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Ted Cordes, whose 35 years at NBC included telling Johnny Carson, Tom Snyder and others what they could and could not put on the air as the longtime head of broadcast standards for the network on the West Coast, has died. He was 87.

Cordes died Sunday night at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications from Alzheimer’s disease, his husband, William J. Derby, announced.

In 1963, Cordes joined NBC as a page in the guest relations department in Burbank and answered fan mail for Bonanza. He called it a career at the end of 2003 overseeing Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and other programs as vp broadcast standards, West Coast.

On live broadcasts, Cordes would personally oversee the 10-second delay to prevent viewers from encountering objectionable material.

“In a nation where everyone believes in at least his own right to free speech, the censor is typically seen as the enemy...

Theodore F. “Ted” Cordes, who spent more than 30 years at NBC including as its head of broadcast standards, has died at the age of 87.

He died on Sunday, July 6, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, according to his husband, William J. Derby.

Cordes worked on some of NBC’s key shows including The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Tomorrow Show, L.A. Law, Law & Order and the Saturday morning animated Star Trek series.

Joining the company as a page in Burbank before rising to become VP Broadcast Standards, West Coast, he once said that his career began by answering fan mail for Bonanza in 1963 and ended in 2014 when he handled broadcast standards for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

After serving in the U.S. Army from 1961-63, stationed in Korea, he joined NBC as a page, before briefly leaving in 1966 to join advertising agency Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample.

Will Hutchins, the eccentric actor who portrayed the wholesome sharpshooter and frontier lawyer Tom Brewster on the 1957-61 ABC Western Sugarfoot, has died. He was 94.

Hutchins died Monday, his wife, Barbara, told Western film and TV historian Boyd Magers.

Hutchins also starred as Woody Banner, who inherits a Manhattan brownstone from his uncle, on the 1966-67 NBC sitcom Hey, Landlord, created by Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson, fresh off their work on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Two years later, the blue-eyed Los Angeles native played Dagwood Bumstead opposite Patricia Harty on the 1968-69 CBS comedy Blondie. Based on the comic strip and following a set of films and a 1957 NBC series, it lasted just 16 episodes before being canceled.

On the big screen, Hutchins appeared opposite Elvis Presley in two movies: as the gourmet cop Tracy Richards (the name was a Dick Tracy pun) in Spinout (1966) and as buddy Tom Wilson...

Janet de Cordova's story showcases the fleeting nature of Hollywood fame, filled with glitz and glamour of high society. Despite initial buzz, the HBO movie adaptation of her life remains stalled with no updates on its development. Speculation on the cast includes actresses like Carey Mulligan and Rosamund Pike, highlighting the complexity of Janet's character and story.

A movie about Janet de Cordova was in development over a decade ago at HBO, but the film has yet to enter production. Janet de Cordova's story is a poignant reminder of the ephemeral nature of fame and fortune in Hollywood's Golden Age. As the wife of Freddie de Cordova, the esteemed producer of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Janet's life was filled with the glitz and glamour of high society. Known for her lavish parties that hosted A-list celebrities like Billy Wilder, Gary Cooper, Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin, she...

Joan Evans, the daughter of screenwriters and goddaughter of Joan Crawford, who starred opposite Farley Granger in her first three films and with Audie Murphy in a pair of Westerns, has died. She was 89.

Evans died Oct. 21 in Henderson, Nevada, her son, John Weatherly, told The Hollywood Reporter.

She also toplined the Charles Lederer-directed On the Loose (1951), playing a suicidal teenager in the drama written by her parents, Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert; portrayed Irene Dunne’s daughter in the fantasy It Grows on Trees (1952); and enlisted in the U.S. Navy with Esther Williams in the musical comedy Skirts Ahoy! (1952).

Evans played the love interest of Granger’s character in the title role of Roseanna McCoy (1949), a drama loosely based on the family feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. The two worked together again in the 1950 releases Our Very Own and Edge of Doom, a bleak film noir directed by Mark Robson.

Emily Marshall, who parlayed a gig as a secretary for producer Fred de Cordova on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show into a two-decade career as a sitcom writer on Newhart, Rhoda, Wkrp in Cincinnati and Designing Women, has died. She was 79.

