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Racket Squad
''Racket Squad'' is an American TV crime drama series that aired from 1951 to 1953. The format was a narrated anthology drama, as each individual episode featured various ordinary citizens getting ensnared in a different confidence scheme. Episodes were introduced and narrated by Reed Hadley as "Captain John Braddock", a fictional detective working for a police department in a large, unnamed American city. Braddock served as the series' host and narrator. Synopsis The show dramatized the methods and machinations of con men and bunko artists. At episode's end, Captain Braddock gave viewers advice on how to avoid becoming the victim of the confidence game illustrated in the episode. Plots were based on actual case files from United States police departments, business organizations and other agencies. In the original episodes, Braddock addressed the victim in the second person, addressing the victim directly. In later episodes he narrated in the more conventional third person ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Police Procedural
The police show, or police crime drama, is a subgenre of procedural drama and detective fiction that emphasizes the investigative procedure of a police officer or department as the protagonist(s), as contrasted with other genres that focus on either a private detective, an amateur investigator or the characters who are the targets of investigations. While many police procedurals conceal the criminal's identity until the crime is solved in the narrative climax (the so-called whodunit), others reveal the perpetrator's identity to the audience early in the narrative, making it an inverted detective story. Whatever the plot style, the defining element of a police procedural is the attempt to accurately depict the profession of law enforcement, including such police-related topics as forensic science, autopsies, gathering evidence, search warrants, interrogation and adherence to legal restrictions and procedure. Early history The roots of the police procedural have been traced to at l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen ratings, an audience measurement system of television viewership that for years has been the deciding factor in canceling or renewing television shows by television networks. As of May 2012, it is part of Nielsen Holdings. NMR began as a division of ACNielsen, a 1923-founded marketing research firm. In 1996, NMR was split off into an independent company, and in 1999, was purchased by the Dutch conglomerate VNU. In 2001, VNU also purchased ACNielsen, thereby bringing both companies under the same corporate umbrella. NMR is also a sister company to Nielsen//NetRatings, which measures Internet and digital media audiences. VNU was reorganized and renamed the Nielsen Company in 2007. History The Nielsen TV Ratings have been produced in the U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Addams Family
''The Addams Family'' is a fictional family created by American cartoonist Charles Addams. They originally appeared in a series of 150 unrelated single-panel cartoons, about half of which were originally published in ''The New Yorker'' over a 50-year period from their inception in 1938. They have since been adapted to other media, such as television, film, video games, comic books, a Musical theatre, musical, and merchandise. The Addamses are a satire, satirical inversion of the ideal postwar American middle-class nuclear family: an odd old money clan who delight in the macabre and are seemingly unaware or unconcerned that other people find them bizarre or frightening. The family members were unnamed until The Addams Family (1964 TV series), the 1964 television series. The Addams Family consists of Gomez Addams, Gomez and Morticia Addams, their children Wednesday Addams, Wednesday and Pugsley Addams, Pugsley, close family members Uncle Fester and Grandmama (The Addams Family) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jackie Coogan
John Leslie Coogan (October 26, 1914 – March 1, 1984) was an American actor and comedian who began his film career as a child actor in silent films. Charlie Chaplin's film classic ''The Kid'' (1921) made him one of the first child stars in the history of Hollywood. He later sued his mother and stepfather over his squandered film earnings and provoked California to enact the first known legal protection for the earnings of child performers, the California Child Actors Bill, widely known as the Coogan Act. Coogan continued to act throughout his life, later earning renewed fame in middle age portraying Uncle Fester in the 1960s television series ''The Addams Family''. Early life and early career Coogan was born John Leslie Coogan in Los Angeles, California in 1914 to John Henry Coogan Jr. and Lillian Rita (Dolliver) Coogan. He began performing as an infant in both vaudeville and film, with an uncredited role in the 1917 film ''Skinner's Baby''. Charlie Chaplin discovered him in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lassie (1954 TV Series)
''Lassie'' is an American television series that follows the adventures of a female Rough Collie dog named Lassie and her companions, both human and animal. The show was the creation of producer Robert Maxwell and animal trainer Rudd Weatherwax and was televised from September 12, 1954, to March 25, 1973. The sixth longest-running U.S. primetime television series after ''The Simpsons'', '' Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'', ''Gunsmoke,'' ''Law & Order and Family Guy,'' the show ran for 17 seasons on CBS before entering first-run syndication for its final two seasons. Initially filmed in black and white, the show transitioned to color in 1965. The show's first 10 seasons follow Lassie's adventures living on a farm. 11-year-old Jeff Miller, his mother Ellen, and his grandfather are Lassie's first human companions until seven-year-old Timmy Martin and his adoptive parents take over in the fourth season. When Lassie's exploits on the farm end in the 11th season, she finds new adve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jan Clayton
