November 11, 1980: "Too Close for Comfort" Premieres

Left to right: Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Nancy Dussault

Jim J. Bullock, Ted Knight, Lydia Cornell and Audrey Meadows.

November 11, 1980: Too Close for Comfort premieres on ABC. It was based on Keep It In the Family, a British sitcom created by Johnny Speight, who also created That Was the Week That Was and Till Death Us Do Part, on which All In the Family was based.

Ted Knight played Henry Rush, a cartoonist in San Francisco. In real life, Knight dropped out of high school to serve in World War II, and never went to college, so, as Henry -- a much smarter and, though a bit gruff, nicer guy than Ted Baxter of The Mary Tyler Moore Show -- he wore college sweatshirts, 4 years before Bill Cosby started doing it on The Cosby Show. This proved popular enough that fans began donating sweatshirts, some of which he wore on the show.

Nancy Dussault played his wife Muriel, a photographer. Deborah Van Valkenburgh, previously known for her role in The Warriors, played their daughter Jackie. Lydia Cornell played their daughter Sara. In the pilot episode, the daughters moved out of the upstairs apartment in their house to the downstairs apartment. At the start of the 3rd season, despite their parents both being in their late 40s, they were joined by a baby brother, Andrew.

Jim J. Bullock (then billed as "JM J.") played Monroe Ficus, a friend of the daughters, intended as a one-time role, but became popular enough to be the show's "Cousin Oliver" or "Urkel." Ray Middleton played Henry's father. Audrey Meadows played Muriel's mother, coming full circle from her role on The Honeymooners: Now she was playing the battleaxe mother-in-law.

The show ran for 6 seasons, until Knight died of cancer in 1986. As of November 11, 2022, the rest of the main cast have all retired from acting, although Cornell has mostly produced and directed since 2005.

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November 11, 1980 was a Tuesday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 9 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Detroit Pistons, 149-118 at Madison Square Garden. In spite of the Knicks' high point total, the game's leading scorer was Michael Campanella "Campy" Russell, with 28 points.

* The Washington Bullets beat the Denver Nuggets, 107-92 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Atlanta Hawks, 126-97 at The Omni in Atlanta.

* The Houston Rockets beat the expansion Dallas Mavericks, 105-94 at the Reunion Arena in Dallas.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the San Antonio Spurs, 119-113 at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio. Billy Knight led all scorers on the night with 52 points. Despite being a basketball player for an Indiana team, he was black, and thus not related to Indiana University coach Bobby Knight, who was about to start a season that would see him win the 2nd of his 3 National Championships at IU.

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 100-96 at The Coliseum in the Cleveland suburb of Richfield, Ohio.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Chicago Bulls, 121-80 at the Chicago Stadium.

* The Phoenix Suns beat the San Diego Clippers, 109-107 at the San Diego Sports Arena (now the Pechanga Arena).

* And the Kansas City Kings beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 102-101 at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Portland.

And there were 6 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Calgary Flames, 7-3 at the Stampede Corral in Calgary. Guy Chouinard had a hat trick.

* The New York Islanders and the Minnesota North Stars played to a tie, 6-6 at the Nassau Coliseum. Mike Bossy scored 4 goals, and it still wasn't enough to give the Isles the win.

* The Chicago Black Hawks and the Quebec Nordiques played to a tie, 6-6 at the Colisée de Québec. The Nords blew a 5-0 lead.

* In an "Original Six" matchup, the Boston Bruins and the Detroit Red Wings played to a tie, 4-4 at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Colorado Rockies, 8-2 at the McNichols Arena in Denver. Les Habitantes got goals from 8 different players: Larry Robinson, Mark Napier, Pierre Mondou, Serge Savard, Gaston Gingras, Brian Engblom, Keith Acton and Bob Gainey.

* And the St. Louis Blues beat the Vancouver Canucks, 8-2 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.

September 19, 1970: "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" Premieres

September 19, 1970: The Mary Tyler Moore Show premieres on CBS. By the standards of the time, it was considered to be a groundbreaking situation comedy.

