Now I've Heard Everything

Happy Presidents Day.  Now, if you're old enough, as I am, you may remember that this day was traditionally celebrated as Lincoln's birthday.  It was transformed into President's Day in 1971, as part of the move toward more Monday holidays. In 2005, noted presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose best selling books included volumes about Lyndon Johnson and John F Kennedy, took o...

Happy Valentine's Day weekend! I thought this would be an appropriate time to bring back an interview with the author of one of the great love stories of our time -- Love Story, by Erich Segal. His book became a huge bestseller in 1970, and even bigger box office movie smash in 1971, starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal as the star-crossed lovers. I met him in 1988, when he published his latest no...

Was the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s a social or political movement? It was, but it was also a religious or spiritual movement, says former Congressman and UN Ambassador Andrew Young. In a 1994 book called A Way Out of No Way, Young, a confidant of Martin Luther King jr., a former preacher, former Atlanta mayor, told his own story against the backdrop of the movement that he was a ke...

For three weeks in October 2002, the Washington DC area was terrorized by a series of sniper attacks. Someone was randomly shooting and killing people throughout the district, and the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Piecing together scant eyewitness Clues, police began searching for the gunman, and ultimately found, and arrested, 41 year old John Allen Muhammad and 17 year old Lee Boyd Malvo. Both...

The Kansas City Chiefs are meeting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV. The Chiefs were also in the very first Super Bowl, in 1967. But it was their misfortune that year to be playing the Green Bay Packer, who are led by future Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr. He was named the game's Most Valuable Player, as well as MVP of Super Bowl II Ithe following year. I met Bart Starr in 1987, when...

A few days ago on Now I've Heard Everything, I featured an interview that I had done many years ago with one of my broadcasting Heroes, the late Larry King. Today, another one: longtime CBS radio and TV news personality Charles Osgood. Osgood grew up in Depression-era, World War ii-era Baltimore. And in 2004, he wrote a memoir recalling those years, called Defending Baltimore Against Enemy Attack.

They may have called her "the original 'bad girl of rock and roll'," but Ronnie Spector was nothing but nice to me, when I met her in 1990. Spectre was the lead singer in the '60s girl-group The Ronettes. Their big hit, of couse, was "Be My Baby." but of course there were others, too. But Ronnie Spector was also Mrs. Phil Spector. And we get into that a little bit, in this interview.

I listened to Larry King on the radio long before I first met him, in 1988.  That was actually the first of several interviews I did with King, who passed away the other day at age 87.  Larry King was a legend in radio and television. Whether you like them or not, you had to acknowledge he had Broad and deep influence in broadcasting.  Larry did tens of thousands of interviews over...

Tomorrow is January 28, and if you are old enough, you undoubtedly have a clear memory of exactly where you were 35 years agp, on January 28, 1986. That was the day of that horrible tragedy, the explosion of Space Shuttle Challenger. Among the crew members was teacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe, who had won a nationwide competition to become the first teacher in space. Watching the liftoff in per...

Do you remember The Dating Game? Or The Newlywed Game?  How about The Gong Show? They and many other TV game shows were all created by e same man: Chuck Barris. He was the king of game shows for many years until he retired in the 1980s and moved to France. A few years later, he wrote a memoir clled The Game Show King. And that's when I met him and interviewed him.

In 1969, a young Texas woman sought a legal abortion. But when she was unable to obtain one, she turned to two young lawyers for help. Those lawyers took Norma NcCorve's case to court, and eventually to the United States Supreme Court. Along the way, Norma NcCorvey became known in the court papers as "Jane Roe." Henry Wade was the local prosecutor she was suing, so the case became known as Roe v W...

In early November 1979, a group of students and militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking everyone inside hostage, including the chargé d'affaires, a career diplomat named Bruce Laingen. The militants were demanding the return of the exiled Shah of Iran, who was undergoing medical treatment in the U.S. But diplomatic and even military efforts to free thehstages failed, and they ended up...

