She’s known as a Hollywood trailblazer, expanding what audiences and the women inspired by her legacy thought was possible from a successful female comic. And like most artistic innovators, the late Joan Rivers’ ascent was due to a combination of incredible talent and a touch of luck surrounding her big break.
She performed in comedy clubs across New York throughout the early ’60s. She appeared on the Jack Paar edition of The Tonight Show at the beginning of the decade. But her stand-up spots on The Ed Sullivan Show played a big role in her mainstream breakthrough. For all the work Rivers was doing as a comedian, she received her place on the platform because of an error by Sullivan.
Ed Sullivan’s slip of the tongue gave Joan Rivers her big break on his talk show Actress and Comedian Joan Rivers takes part in a photocall for her...
She performed in comedy clubs across New York throughout the early ’60s. She appeared on the Jack Paar edition of The Tonight Show at the beginning of the decade. But her stand-up spots on The Ed Sullivan Show played a big role in her mainstream breakthrough. For all the work Rivers was doing as a comedian, she received her place on the platform because of an error by Sullivan.
Ed Sullivan’s slip of the tongue gave Joan Rivers her big break on his talk show Actress and Comedian Joan Rivers takes part in a photocall for her...
- 3/23/2023
- by Sam Hines
- Showbiz Cheat Sheet
Banijay Kids & Family has bought UK drama specialist Kindle Entertainment and Italian animation firm Movimenti Production. The deals bring the total number of production within Banijay’s youth-focused arm across France, the UK and Italy to six, sitting alongside distribution, marketing and licencing arm, Zodiak Kids & Family Distribution.
Based in London, the female-led Kindle Entertainment is behind premium YA and family dramas such as Sky limited series Little Darlings and Netflix teen mystery The A List. It has also just launched trilogy of Ivy + Bean family films on the streamer, starring the likes of Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Jane Lynch.
Lionsgate had owned a minority stake in the business since late 2015. Deadline understands there had been a buy-out prior to today’s news and the Banijay deal was struck directly with its founders.
Established in 2004 with bases in Milan, Florence and Rome, Movimenti is behind Rai’s Topo Gigio and...
Based in London, the female-led Kindle Entertainment is behind premium YA and family dramas such as Sky limited series Little Darlings and Netflix teen mystery The A List. It has also just launched trilogy of Ivy + Bean family films on the streamer, starring the likes of Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Jane Lynch.
Lionsgate had owned a minority stake in the business since late 2015. Deadline understands there had been a buy-out prior to today’s news and the Banijay deal was struck directly with its founders.
Established in 2004 with bases in Milan, Florence and Rome, Movimenti is behind Rai’s Topo Gigio and...
- 9/8/2022
- by Jesse Whittock
- Deadline Film + TV
Exclusive: While we’re all thanking David Letterman for tossing the genteel Tonight Show mold and recasting post-primetime comedy in his own rebellious image, here is a heresy worth considering: Letterman’s debt to Ed Sullivan goes way beyond just the name of the theater in which he’s hosted Late Night since August 30, 1993. It was Sullivan, after all, who could showcase prima diva Joan Sutherland and puppet Topo Gigio on the same night; Sullivan who, despite his own…...
- 5/20/2015
- Deadline TV
No doubt the news that NBC is hiring Neil Patrick Harris to host a variety show was greeted by everyone under 35 with the response, "What's a variety show?"
Long ago, when there were only three channels and programmers crafted series that were meant to have universal appeal, the variety show was a TV staple. Shows blending music, comedy, dance, drama, juggling, puppetry, ventriloquism, and anything else you could think of were the networks' way of providing something for everyone. If you didn't like an act, wait five minutes, and something more to your taste would come along.
What's more, you didn't have to have any particular talent to host a variety show. Sure, a lot of hosts of 1970s variety shows were musicians -- Dean Martin, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, Sonny and Cher, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Donny and Marie Osmond. Some of them could even tell jokes. And then there was Ed Sullivan,...
Long ago, when there were only three channels and programmers crafted series that were meant to have universal appeal, the variety show was a TV staple. Shows blending music, comedy, dance, drama, juggling, puppetry, ventriloquism, and anything else you could think of were the networks' way of providing something for everyone. If you didn't like an act, wait five minutes, and something more to your taste would come along.
What's more, you didn't have to have any particular talent to host a variety show. Sure, a lot of hosts of 1970s variety shows were musicians -- Dean Martin, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, Sonny and Cher, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Donny and Marie Osmond. Some of them could even tell jokes. And then there was Ed Sullivan,...
- 10/31/2014
- by Gary Susman
- Moviefone
If you count forward from Jim Henson's mid-1960s TV appearances with a fringy pup named Rowlf and the lizard, made from an old winter coat, who would later become Kermit the Frog, the Muppets have outlived most of their early puppet peers by more than two generations: You don't see any contemporary movies being built around Topo Gigio or Señor Wences (though that's not to say it couldn't happen). The endurance of the Muppets isn't just the result of the creative skills of Henson and collaborators like Frank Oz, or of smart business decisions, or of sheer dumb luck. It's simply that the Muppets are just ever so slightly, or maybe even totally, mad. Man, woman, child: Who can resist them? Even TV-watching cats are drawn to their frisky hippety-hopping and flutey, gravely, squeaky,...
- 3/19/2014
- Village Voice
Across the world, he has many names: Kris Kringle, Pere Noel, and Topo Gigio. But we all know him as…Tim Allen? Yes, friends, with Christmas two weeks away, Josh takes a look at another Christmas movie from Walt Disney Pictures on the new Mousterpiece Cinema: 1994′s The Santa Clause. He may have liked it as a kid, but is Josh as enamored of this holiday classic as an adult? Do the special effects still impress him? And what does he think about the Cosby sweaters Judge Reinhold wears? Find out on the new holiday-themed episode of Mousterpiece Cinema!
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- 1/6/2012
- by Josh Spiegel
- SoundOnSight
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