Mary Tyler Moore had previously played Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show. This time, having formed MTM Enterprises with her then-husband, then-CBS executive Grant Tinker, she worked with co-creators James L. Brooks and Allen Burns to create a new show with her name on it. Brooks had written for Marlo Thomas' sitcom That Girl, and he and Burns would later create the sitcom Taxi.

Moore, 33 years old at the time of the premiere, played Mary Richards, 30, never yet married, no children, and recently having broken her engagement to a man she realized didn't really want to get married. So she leaves her (fictional) hometown of Roseburg, Minnesota, and heads for the nearest big city, Minneapolis.

Originally, the idea was that Mary Richards was going to be divorced, not single. But even in 1970, this was a touchy subject. As it turned out, Catholics and evangelical Protestants were shocked to find out that the character, to put it politely, was no innocent young thing. If she'd come into the show divorced, that might have tanked the ratings right there.

CBS executives, who had made a lot of money on the lack of intelligence of many TV viewers, had a 2nd reason to veto the divorce angle: They were worried that, given Moore's claim to fame as Laura Petrie, audiences would think she had divorced Dick Van Dyke. That's how dumb they thought TV viewers were -- and a lot of them were.

(Don't look at me like that: I was a kid in the 1970s, and it always surprised me when someone, be they an actor or a newscaster, switched networks. I didn't realize that was allowed.)

The Season 1 opening montage shows her driving to Minneapolis, interspersed with a scene of a going-away party thrown by her friends. The theme song, "Love Is All Around," was written and sung by Sonny Curtis, formerly of Buddy Holly's Crickets and author of Bobby Fuller's "I Fought the Law." The song asks the question, "How will you make it on your own? This world is awful big. Girl, this time, you're all alone."

The song rebounds from this gloomy start, picks up, and concludes with the words, "You just might make it after all!" and with Mary tossing her hat in the air, while standing in front of the Donaldson's department store, at South 7th Street and Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis.

Unusual for opening credits, the name of the show is not mentioned, only the lead actor's name: "MARY TYLER MOORE." And none of the other members of the main cast are mentioned, until the closing credits start.

To reflect Moore's initials, the closing shot is of the logo of MTM Enterprises, a parody of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or MGM, and their roaring lion: A mewing kitten named Mimsie. There would be variations over the years, depending on the MTM-produced show: A Christmas episode would have the round frame as a wreath, and the kitten wearing a Santa Claus hat; The White Shadow showed a cat dribbling a cartoon basketball; Hill Street Blues had the kitten wearing a policeman's cap; Remington Steele had the kitten wearing a deerstalker cap like Sherlock Holmes, and dropping a Holmesian pipe out of its mouth as it mewed; and Newhart had Bob Newhart saying a sardonic, deadpan "Meow."

St. Elsewhere had the kitten wearing a surgical gown and cap. In one of the most tasteless moments in TV history, the last episode of St. Elsewhere had the kitten lying down, hooked up to machines, and flatlining, suggesting that the kitten was dead. I can't believe Moore approved that. Certainly, Betty White, "Animal lover that I am," would have objected! (In real life, the original Mimsie had recently died, living to a decent age for a cat.)

In the pilot, Mary gets an apartment in a house owned by Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman), a character that beat Beatrice Arthur's Maude Findlay to the title of sitcoms' 1st brassy feminist by 2 years. The house's address was listed as 119 North Weatherly Street, which does not really exist. The exterior shots were of a real house in Minneapolis, at 2104 Kenwood Parkway.

Phyllis often refers to her husband, a dermatologist named Lars, but the character is never seen onscreen. They have a daughter, Bess (Lisa Gerritsen), a teenager who follows her mother's example, perhaps a little too much.

Mary meets her upstairs neighbor, Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper), a wisecracking window dresser from New York. Also single, her lovelife is more active than Mary's, though without better results. In the pilot, Rhoda doesn't like Mary, but this soon changes, and they become best friends. Bess also gets along well with both Mary and, to Phyllis' dismay, Rhoda, often calling her "Aunt Rhoda," to which Phyllis says, "She's not your aunt!"

Mary applies for a job as an associate producer for the evening news at WJM, Channel 12. The producer, Lou Grant (Edward Asner), is old-school even by the standards of the time. Asner was 40 when the show began, but the later Lou Grant series established that Grant was actually 44, and with his bald head and paunch, he could have passed for being in his 50s.

