Author Archives: dcaligari

October 3, 1954 –Another in the series of alcoholic actors playing model Dads, Father Knows Best, starring Robert Young first aired on this date. The setting is very possibly Springfield, Illinois, since there is mention of a wedding in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a new girl from Chicago, and in one episode, Bud’s homing pigeon is releasedContinue reading “Father Knows Best premiered”

October 3, 1961 –The Dick Van Dyke Show premiered on this date. The show wasn’t an immediate success but became a hit. Carl Reiner asked network censors for permission to show Laura and Rob sleeping in one large bed together, reasoning (quite sensibly) that he and his wife did so in real life. The permissionContinue reading “We met the Petries for the first time”

October 3, 1964 –According to noted food historian, Calvin Trilling, the first buffalo wings were served on this date. The wings were reported to have first been made in Buffalo, New York, by the Bellissimo family at the Anchor Bar. They were served with blue cheese dressing and given away for free. The bar nowContinue reading “Game day was never the same”

October 3, 1953 – The final installment of the Looney Tunes “Hunting Trilogy“, Duck! Rabbit, Duck!, premiered on this date. Bugs Bunny stuck out four signs to lead Elmer Fudd to shoot Daffy Duck. In order they are: 1st GOAT SEASON OPEN;2nd, DIRTY SKUNK SEASON;3rd, PIGEON SEASON;4th and last, MONGOOSE SEASON.

October 3, 2003 –The documentary film directed by David Leland about the tribute concert for George Harrison held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on November 29, 2002, This was the first time that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr performed together on stage since the breakup of The Beatles.

Rosh Hashanah begins this evening, so we here at ACME are wishing our friends L’shanah Tovah. As you hear the shofar this evening, remember to start writing 5785 on your checks. Also, I hope your sins are not so numerous that you really couldn’t cast them upon the water.

Three of the past century’s finest comedians were born on October 2: Groucho Marx (1890), Bud Abbott (1895), and Mahatma Gandhi (1869). Groucho and Abbott were funny enough, but they pale beside the towering comic greatness of Gandhi. “When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have alwaysContinue reading “A trifecta of birthdays”

October 2, 1955 – Revenge, the very first story on the Alfred Hitchcock Presents show premieres on this date. The sponsors, who had great influence regarding the presentation of the show, insisted that for the episodes ending with the perpetrator “getting away with a crime,” Alfred Hitchcock provide a statement in his closing monologue thatContinue reading “Funeral March of a Marionette was first heard on TV”

October 2, 1959 – The first episode of the anthology series The Twilight Zone, Where is Everybody?, premiered on this date Rod Serling thought he had come up with the term “The Twilight Zone” on his own (he liked the sound of it), but after the show aired, he found out that it is anContinue reading “… a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind …”

October 2, 1925 –Scottish inventor John Logie Baird successfully transmitted the first television picture with a greyscale image: the head of a ventriloquist’s dummy nicknamed Stooky Bill on this date. (“Stooky” being slang for someone who moves woodenly and a colloquial term for the plaster cast used to immobilize bone fractures.) Almost immediately, Logie BairdContinue reading “TV made a big leap forward”