MORE CLASSIC TELEVISION TURNS 50 & 60......"MY THREE SONS"......"BURNS AND ALLEN"..........

..........120 years ago today in Portugal, my maternal grandfather Manuel Lawrence Correia, (COREY) was born.  At age 17, he immigrated to the United States, settling in Sacramento, and went to work for the Southern Pacific Railroad.  One day in 1910, they called him into the office and told him the spelling of his last name would from then on be, COREY, instead of Correia.  To drop the second r and the i and the a, and add y to become Manuel COREY, an American.  Proud to become an American he did so, not realizing legal citizenship entailed much more than that.  Finally, at age 66, in 1956, he achieved citizenship as a naturalized American..........

Last Saturday I blogged about some of the stars and shows and significant milestones they had reached.  Today i add two more television classics and write of the Hollywood stars who appeared in them.  Fred MacMurray was a famous leading actor in movies of the 1930's into the 1960's.  His gentle, easy going, unflappable appearance won him wide acclaim.  On September 29, 1960, he came to television in a situation comedy series titled, "My Three Sons", on ABC-TV.  Co-starring with him were William Frawley, another Hollywood movie veteran, fresh off a nine year run as Fred Mertz, on the,"I Love Lucy / Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour series, and playing his sons, Tim Considine, Don Grady, and Stanley Livingston.  After six highly successful seasons on ABC, the show moved to CBS-TV, in 1965.  Tim Considine left the seies at that time and a new, adopted, younger, third son, played by Barry Livingston, (the real life, biological brother of Stanley Livingston) joined the cast.  Then in 1966, William Frawley died, and his character, "Bub", was replaced by another veteran character actor from the movies, William Demarest as, "Uncle Charlie".  As the series progressed into its next six seasons, actresses, Tina Cole, Beverly Garland, and Dawn Lyn, were added to the cast.  For twelve delightful seasons "My Three Sons", was a very welcome weekly guest in American homes.....With overtones of vaudeville, early television variety shows and emerging situation comedies, George Burns and Gracie Allen, brought their very popular radio show, to television on October 12, 1950.  And for eight, hilarious and ditsy seasons, brought laughter and enjoyable entertainment to viewers. George Burns and Gracie Allen formed a vaudevillian comedy team in 1922, married in 1926, and starred on radio from the early 1930's, taking over the slot held by The Guy Lombardo Show, on which they had been regulars on CBS Radio in 1934, a program that became the Burns and Allen Show in 1936.  It was that series fourteen years later they brought to television sixty years ago, on October 12, 1950, which had a highly successfuk eight season run, until Gracie Allen decided to retire from show business in 1958.  With the hundreds of tv networks now available in the media world of cable and satellite, few programs having the enduring classic television flavor and staying power, as these two outstanding shows from the golden age of television.  If you remember them, celebrate their 50th and 60th anniversaries and the enjoyment they provided.  If you are too young to have seen them during their prime time runs, then seek out the reruns and video / dvd library, and you are not likely to be disappointed.  Fred MacMurray, George Burns, Gracie Allen, and all their co-stars will live on forever in the television land of happy memories..........Saluting These Two Television Classics,  Fr.  Troy  TV