On “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (CBS, 1961-66), the alien that Rob (Dick Van Dyke) feared looked like Danny Thomas.
The aliens had eyes in the backs of their heads.
The Goodwill Games were first held in July 1986, in Moscow. The brainchild of Ted Turner, the games included events such as basketball, boxing, gymnastics, track and field, and wrestling.
The first TV series to star a black woman was “Beulah” (ABC, 1950-53), starring successively Ethel Waters, Hattie McDaniel, and Louise Beavers as Beulah, a black maid. “Julia” (NBC, 1968-71), starring Diahann Carroll as nurse Julia Baker, was the second.
The National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) trade convention, held in January, is where you go to sell a TV show for syndication. There producers and distributors sell game shows, reruns, etc., to station managers and program directors.
Neal Hefti composed the eminently hummable theme for TV’s “Batman” (ABC, 1966-68). Danny Elfman wrote the score for the 1989 movie.
Tracy Keenan Wynn wrote the screenplay, based on Ernest J. Gaines’s novel, and John Korty directed the TV movie “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” (CBS, 1974). The film, starring Cicely Tyson as a 110-year-old former slave, won nine Emmys, including Emmys for Tyson, Korty, and Wynn.
“The Andy Griffith Show” (CBS, 1960-68) spawned “Mayberry, RFD” (CBS, 1968-71) and “Gomer Pyle, USMC” (CBS, 1964-70).