Old TV Guide Memories And More

11/08/2025

“Who Shot J.R.?” captivated the country in the summer of 1980.

45 years ago today, August 11, 1980, Time Magazine cover - Larry Hagman of Dallas (Who Shot JR)

11/08/2025

Award-winning actress Viola Davis is 60 years old today.

Happy 60th Birthday, Viola!

Born On This Day Aug 11 1965 Viola Davis, American EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) and BAFTA Academy award-winning actress (The Help; Fences; Prisoners- Su***de Squad), born in St. Matthews, South Carolina

Viola Davis ( born August 11, 1965) is an American actress and film producer. Her accolades include both the Triple Crown of Acting and EGOT. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012 and 2017. The New York Times ranked her ninth on its list of the greatest actors of the 21st century (2020). Davis received the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2025.

She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for reprising her role in the 2016 film adaptation of Fences. She was Oscar-nominated for playing a complex mother in Doubt (2008), a 1960s housemaid in The Help (2011) and Ma Rainey in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020). On television, she became the first black actress to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her role as lawyer Annalise Keating in the ABC legal drama series How to Get Away with Murder (2014–2020). Davis joined the DC Extended Universe playing Amanda Waller starting with Su***de Squad (2016) to Black Adam (2022). She reprises her role in the rebooted DC Universe. She has also starred in the crime drama Widows (2018), and historical action film The Woman King (2022).

10/08/2025

Bark for joy because Snoopy is 75 today!

Happy birthday to Snoopy! He first appeared in comic strips 75 years ago in 1950!

10/08/2025

“Fat Albert’s” big run ended 40 years ago today.

40 years ago today, August 10, 1985, the final episode of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids aired. It was an American animated television series created, produced, and hosted (in live action bookends) by comedian Bill Cosby, who also lent his voice to a number of characters, including Fat Albert and himself. Filmation was the production company for the series. The show premiered in 1972 and ran until 1985 (with new episodes being produced sporadically during that time frame). The show, based on Cosby's remembrances of his childhood gang, focused on Fat Albert (known for his catchphrase "Hey hey hey!"), and his friends.
The show features an educational lesson in each episode, emphasized by Cosby's live-action segments. In addition, at the end of the early episodes, the gang typically joins in their North Philadelphia junkyard to play a song on their cobbled-together instruments, summarizing the show's lesson.

09/08/2025

“Betty Boop” is 95!

95 Years Ago Today!
This Day In Hollywood Aug 9 1930 Animated character Betty Boop debuts in Max Fleischer's cartoon "Dizzy Dishes"

PHOTO: Actress Mae Questel, the voice of Betty Boop, with the character’s creator Max Fleischer in the early 1930s.

Betty Boop started out as a half-dog, half-female creation, appearing for the first time in the 1930 short “Dizzy Dishes.”
She soon morphed into the flirty girl next door, debuting with the name Betty Boop in 1931’s “Minding the Baby.” She was an instant hit for Paramount Pictures, according to Richard Fleischer, who died in 2006.

“Several squeaky female voices were tried out in the early Betty Boops, but none seemed exactly right,” he wrote in his book. “The voice needed to be squeaky, but it also needed to be cute and sexy, to sing, to do good line readings and to be able to say and sing ‘Boop-oop-a-doop’ in exactly the right way.”
Max Fleischer settled on the American actress Mae Questel, who was Boop’s voice for all 118 animated shorts.

07/08/2025

Movie star Charlize Theron, who had a recurring role on “Arrested Development,” is the big 5️⃣0️⃣ today.

Happy 50th Birthday, Charlize!

Charlize Theron ( born 7 August 1975) is a South African and American actress and producer. One of the world's highest-paid actresses, she is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. In 2016, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

She came to international prominence in the 1990s by playing the leading lady in the Hollywood films The Devil's Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and The Cider House Rules (1999). She received critical acclaim for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003), for which she won the Silver Bear and Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first South African to win an acting Oscar. She received another Academy Award nomination for playing a sexually abused woman seeking justice in the drama North Country (2005).

She has starred in several commercially successful action films, including The Italian Job (2003), Hancock (2008), Prometheus (2012), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Atomic Blonde (2017), and The Old Guard (2020), as well as several Fast & Furious installments: The Fate of the Furious (2017), F9 (2021), and Fast X (2023). She received praise for playing troubled women in Jason Reitman's comedy-dramas Young Adult (2011) and Tully (2018), and for portraying Megyn Kelly in the biographical drama Bombshell (2019) she received her third Academy Award nomination.

05/08/2025

In honor of the late Loni Anderson… Cincinnati, 1977

05/08/2025

Netflix is reviving “T.J. Ho**er” as a movie - if it does well, possibly a movie franchise.

Netflix is developing a 'T.J. Ho**er' reboot with the creators of the short-lived (but fondly remembered) Fox comedy 'The Grinder.'