was born in Louisiana in 1917, came before Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Dick Cavett or Johnny Carson and was really the figure who created an entire genre of television that thrives today with the likes of Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.
Deadline explores her story, how CBS’ Kelly Kahl was instrumental in preserving her legacy, how she paved the road for the likes of Chelsea Handler, Samantha Bee and Lilly Singh and how a scripted series about her life is now in development.
The Faye Emerson Show began airing on CBS on October 24 1949 in local East Coast markets...
However, nearly forty years before Rivers took that job, there was another woman who had, in fact, pioneered the genre and become the first late-night host: Faye Emerson.
Emerson, who was born in Louisiana in 1917, came before Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Dick Cavett or Johnny Carson and was really the figure who created an entire genre of television that thrives today with the likes of Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.
Deadline explores her story, how CBS’ Kelly Kahl was instrumental in preserving her legacy, how she paved the road for the likes of Chelsea Handler, Samantha Bee and Lilly Singh and how a scripted series about her life is now in development.
The Faye Emerson Show began airing on CBS on October 24 1949 in local East Coast markets...
- 7/1/2020
- by Peter White
- Deadline Film + TV
Ah romance! A handsome stranger takes a room in your house, lets you feed him and doesn’t pay the rent — of course he’s the perfect man of your dreams. Excellent WB players Faye Emerson and Zachary Scott enliven an odd mix of moods in a tale of a murderous Bluebeard- boyfriend. Director Robert Florey’s thriller is half stylish spook show, and half romantic sitcom. With Dick Erdman, Rosemary DeCamp and perky Mona Freeman as the little sister who needs to be told, ‘Don’t you do what your big sister done.’
Danger Signal
DVD-r
The Warner Archive Collection
1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 78 min. / Street Date March 6, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Faye Emerson, Zachary Scott, Dick Erdman, Rosemary DeCamp, Bruce Bennett, Mona Freeman, John Ridgely, Mary Servoss, Joyce Compton, Virginia Sale, Robert Arthur.
Cinematography: James Wong Howe
Film Editor: Frank Magee
Original Music: Adolph Deutsch
Written by Adele Comandini,...
Danger Signal
DVD-r
The Warner Archive Collection
1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 78 min. / Street Date March 6, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Faye Emerson, Zachary Scott, Dick Erdman, Rosemary DeCamp, Bruce Bennett, Mona Freeman, John Ridgely, Mary Servoss, Joyce Compton, Virginia Sale, Robert Arthur.
Cinematography: James Wong Howe
Film Editor: Frank Magee
Original Music: Adolph Deutsch
Written by Adele Comandini,...
- 4/7/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
“Grand Hotel. Nazis come. Nazis go. Nothing ever happens.” That’s a paraphrase from 1932’s Grand Hotel, indicating that the hallowed halls once occupied by Greta Garbo are now overrun with Warner Bros. contract players. As defeat looms, German officers, crooks, fugitives and ordinary citizens fumble for a way to survive. Writer and fervent anti-fascist Alvah Bessie almost didn’t — he would later be politically scourged as a member of The Hollywood Ten. Get set for a soap opera with swastikas.
Hotel Berlin
DVD
The Warner Archive Collection
1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 98 min. / Street Date March 6, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Faye Emerson, Helmut Dantine, Raymond Massey, Andrea King, Peter Lorre, Alan Hale, George Coulouris, Henry Daniell, Peter Whitney, Helen Thimig, Steven Geray, Kurt Kreuger, Erwin Kalser, Torben Meyer, Jay Novello, Frank Reicher, John Wengraf.
Cinematography: Carl Guthrie
Film Editor: Frederick Richards
Original Music: Franz Waxman
Written by Alvah Bessie,...
Hotel Berlin
DVD
The Warner Archive Collection
1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 98 min. / Street Date March 6, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Faye Emerson, Helmut Dantine, Raymond Massey, Andrea King, Peter Lorre, Alan Hale, George Coulouris, Henry Daniell, Peter Whitney, Helen Thimig, Steven Geray, Kurt Kreuger, Erwin Kalser, Torben Meyer, Jay Novello, Frank Reicher, John Wengraf.
Cinematography: Carl Guthrie
Film Editor: Frederick Richards
Original Music: Franz Waxman
Written by Alvah Bessie,...
- 3/31/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Submarine movie evening: Underwater war waged in TCM's Memorial Day films In the U.S., Turner Classic Movies has gone all red, white, and blue this 2017 Memorial Day weekend, presenting a few dozen Hollywood movies set during some of the numerous wars in which the U.S. has been involved around the globe during the last century or so. On Memorial Day proper, TCM is offering a submarine movie evening. More on that further below. But first it's good to remember that although war has, to put it mildly, serious consequences for all involved, it can be particularly brutal on civilians – whether male or female; young or old; saintly or devilish; no matter the nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other label used in order to, figuratively or literally, split apart human beings. Just this past Sunday, the Pentagon chief announced that civilian deaths should be anticipated as “a...
- 5/30/2017
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Merle Oberon films: From empress to duchess in 'Hotel.' Merle Oberon films: From starring to supporting roles Turner Classic Movies' Merle Oberon month comes to an end tonight, March 25, '16, with six movies: Désirée, Hotel, Deep in My Heart, Affectionately Yours, Berlin Express, and Night Song. Oberon's presence alone would have sufficed to make them all worth a look, but they have other qualities to recommend them as well. 'Désirée': First supporting role in two decades Directed by Henry Koster, best remembered for his Deanna Durbin musicals and the 1947 fantasy comedy The Bishop's Wife, Désirée (1954) is a sumptuous production that, thanks to its big-name cast, became a major box office hit upon its release. Marlon Brando is laughably miscast as Napoleon Bonaparte, while Jean Simmons plays the title role, the Corsican Conqueror's one-time fiancée Désirée Clary (later Queen of Sweden and Norway). In a supporting role – her...