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the U.S. So I wanted to revisit an interview I did nearly 30 years ago with a woman whose actions helped propel Dr. King to national prominence. In December 1955, a young woman named Rosa Parks was on her way home after a long hard day at work. She was on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, when she was ordered to the back of the bus so a white man could have her s...

Many people may think Leonard Nimoy's career started with Star Trek. But he was a serious actor for a number of years before that.  He even appearing in other science fiction shows. But of course it was Star Trek that propelled him not just to fame but to Iconic status. His portrayal of a half-human, half-Vulcan Spock practically launch a cottage industry. In 1975, Nimoy wrote a book called I...

In the summer of 1988 leaders of the Democratic party invited Texas State Treasurer Ann Richards to deliver a prime-time address at the Democratic National Convention. Richards delivered. all right, in a big way, targeting Republican presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, who had just spent eight years as Ronald Reagan's vice president.  Richards delivered a takedown line that has lived forev...

It was on January 12th. 1971 -- 50 years ago -- that situation comedy changed in a big way, with the premiere of a controversial show called All in the Family. At the center of the show was an irascible middle-aged blue collar worker named Archie Bunker.  What made Archie so controversial, then and now, was how utterly unapologetic he was for his politically incorrect views.  Cast in the...

In 1993, a single mother with no legal training, no experikence as an attorney, helped bring a major corporation to its knees. Erin Brockovich joined attorney Ed Masry in suing Pacific Gas & Electric, which was accused of poisoning the water supply in a small California town called Hinkley. Soon, Hollywood heard about the story, and itwas turned into a major Motion Picture in 2000, starring Ju...

Don Knotts is perhaps best know as Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show. But you also remember him as Ralph Furley from Three's Company. Maybe you remember him from The Apple Dumpling Gang movies, or The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, or The Shakiest Gun in the West. Or The Incredible Mr. Limpet. Don Knotts had a decades-long entertainment career, which actually began soon after World Wa...

As we look for a place in the history books to put 2020, we also are taking a look back at Season Two of Now I've Heard Everything. And stay till the end, for preview of season 3, coming in Jauary! 

Did you know that December 21st is National Short Girl Appreciation Day?  Ever since 1984, one of America's favorite short girls has been Olympic gold medal gymnast Mary Lou Retton. At the age of just 16, Retton became the first Anerucab woman to ever win the gold medal in all-around gymnastics competition at theOlympics. She also won two silver medals, and two bronze medals. Her boundless en...

Next Monday, December 21, marks the 50th anniversary of a very strange day in White House history. It was on December 21, 1970 that the king of rock and roll, Elvis Presley, showed up unannounced at the White House gate, asking for a personal meeting with President Richard M.Nixon. The man who put that meeting together that day was Nixon aide Egil "Bud" Krogh.  Officially, Krogh was head of t...

Regular listeners of Now I've Heard Everything know that I don't often get starstruck. But this was one of those times. If you grew up in the '60s, as I did, you may best remember Kitty Carlisle as a panelist on the game show "To Tell the Truth." But heracting career went back many decades before that. In fact, Kitty Carlisle was a featured performer in the 1935 Marx Brothers classic "A Night at t...

Graham Nash is actually in the Rock and Roll Hal;l of Fame twice - once as a member of the '60s pop group The Hollies, and again for his work as a member of Crosby Stills and Nash. Nash been an icon in pop and rock music for decades -- and in 2002, he puboished a book about some of the best-known and mosticonic songs of our time, It was called "Off the Record," and I met Graham Nash when he was on...

While Molly Shannon may be best known for her six seasons on Saturday Night and her many many television and movie appearances, it turns out she is also a children's book author. In 2011, Shannon published a book called Tilly the trickster. It's about a young girl who loves to play practical jokes on people, ranging from her brother, to her parents, to her school mates. So, is there a little bit o...

Ed McMahon had a career in broadcasting that dated back to the 1940s. But perhaps nothing he did on television was as memorable as this: his 30-year on-are partnership with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. In 1998, McMahon wrote an autobiography, a mmoir of his decades in television entertainment. That's when I met him.