Lou doesn't like women holding what traditionally were men's jobs, especially since they could get married and quit, or could already be married and get pregnant and quit, leaving him in the lurch. But he hires her anyway, reluctantly, saying, "You know what? You've got spunk. I hate spunk!" (At the time, "spunk" meant "nerve" or "gumption," and was not widely known to refer to anything sexual.)

Mary soon sees that everybody who works for Lou calls him, "Lou," even though she can never bring herself to call him anything but "Mr. Grant." Often, a tearful, "Ohhhh, Mr. Gra-a-ant!" Lou starts the show married to Edie (Priscilla Morrill), but the marriage falls apart, and they divorce. They had 3 daughters and 4 grandchildren.

Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod) is the news department's head writer, and quickly becomes friends with Mary. He is an expert verbal jouster, but also perceptive enough to know how far he can go with it from one person to another. He is married to Marie (Joyce Bulifant), and they have children, but how many was never specified.

Ted Baxter (Ted Knight) is the anchorman. He is dumb. And cheap. How dumb, and how cheap, is he? Ask Lou: "Ordinarily, Ted can't add 6 and 4. But, put a dollar sign in front of it, and he becomes Einstein." Shortly after Lou says this, knowing that his 6:00 broadcast lasts half an hour, he offers to take Mary out to dinner, and says, "Meet me at, um... " and tries to do the math in his head. He can't, until Lou says, "Put a dollar sign in front of it, Ted!" And Ted immediately says, "6:45."

But in spite of being dumb, and cheap, and vain, he has the look of an anchorman (Knight was only 46 when the show debuted, but his hair was already white, though he still had a full head of it for the rest of his life), and he had the deep, sonorous voice of an anchorman. And so, he was popular with the Twin Cities public. And, for the most part, he was a nice guy.

The original cast. Top, left to right:

Valerie Harper, Ed Asner, Cloris Leachman. Bottom, left to right:

Gavin MacLeod, Mary Tyler Moore, Ted Knight.

In Season 2, Ted met Georgette Franklin (Georgia Engel), a co-worker of Rhoda's. They eventually got married, in a ceremony held in Mary's apartment, by a minister played by John Ritter, who had just come from a tennis match and was still dressed for that. Ted and Georgette went on to have a son and a daughter.

In Season 4, a new character was introduced: Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White), who hosted The Happy Homemaker on WJM. More like a happy homewrecker: She slept around, including a disastrous one-night stand with Lou after his divorce. The character was supposed to be a one-time-only, but was such a hit, White became a regular. Sue Ann softened up a bit as the show went along.

For Season 2, to reflect the fact that Mary was beginning to make it -- in spite of the craziness at the office, and her penchant for hosting parties that went wrong -- a new version of the theme song was recorded, with Curtis re-writing the lyrics, including the immortal opening line, "Who can turn the world on with her smile?" And the song closes with a more definitive, "You're gonna make it after all!"

Mary and Rhoda both dated, but love proved fleeting for both. And they didn't just date. One time, when Mary's parents visited, Mary's mother reminded her husband, "Take your pill!" And both father and daughter said, "I will!" The implication was that Mary was taking birth control pills, and thus that Mary was having sex -- or, at least, was looking to do so. For the Nixon years, this was a big step for a single female sitcom character. It's generally accepted that MTM was the 1st U.S. sitcom to mention "The Pill."

Before starring on Good Times, John Amos made 13 appearances as Gordy Howard, WJM's weatherman. His race was never mentioned. This was also revolutionary: He wasn't "the black weatherman," he was "the weatherman." "I thought that was a very healthy attitude for the writers and the producers to take," Amos said.

Sports wasn't mentioned often on the show, but in later opening sequences, Mary is shown washing her Ford Mustang while wearing a Minnesota Vikings jersey, with the Number 10 of Hall of Fame quarterback Fran Tarkenton, then still active. During the course of the show, the Vikings went to 3 Super Bowls, but lost them all.