- 3/26/2016
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Patricia Neal ca. 1950. Patricia Neal movies: 'The Day the Earth Stood Still,' 'A Face in the Crowd' Back in 1949, few would have predicted that Gary Cooper's leading lady in King Vidor's The Fountainhead would go on to win a Best Actress Academy Award 15 years later. Patricia Neal was one of those performers – e.g., Jean Arthur, Anne Bancroft – whose film career didn't start out all that well, but who, by way of Broadway, managed to both revive and magnify their Hollywood stardom. As part of its “Summer Under the Stars” series, Turner Classic Movies is dedicating Sunday, Aug. 16, '15, to Patricia Neal. This evening, TCM is showing three of her best-known films, in addition to one TCM premiere and an unusual latter-day entry. 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' Robert Wise was hardly a genre director. A former editor (Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons...
- 8/16/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Cary Grant films on TCM: Gender-bending 'I Was a Male War Bride' (photo: Cary Grant not gay at all in 'I Was a Male War Bride') More Cary Grant films will be shown tonight, as Turner Classic Movies continues with its Star of the Month presentations. On TCM right now is the World War II action-drama Destination Tokyo (1943), in which Grant finds himself aboard a U.S. submarine, alongside John Garfield, Dane Clark, Robert Hutton, and Tom Tully, among others. The directorial debut of screenwriter Delmer Daves (The Petrified Forest, Love Affair) -- who, in the following decade, would direct a series of classy Westerns, e.g., 3:10 to Yuma, The Hanging Tree -- Destination Tokyo is pure flag-waving propaganda, plodding its way through the dangerous waters of Hollywood war-movie stereotypes and speechifying banalities. The film's key point of interest, in fact, is Grant himself -- not because he's any good,...
- 12/16/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Paul Henreid: From Eleanor Parker to ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ (photo: Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker in ‘Between Two Worlds’) Paul Henreid returns this evening, as Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of July 2013. In Of Human Bondage (1946), he stars in the old Leslie Howard role: a clubfooted medical student who falls for a ruthless waitress (Eleanor Parker, in the old Bette Davis role). Next on TCM, Henreid and Eleanor Parker are reunited in Between Two Worlds (1944), in which passengers aboard an ocean liner wonder where they are and where the hell (or heaven or purgatory) they’re going. Hollywood Canteen (1944) is a near-plotless, all-star showcase for Warner Bros.’ talent, a World War II morale-boosting follow-up to that studio’s Thank Your Lucky Stars, released the previous year. Last of the Buccaneers (1950) and Pirates of Tripoli (1955) are B pirate movies. The former is an uninspired affair,...
- 7/24/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Eleanor Parker Now on TCM Palms Springs area resident Eleanor Parker, who turns 91 next June 26, is Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of June. One of the best actresses of Hollywood’s studio era, Parker isn’t nearly as well-remembered today as she should be despite three Best Actress Academy Award nominations (Caged, 1950; Detective Story, 1951; Interrupted Melody, 1955), a number of box-office and/or critical hits, and a key role in one of the biggest blockbusters of all time (The Sound of Music). Hopefully, the 34 Eleanor Parker movies TCM will be showing each Monday this month — beginning tonight — will help to introduce the actress to a broader 21st-century audience. Eleanor Parker movies "When I am spotted somewhere it means that my characterizations haven’t covered up Eleanor Parker the person. I prefer it the other way around," Parker once said. In fact, the title of Doug McClelland’s 1989 Eleanor Parker bio,...
- 6/4/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Warner Archive Collection 4th anniversary DVD / Blu-ray releases The Warner Archive Collection (aka Wac), which currently has a DVD / Blu-ray library consisting of approximately 1,500 titles, has just turned four. In celebration of its fourth anniversary, Wac is releasing with movies featuring the likes of Jane Powell, Eleanor Parker, and many more stars and filmmakers of yesteryear. (Pictured above: Greer Garson, Debbie Reynolds, Ricardo Montalban in the sentimental 1966 comedy / drama with music The Singing Nun.) For starters, Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds play siblings in Richard Thorpe's Athena (1954), whose supporting cast includes Edmund Purdom, Vic Damone, frequent Jerry Lewis foil Kathleen Freeman, Citizen Kane's Ray Collins, Tyrone Power's then-wife Linda Christian, former Mr. Universe and future Hercules Steve Reeves, veteran Louis Calhern, not to mention numerology, astrology, and vegetarianism. As per Wac's newsletter, the score by Hugh Martin and Martin Blane "gets a first ever Stereophonic Sound remix for this disc,...
- 3/27/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
A Face In The Crowd Review Pt.1 [Photo: Andy Griffith as Larry 'Lonesome' Rhodes.] Rhodes' abrupt fall is based on a New York radio show incident-cum-urban legend from a few years earlier, as a Wor children’s show host named Uncle Don, purportedly believing he was off the air, said: "This is Uncle Don, saying good night. We're off. Good, that will hold the little bastards." The solid Warner Bros. DVD is part of the box set "Controversial Classics." The DVD includes only two extras: the original theatrical trailer and the 30-minute documentary Facing the Past, in which Andy Griffith, Budd Schulberg, Patricia Neal, and several scholars and behind-the-scenes contributors speak of the film, its impact, and director Elia Kazan. An audio commentary would have been most welcome, but Facing the Past is certainly a good documentary, giving the viewer a real sense of what was going on in the minds of the film’s participants. Griffith’s scenery-chewing,...
- 1/25/2012
- by Dan Schneider
- Alt Film Guide
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