MIKE GRACIA

Milton Berle (Mendel Berlinger)
(July 12, 1908 – March 27, 2002)

Berle was an actor and comedian. His career 
spanned over eight decades, first in silent
films and on stage as a child actor, then in
radio, movies and television. 
 

As the host of NBC‘s Texaco Star Theatre
(1948–1953), he was the first major television
star and was known to millions of viewers as
"Uncle Miltie" and "Mr. Television" during the
first Golden Age of Television.

He was honored with two stars on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame for his work in both radio and TV.

On January 26, 1979, “The Dukes of Hazzard,” a television
comedy about two cousins in the rural South and their
souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger known as the General Lee,
debuted on CBS.

The show, which originally aired for seven seasons, centered
around cousins Bo Duke (John Schneider) and Luke Duke
(Tom Wopat) and their ongoing efforts to elude their nemeses,
the crooked county commissioner “Boss” Jefferson Davis Hogg
(Sorrell Booke) and the bumbling Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane
(James Best).

“The Dukes of Hazzard” was known for its car chases, stunts
and the General Lee.

The General Lee in action.

On January 12, 1926, the two-man comedy series “Sam ‘n’
Henry” debuted on Chicago  radio station WGN. Two years
later, after changing its name to “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” the show
became one of the most popular radio programs in American
history.

Though the creators and the stars of the new radio program,
Freeman Gosden and Charles Carrell, were both white, the
characters they played were two Black men from the Deep
South who moved to Chicago to seek their fortunes.

By that time, white actors performing in dark stage makeup—
or “blackface”—had been a significant tradition in American
theater for over 100 years.

Gosden and Carrell, both vaudeville performers, were doing
a Chicago comedy act in blackface when an employee at the
Chicago Tribune suggested they create a radio show.

“Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” an irreverent
comedy based in the outlandish (fictionalized) world of
American stock car racing, premiered in movie theaters
around the United States on August 4, 2006.

American Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) stands up to his Gallic
rival Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen).

On July 2, 1997, the science fiction-comedy movie Men in Black,
starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, opened in theaters
around the United States. The film grossed more than $250
million in America alone and helped establish the former sitcom
star Will Smith as one of Hollywood’s most bankable leading men.