Marshall died March 17 of lung cancer at her home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, her friend and mentor, Emmy-nominated writer-producer Barry Kemp, said. She served as a staff writer on Newhart, which he created, from 1982-84.

Marshall was the third wife of Doc Severinsen. She married the colorful Tonight Show bandleader and trumpet player in 1980 and was with him for nearly 40 years through 2013.

Marshall also created the 1988-89 CBS sitcom Coming of Age, which starred Paul Dooley, Phyllis Newman, Alan Young, Glynis Johns, Kevin Pollak and Ruta Lee. The comedy, set in an Arizona retirement community, opened with Severinsen performing the boisterous big band number “Sing, Sing,...

After months of sitting in limbo, Paul Reiser’s period comedy “There’s… Johnny!” has finally been given a premiere date: All seven episodes launch November 16, on Hulu.

For Reiser, it’s a relief to finally get to show his pet project to the world. “There’s… Johnny!” had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year and was originally set to debut on NBC Universal’s Seeso digital platform in August. But then Seeso was shut down, leaving all of its original series hanging.

Some of Seeso’s existing programs, including “Harmontown,” were sold to another digital company, Vrv. After three or four months of conversations with various potential homes, “There’s… Johnny!” finally landed at Hulu, as part of an overall distribution deal the streaming service signed with NBCU.

Read More:Seeso Confirms It’s Shutting Down, Leaving Shows Like ‘There’s… Johnny!’ to Look For...

Deanna Durbin: Highest-paid actress in the world [See previous post: "Deanna Durbin in the '40s: From Wholesome Musicals to Film Noir Sex Worker."] Despite several missteps in the handling of her career, David Shipman states that Deanna Durbin was Hollywood’s (and the world’s) highest-paid actress in both 1945 and 1947. In 1946, Durbin’s earnings of $323,477 trailed only Bette Davis’ $328,000 at Warner Bros. Those are impressive rankings (and wages), but ironically Durbin’s high earnings ultimately harmed her career. By the mid-’40s, her domestic box-office allure was beginning to fade, a situation surely worsened by World War II closing off most of Hollywood’s top international markets. As a result, Universal, since 1947 a new entity known as Universal-International, was unwilling to spend extra money in their star’s already costly vehicles. That’s a similar predicament to the one faced by silent-era superstar John Gilbert at MGM in the early ’30s: the studio had to pay Gilbert an exorbitant salary that made his movies much...

Dorothy Lamour, Bob Hope, Road to Morocco Bob Hope on TCM Schedule and synopses from the TCM website: 3:00 Am Bachelor In Paradise (1961) A writer moves into a housing development to study married couples. Cast: Bob Hope, Lana Turner, Janis Paige. Dir: Jack Arnold. C-109 mins. 5:00 Am Global Affair, A (1964) A U.N. official tries to locate the mother of an abandoned baby. Cast: Bob Hope, Yvonne De Carlo, Robert Sterling. Dir: Jack Arnold. Bw-84 mins. 6:30 Am I’ll Take Sweden (1965) A widower takes a job in Stockholm to get his daughter away from her boyfriend. Cast: Bob Hope, Tuesday Weld, Frankie Avalon. Dir: Frederick de Cordova. C-97 mins. 8:08 Am Short Film: Stockholm "Pride Of Sweden" (1937) In this "Traveltalk," we learn about Stockholm’s people, culture, and history. C-9 mins. 8:30 Am Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966) A real estate agent tries to keep a...

Elvis Presley holds the throne as “The King” of rock n’ roll. Music was his forte, but he did dabble in film for awhile and the results were a mixed bag. In honor of his 75th birthday which he won’t be able to celebrate for himself (unless you’re an Elvis Lives conspiracy theorist), Fox has released the Elvis 75th Birthday Collection. Presented in 2.35:1 Widescreen (save for Kid Galahad in 1.85:1 and Frankie and Johnny in 1.66:1), the collection shows its age in a few places as Fox seems to have done little to remaster these classics, but overall it’s a nice look at the musician who would be an actor, even if the selection of films leaves a lot to be desired. If the set is good for anything it’s for showing his progress as an actor from his first film ever, Love Me Tender,...