June 9-15, 1973
This week Ken welcomes professor and author of the book The Drama of Celebrity Sharon Marcus.
Ken and Sharon discuss how TV Guides can summon up memories of hot New York Summers, Queens, staying up late and watching old movies, classic movie theaters in New York, seeing old movies at your local library, sparking an interest in research and academia, The Hollywood system, Bette Davis, the creation of celebrity, how not smiling is fascinating, Liz Taylor, the thrill of the hunt, stumble on culture, Sarah Bernhardt, the 19th Century in theater, being social through live performances, Ina Claire, the transition into talkies, Lillian Gish, Bela Lugosi, traveling shows, New York as the Center of the Universe, Astoria, Wonderama, the craze of theater scrapbooks, the mass press, cheap photographic reproduction, the negative connotation of celebrity, how now isn’t worse, the loss of common references, fads, overalls, Maude, All in the Family, shared experience, pop culture and social class, TV Guide’s editorializing in movie descriptions, Paul Newman, boxing, James Dean, Sadie Thompson, Joan Crawford, the mysterious Channel 31, Watergate, classical music, discovering pop music later in life, reverse engineering sitcom structure, One Day at a Time, dealing with commercials, serializing movies over several days, the Million Dollar movie, the value of anticipation, WPIX, WOR, and the wonders of Columbo.
Buy her new book here!:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=drama+of+celebrity&ref=nb_sb_noss
Powell’s: https://www.powells.com/book/-9780691177595
Princeton UP: https://press.princeton.edu/titles/13535.html
About Ken Reid
I’m Ken Reid, a stand up comedian from Boston, MA and a life long television fan. I’ve been twice nominated as the Best Stand up in Boston and I have been featured on Comedy Central, NPR, Nerdist, and MSN. I own every issue of TV Guide. Each week a guest chooses an issue at random, picks their viewing choices from that week and the show is our discussion of the tough viewing choices of our past. We get into stories about growing up, people’s relationship with television, some cultural/media studies dissection and I spit out a lot of trivia.
Note: The Ken Reid TV Guidance Counselor Podcast is rated PG-13 and may contain mild language.
