Now I've Heard Everything

At a time when her high school classmates were studying for exams or preparing book reports, Janis Ian was giving concerts, and appearing on television, and getting awards for her music. From an early age, Janis Ian made a name for herself as a singer-songwriter. Among her biggest hits, Society's Child, and At 17. And in 1975 -- 45 years ago this week, in fact, -- Janis Ian was one of the two musi...

Tonight, October 7th, Senator Kamala Harris will meet Vice President Mike Pence in their one and only debate of the 2020 election campaign. Harris is the first woman of color on a major party presidential ticket, and she is only the third woman ever nominated by a major party for vice president. The first, in 1984, was Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, who was chosen by Democrat Walter Mondale to b...

You may know defense attorney Johnnie Cochran best for his participation in OJ Simpson's dream team in his 1990s trial. But Johnny Cochran had a long legal career, and the Simpson case was just one of hundreds that he participated in. I met him in 2002, when he wrote A Memoir, of his long, storied legal career.

Sixty-five years ago this week, a new children's television show was launched on the CBS networok.  Its creator was a man who had actually been part of the supporting cast of The Howdy Doody Show. His name was Bob keeshan. But the world knew him for decades to come as Captain Kangaroo.  I actually interviewed Bob keeshan twice. This interview was the second time, in early 1995. He had wr...

Julie Andrews made her debut as an actress and singer in London in 1948. She first appeared on Broadway in 1954. But to audiences of all ages around the world, she may be best known as Mary Poppins, or as Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music. I met her in 2009, aftershe and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton, had collaborated 

Tomorrow night, September 29th, is the first debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. So today on Now I've Heard Everything, I wanted to revisit an interview I did over 30 years ago with a man who played a key role in the 1984 presidential debates between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale. Years before he became head of Fox News -- way before there even was a Fox N...

Fifty years ago today, a TV show premiered on ABC, about a family that had formed a rock band. It was called "The Partridge Family,: and its star was a young actor-singer named David Cassidy. In very short order, Cassidy became a full-fledged teen idol. Girls went crazy for him. He sold out concert Halls. But as he revealed in a 1994 memoir, life was not exactly what it looked like on the outside.

In nearly thirty years of interviewing celebrities and big names, I didn't often get very Starstruck, but this day I did. It's hard to overstate how big a star Mickey Rooney was.  For decades, he was one of the most recognizable names and faces in all of Hollywood. If you've ever watched one of his movies on one of the classic movie networks, you know his Andy Hardy series, and all those hey...

Journalist and celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley first rose to prominence in 1978, with her biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a book called Jackie Oh! But it was her 1986 biography of the legendary Frank Sinatra that make kitty Kelley a household name. Kelley is a meticulous and very thorough biographer, and in researching Sinatra's life, she uncovered a lot of things he didn't want uncover...

If you've ever eaten that Wendy's, and most of us have, you probably know that the chain was founded by a guy named Dave Thomas. He needed a first daughter. And you probably remember his TV commercials: But here's what you may not know about Dave Thomas. He was born during the Great Depression. Later he was adopted, but his homelife was so unstable, he dropped out of high school and struck out on...

-------------------------- In the US, we take labor unions for granted. To many, it seems like they have always been around. But in 1980, labor unions in countries under the grip of the Soviet Union we're totally hostile to labor unions. That's why it made huge news 40 years ago this week, when workers in the Gdansk shipyards of Poland formed a labor union called solidarity. With the implicit bles...

Today's episode is for my baby boomers. Because we all remember June Lockhart, whether it's from Lassie, Lost in Space, or even Petticoat Junction. June Lockhart, child of Hollywood parents, has been a fixture classic TV for decades. She typically played a firm but loving mom, someone we can all relate to.  I met her in 2001, after she'd written a memoir.

Do you remember where you were 19 years ago today? Richard Picciotto will always remember that as the day he thought he would die. Indeed, he almost did. PIcciotto was a New York City Fire Department battalion chief that day, and he was inside the North Tower of the World Trade Center when the South Tower collapsed. Half an hour later, he was still inside the North Tower when it, too, collapsed.

