On January 27, 1965, the Shelby GT 350, a version of a Ford
Mustang sports car developed by the American auto racer
and car designer Carroll Shelby,was launched.
The Shelby GT 350, which featured a 306 horsepower V-8
engine, remained in production through the end of the 1960s
and today is a valuable collector’s item.
Carroll Hall Shelby
(January 11, 1923 – May 10, 2012)
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.
The first Emmy Awards ceremony was held on January 25, 1949
at the Hollywood Athletic Club.
The awards recognize excellence in television (which in the
1940s was a novel medium).
Hollywood’s first television academy had been founded three
years earlier by Sydney Cassyd, a former film editor for Frank
Capra who later worked as a grip at Paramount Studios and
an entertainment journalist.
At a time when only about 50,000 American households had
TV sets, Cassyd saw the need for an organization that would
foster productive discussion of the fledgling entertainment
medium.
Sydney Cassyd (1908 – 2000)
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.
All in the Family is an sitcom television series that aired
on CBS for nine seasons from January 12, 1971, to April
8, 1979, with a total of 205 episodes.
All in the Family has been ranked as one of the best TV
series. The show became the most watched show in the
U.S.during the summer reruns of the first season, and
topped the yearly Nielsen ratings from 1971 to 1976, the
first television series to have held the position for five
consecutive years.
1971
Sally Anne Struthers (77) was born in Portland, Oregon.
