Sid Caesar

Question: I know I'm not crazy. Back in the '70s, Larry Storch (and, I believe, his old cohort Forrest Tucker) were in a Saturday-morning kid-oriented show that had something to do with outer space. I want to say it ran opposite Bob Denver's Far Out Space Nuts. It would have been around the time of Sid and Marty Krofft's dominance of Saturday-morning programming. Please tell me I haven't completely lost my mind.

Answer: Not in this regard you haven't, David. You're thinking of The Ghost Busters, which ran on CBS for a year beginning in September 1975. On it, Storch and Tucker, best known for their F Troop days together, played a couple of ghost hunters who were teamed with a gorilla named Tracy. It was a live-action show, but spawned an animated version in the late read more

The occasion: a panel late Tuesday afternoon promoting Pioneers of Primetime, a PBS special (airing Nov. 9) about the legendary vaudevillian clowns who first made TV popular. Several gave their final TV interviews for this documentary, including the late Milton Berle, Steve Allen and Red Skelton — who turned down producer Steve Boettcher's interview requests at least half a dozen times before relenting and rewarding him with three and a half hours shortly before he died.

At TCA, this all-star panel of 80-something golden-age talent, which at first glance promised to be an exercise in fawning nostalgia, quickly turned into a rollicking display of classic shtick, as Red Buttons and Carl Reiner me read more