Whoopi Goldberg has been entertaining us for almost 40 years, in movies like "The Color Purple," "Ghost," and "Sister Act" as well as TV's "Star Trek: The Next Generation," and of course, on ABC's "The View." I met her in 1997, after she wrote a book called "Book."  It was a kind of stream-of-consciousness effort, with chapters each having a single syllable word as their title. And our interv...

Happy Labor Day! This is the national holiday set aside to recognize the efforts and contributions of America's Workforce.  So I want to revisit my interview almost a quarter-century ago with the man who was America's top labor leader for 14 years.  John Sweeney was president of the AFL-CIO. I met him in 1996, about a year after he assumed the presidency of the Union.

In 21 seasons with his hometown Baltimore Orioles,Cal Ripken racked up some very enivable numbers: 3,184 hits. 431 home runs. 1,695 runs batted in.  A 19time All-Star, and two-time American League Most Valuable Plater. But perhaps his greatest number was 2,632.  That's w many consecutive games Ripken played in,shattering the Lou Gehrig record of 2,130,  25 years ago this weekend.

It was 46 years ago this week that NBC TV viewers first heard that theme music introducing a series called "Littel House on the Prairie." For the next eight years, it was a perennial viewer favorite. One of the stars of the series was Melissa Anderson -- known in those years as "Melissa Sue Anderson"; she'll explain why, in this interview.  Anderson played "Mary," one member of the Ingalls fa...

What is it like, growing up in what some say was the most famous family of the twentieth century? Reeve Lindbergh knows. She was born in 1945 to Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.  Her father was "Lucky Lindy" the aviator who made history in 1927 as the first pilot to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a solo flight.

By 1991 when i met and interviewed him, Stan Lee -- the genius behind Marvel Comics -- was a legend.  Almost royalty. And as he told me then, the Stan Lee - Marvel Comics story actually went back decades.  Together they transformed a medium that was at one time the exclusive domain of children into a much richer art form.

As public scandals go, this one might seem pretty benign, by today's low bar.  But in 1984, it was a big story when it was revealed thatthe authoirities had broken up a high-priced Manhattan escort service that was being run by a woman named Sydney Biddle Barrows. Now, when a New York Post reporter uncovered the fact that the 32-year-old Barrows is from the Biddle family of Philadelphia, and...

Last week Democrats nominated Joe Biden for president. This week, Republicans will renominate Donald Trump, for a second term. Let's go back 56 years, to July1964, when the GOP nominated Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. When I met him in 1988, the country was in the midst of the George H.W. Bush vs Michael Dukakis race. And as you're about to hear, Goldwater had some very specific ideas about that...

Years before her husband Al was elected vice president of the United States, Tipper Gore established a reputation of her own, as a social issues advocate. And her issue, in the late 80s, was protecting America's children from sex and violence in the media. She was co-founder of the Parents Music Resource Center, which led the effort to require warning labels if on media contained profanity, sexual...

Tomorrow, August 20th, is National Radio Day. Yoday, we're going to revisit my interview 25 years ago with one of the greatest radio personalities of all time. And I'm going to let you hear the question I asked him that day, and the answer he gave me, that has haunted me to this day.  I'm talking about the great Wolfman Jack, one of the greatest figures in the history of the music business in...

The 2020 Democratic National Convention is getting underway this week. It'll look a lot different from any past convention, though, because of the coronavirus pandemic. Let's go back 48 years, to 1972, when the Democratic party nominated South Dakota Senator George McGovern as their standard-bearer. Running on a liberal, anti-war platform, McGovern lost badly to Republican incumbent Richard Nixon...

Irish-born redhead Maureen O'Hara knew from an early age she wanted to act.  After years of training, she was finally "discovered," if you will, as ayoung woman  by Charles Laughton, considered one of thye world's finest actors.   Her first movie came in 1938, and it launched an award-winning career that spanned decades.  I met her in 2004. She had just written a memoir that in...