In the original British TV series, “The Avengers”, Patrick Macnee’s Steed played opposite Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale.
Blackman later became known as James Bond’s love interest, Pussy Galore, in Goldfinger.
By the time the series was imported to America in 1966, Diana Rigg, as Emma Peel, had replaced Blackman.
The club where Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) played on “I Love Lucy” was in New York, he played at the Tropicana. When the family moved to Connecticut, he started his own club, the Ricky Ricardo Babaloo Club.
The TV movie “The Homecoming,” the original pilot for “The Waltons” (CBS, 1972-77) starring Patricia Neal and Richard Thomas, aired on CBS in 1971.
Mary Stuart as Joanne Barron and Larry Haines as Stu Bergman, both on “Search for Tomorrow” (CBS, 1951-82; NBC, 1982-1987), is the longest-running performance in daytime TV drama history.
The TV game show “The $64,000 Question” (CBS, 1955-58) cost only a small fraction of that to produce each week, about $15,000 per weekly episode. This was much cheaper than another top-rated half-hour show of the period, “The Jack Benny Show” (CBS, NBC, 1950-65), which cost $42,000 an episode.
George Wyle and “Gilligan’s Island” producer Sherwood Schwartz wrote “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Island” for the TV series.
Ted Koppel was born in Lancashire, England, in 1940. He has hosted ABC’s “Nightline” since 1979.