Jan Clayton (August 26, 1917 – August 28, 1983) was a film, musical theater, and television actress. She starred in the popular 1950s TV series ''Lassie''. Born near Alamogordo, New Mexico, the only child of two schoolteachers, Clayton started singing by age four. Career Clayton was a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starlet in the early 1940s, appearing in several films, none of them particularly notable, except for an unbilled role in 1948 as a singing inmate in ''The Snake Pit''. She appeared in the role of Julie Jordan in the original 1945 Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic ''Carousel''. Clayton can be heard on the original cast recordings of both ''Carousel'' (1945) and the 1946 Broadway revival of Kern's 1927 musical play ''Show Boat''. The ''Show Boat'' album was the first American production of the show to be recorded with its original cast. In May 1954, Clayton guest-starred in ABC's sitcom ''Where's Raymond?'', starring Ray Bolger as a song-and-dance man, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stories Of The Century
''Stories of the Century'' is a 39-episode Western historical fiction television series starring Jim Davis that ran in syndication through Republic Pictures between 1954 and 1955. Synopsis Jim Davis, who became famous decades later as the patriarch Jock Ewing in the ''Dallas'' television series, held a dual role as the show's narrator and Southwest Railroad detective Matt Clark. Mary Castle co-starred in twenty-six episodes as Clark's assistant, Frankie Adams; she was replaced by Kristine Miller, who appeared in thirteen episodes as Margaret "Jonesy" Jones. Clark and his female associates traveled the American West weekly, seeking to capture the most notorious badmen. They placed Clark at the right place and the right time to capture great moments in the history of the American Old West. Clark's appearances often seemed contrived, as when he appears just at the time young Robert Ford was assassinating Jesse James. Though Clark himself was fictional, the events he encou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Castle
Mary Ann Castle, ''née'' Mary Ann Noblett, (January 22, 1931 – April 29, 1998) was an American actress. She appeared in the films ''When the Redskins Rode'' in 1951, ''Three Steps to the Gallows'' in 1953 and ''Gunsmoke'' in 1953. In 1954 she appeared opposite Jim Davis as 'Frankie Adams' in the television series '' Stories of the Century''. On November 13, 1959, while in jail in Beverly Hills Beverly Hills is a city located in Los Angeles County, California. A notable and historic suburb of Greater Los Angeles, it is in a wealthy area immediately southwest of the Hollywood Hills, approximately northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Bev ... on a charge of drunkenness, she attempted to hang herself. Castle also faced financial problems that resulted in legal action. In December 1959, she told a superior court that she had no money when an interior designer got a $4,500 judgment against her. On February 25, 1960, Castle filed a bankruptcy petition listing $300 worth of cl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ward Cleaver
Ward Cleaver Jr. is a fictional character in the American television sitcom '' Leave It to Beaver''. Ward and his wife, June, are often invoked as archetypal suburban parents of the 1950s babyboomers. At the start of the show, the couple are the parents of Wally, a 13-year-old in the eighth grade, and seven-year-old ("almost eight") second-grader Theodore, nicknamed "The Beaver". A typical episode from ''Leave It to Beaver'' follows a misadventure committed by one or both of the boys, and ends with the culprits receiving a moral lecture from their father and a hot meal from their mother. Hugh Beaumont portrays Ward in the series and directed several episodes in the later seasons of the show. Max Showalter (appearing as Casey Adams) plays Ward in the series' pilot, "It's a Small World", which aired in April 1957. Many of the ''Leave It to Beaver'' players were featured in their original roles in a reunion movie televised in 1983 (''Still the Beaver'') and a sequel series called ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugh Beaumont
Eugene Hugh Beaumont (February 16, 1909 – May 14, 1982) was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of Ward Cleaver on the television series '' Leave It to Beaver'', originally broadcast from 1957 to 1963; and as private detective Michael Shayne in a series of low-budget crime films in 1946 and 1947. Early life Beaumont was born in Lawrence, Kansas, to Ethel Adaline Whitney and Edward H. Beaumont, a traveling salesman whose profession kept the family on the move. After graduating from the Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the class of 1930, he attended the University of Chattanooga, where he played football. He later studied at the University of Southern California and graduated with a master of theology degree in 1946. Career Beaumont began his career in show business in 1931 by performing in theaters, nightclubs, and radio. He began acting in motion pictures in 1940, appearing in over three dozen films. Many of those roles were bit parts and minor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Gunn
''Peter Gunn'' is an American private eye television series, starring Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn with Lola Albright as his girlfriend, Edie Hart. The series aired on NBC from September 22, 1958, to 1960 and on ABC in 1960–1961. The series was created by Blake Edwards, who, on occasion, was also writer (for 39 episodes) and director (for nine episodes). ''Peter Gunn'' is notable for being the first televised detective program whose character was created for television, instead of adapted from other media. The series is probably best remembered today for its music, including the iconic "Peter Gunn Theme", which was nominated for an Emmy Award and two Grammys for Henry Mancini. Subsequently it was performed and recorded by many jazz, rock and blues musicians. The progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer recorded the song adding synthesizers. The series was number 17 in the Nielsen ratings for the 1958–1959 TV season and number 29 for the 1960-61 TV season. Plot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
