by David Krell | Oct 26, 2016 | David Krell
Baseball pitchers in fiction seem to have a black cloud hovering over them. Once an ace relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, Sam “Mayday” Malone is a recovering alcoholic on Cheers. Sam owns the eponymous Cheers, a bar where he is revered for his...
by David Krell | Oct 25, 2016 | David Krell
When President George Walker Bush threw out the first pitch at that most hallowed of baseball cathedrals—Yankee Stadium—on October 30, 2001, the eyes of the world focused on him. The setting was Game 3 of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Arizona...
by David Krell | Oct 24, 2016 | David Krell
On October 24, 1972, Jack Roosevelt Robinson died. Nine days prior, he declared, “I am extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon, but must admit I’m going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third-base coaching line one day...
by David Krell | Apr 4, 2016 | David Krell
Opening Day is a metaphor for life. It helps inaugurate Spring with hope, the very base of the season’s renaissance. Indeed, any junior high student in French class will tell you that naître, the root of renaissance, means to awaken in the language of love....
by David Krell | Dec 25, 2015 | David Krell
Christmas television specials dominate prime time during between Thanksgiving and December 25th. The Hollywood Palace was no exception in 1965. With the holiday season as a backdrop for one particular episode in December, host Bing Crosby mentions that this time of...
by David Krell | Nov 1, 2015 | David Krell
Television’s progress as a creative medium began, arguably, with I Love Lucy, starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. When the television series about a ditzy redhead married to a Cuban bandleader premiered on CBS in 1951, it introduced the three-camera format...
by David Krell | Oct 30, 2015 | David Krell
Dino Crocetti emerged from the hardscrabble existence in Steubenville, Ohio to become one of the biggest stars in the second half of the 20th century. With a new moniker of Dean Martin, a legendary partnership with Jerry Lewis, and a fixture status in the famed Rat...
by David Krell | Oct 29, 2015 | David Krell
Corruption rooted in ego, fame, and power forms the foundation for A Face in the Crowd, a 1957 film; Budd Schulberg wrote the screenplay based on his short story The Arkansas Traveler. Andy Griffith stars as Lonesome Rhodes, a country bumpkin discovered by television...
by David Krell | Oct 23, 2015 | David Krell
Humor, it is often said, serves us best when it is grounded in reality. The Dick Van Dyke Show espoused this theorem. Carl Reiner, formerly a writer and performer on Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour, starring television comedy pioneer Sid Caesar, created a...
by David Krell | Oct 18, 2015 | David Krell
For nearly 30 years, from 1981 to 2009, NBC defined quality television programming in the 10:00 p.m. time slot. Hill Street Blues debuted in 1981 and changed the production of television drama. Story lines became story arcs, lasting several episodes. Moving cameras...
