Johnny Rivers peaked at #3 on the Hot 100 with a solo cover of the Four Tops' 1964 hit, "Baby, I Need Your Lovin'", which got him booked on The Ed Sullivan Show. Rivers would follow this up with another Motown cover, this time Smokey Robinson's "Tracks Of My Tears":
A NY detective moves to California not only to become a PI, but also an actor. Unfortunately, viewers voted with their remotes, and Half Nelson, a spring replacement series from Glen A. Larson & 20th Century Fox for NBC, was gone in 2 months in 1985.
Before "Home Alone" & "Goodfellas" made him a box office attraction in the 90's, Joe Pesci top-lined in the title role as "Rocky" Nelson. The title refers to Nelson's relatively short size, not a wrestling hold that the show actually gets its title from. Nelson joins up with the Beverly Hills Patrol, and, well, I might as well say it, he looks like a football running back opposite three of the game's greatest defensive stars, Fred Williamson (his first TV gig since, I think, Julia), and Miller Lite pitchmen Dick Butkus & Bubba Smith, who'd co-starred in Blue Thunder a year earlier. Victoria Jackson moved over to Saturday Night Live a year after this series ended.
Half Nelson is also notable in that its other star attraction is Dean Martin, in his final series for NBC. The Celebrity Roasts were, or, had come to an end by this point. Martin also sings the show's closing theme. Robert Jason co-wrote & sings "LA, You Belong To Me", the opening theme.
This sample episode features a rare appearance by the Bobby Troup Trio, marking the return of Troup (ex-Emergency!) to NBC. John Beck, who also guests, had appeared with Butkus on Matt Houston three years earlier.
Edit, 12/26/25: The video was deleted. In its place is the pilot, courtesy of a Dean Martin fan channel. Rod Taylor and Mills Watson, who'd worked for Glen Larson on The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo a few years earlier, co-star.
30 years after the original Charlie's Angels had solved their final case, ABC decided to dust off the concept, but there were too many problems, leading to a quick hook.
The new Charlie's Angels had a lot to live up to, and not just the original series (1976-81). There had been the movies featuring Drew Barrymore. ABC entrusted writer-producers Alfred Gough & Miles Millar, fresh from Smallville, to breathe fresh life into the franchise.
The problems?
*Location: The series was relocated from Southern California to Miami. This was the biggest mistake.
*Casting: Millar & Gough went with mostly unknowns for the three leads, the most famous name in the group being Minka Kelly, who at the time had been the armpiece of Yankees star Derek Jeter (they subsequently split). Former football player turned actor and Old Spice pitchman Isaiah Mustafa appeared in one episode at least as a detective. Millar & Gough wanted Robert Wagner as the voice of the never seen Charlie Townshend (voiced by John Forsythe in the original series), but when Wagner had a scheduling conflict, Victor Garber (ex-Alias) was brought in instead. Ramon Rodriguez was cast as John Bosley, repackaged here as an ex-hacker.
*Scheduling: ABC, perhaps wary of past reboots, slotted the new Angels on Thursdays, just as they had done with the reboot of Night Stalker a few years earlier, when the original series had always been on Wednesdays, either at 9 or 10 pm (ET). I think this version was on too early (8 pm).
*Missing the Spelling touch: Sony, which owns the rights to the franchise, produced this themselves, leaving Spelling Entertainment out of the loop. This, then, would explain the shift in setting from California to Miami, since a majority of Spelling's crime dramas were based in SoCal.
*Plotting: In order to fit Minka Kelly in the mix, one of the three other Angels was killed off in the opener, as you'll soon see. As a result, this played more like another Gough-Millar bomb, the adaptation of DC's Birds of Prey, with so much angst.
Let's check out the trailer:
At DC, Fradon co-created Metamorpho, and penciled most, but not all, of the comics adaptation of Super Friends, beginning with issue 3, and ending with issue 41, at which point inker Romeo Tanghal was promoted to penciller while Fradon left to work on Brenda Starr. Fradon also pencilled Plastic Man when DC revived the series in 1976 for a short run, and drew Plas, seemingly for the last time, in Super Friends 36.
Fradon retired from Brenda Starr in 1995, and continued contributing to comics until her final retirement last month.
Fradon briefly worked at Marvel, but a planned issue of The Cat never saw the light of day, and a 1-shot of Fantastic Four was not very popular with fans.
To give you some idea of her art style, well, you might like her take on Wonder Woman and a certain polarizing political figure.
Just three weeks into his NBC series, Tennessee Ernie Ford performed his signature hit, "Sixteen Tons", with a prerecorded background behind his live vocals.
In the early days of the Nashville Network, the one that later was bought out by Viacom, and has morphed into today's Paramount Network, the channel built a solid lineup of programming, but because of it being a niche channel, it doesn't get the flowers it deserves.
One such series was Yesteryear in Nashville, which was an interview series with country legends and then-current talents. Archie Campbell (Hee Haw) served as the series host, which meant he often got to interview friends and colleagues, such as, in this case, Hee Haw castmate Roni Stoneman.