In the last episode, airing on March 19, 1977, the station was bought, and everybody was fired except Ted, the dummy. The last scene, of the remaining characters walking out the door while hugging, is one of the most fondly remembered in TV history. In the last shot for the last episode, instead of mewing, the MTM kitten is Moore's voice saying, "Bye!"

The closing cast. Top, left to right:

Gavin MacLeod, Ed Asner, Ted Knight. Bottom, left to right:

Betty White, Mary Tyler Moore, Georgia Engel.

The MTM Show won 29 Primetime Emmy Awards, a record that stood until Frasier won its 30th in 2002 -- and, let's face it, considering Frasier a better show than MTM is a joke. These Emmys included 3 as Outstanding Comedy Series; 3 for Moore as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series; 3 for Asner and 2 for Knight as Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in Comedy; and 3 for Harper, 2 for Leachman and 2 for White as Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in Comedy. In other words: In all 7 seasons, someone on the show won Best Supporting Actress, while someone won Best Supporting Actor in 5 of the 7.

The show inspired 3 spinoffs. Harper left after 4 seasons when Rhoda got married, and starred for 4 seasons on Rhoda, with the character and her husband moving to her hometown of New York. Leachman and Gerritsen left after 1 more season, and starred on Phyllis, with the premise that Lars had died, and Phyllis and Bess moved back to Phyllis' hometown of San Francisco. And when The MTM Show came to an end, Asner starred on Lou Grant -- not a half-hour sitcom, but an hourlong drama, in which he moved to Los Angeles and ran a newspaper. It was another innovation: A spinoff of a sitcom being a drama had never been done before, nor has since. All of these shows were, like The MTM Show, on CBS, and produced by MTM Productions.

Pretty much everybody on the show went on to star on other shows. In addition to the preceding, White starred as dim but lovable Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls, MacLeod as Captain Merrill Stubing on The Love Boat, and Knight as cartoonist and family man Henry Rush on Too Close for Comfort. Knight was also the narrator of the Super Friends cartoon: "Later, at the Hall of Justice... "

White was joined on The Golden Girls by Beatrice Arthur as Dorothy Zbornack, and Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux. Bea and Rue had been together on Maude, as Maude Findlay and Vivian Harmon. Rue was cast first, and knew that Bea was the only woman who could play Dorothy. Knowing that most sitcoms had a "dummy," Bea told Rue that she didn't want to be on the show if Rue was going to play it again. Rue said, "No, this time, Betty is playing Vivian, and I'm playing Sue Ann!" Getting the reference, Bea said, "Interesting!" and took the role.

Bulifant became part of the cast of the Alice spinoff Flo, and Engel later became a recurring character on another Minnesota-based show, ABC's football-themed sitcom Coach, set at Minnesota State University -- then a fictional school, but a real school has since adopted the name. Despite that show's success, The Mary Tyler Moore Show remains the most popular show ever set in Minnesota, and one of the most popular sitcoms of all time.

In addition to all that, White and Bulifant became semi-regular panelists on the CBS game show Match Game. White had plenty of game-show experience, often appearing as a panelist on Password, hosted by her husband, Allen Ludden. White's activism for animals was already well-known, and any time there was a possibility of an answer of an animal getting hurt or killed on Match Game, if Betty was there, a panelist might mention avoiding the possibility because of it. If she wasn't there, such an answer might be given, and host Gene Rayburn would say, "It's a good thing Betty White isn't here!"

When Bulifant was on Match Game, she became the queen of what Rayburn called "rotten answers," and was often called a weirdo by him. Asner also made occasional appearances. Later on, White, who had taken George Burns' former place as America's favorite old person, starred on the sitcom Hot In Cleveland, and Moore, Harper, Leachman and Engel all guest-starred on a 2013 episode of that show.

In 2000, ABC aired the 2-hour TV movie Mary and Rhoda, a sequel to the original series. It revealed that Mary had eventually gotten married, to Steve Cronin, a Congressman, but that he had recently been killed in a rock-climbing accident. Rhoda had gotten divorced from her 1st husband, gotten married again, and gotten divorced again.

After not seeing each other for several years -- Mary had continued in TV news production in New York, and Rhoda had lived as a photographer in Paris with her French 2nd husband -- they were basically starting over again at ages 60 and 58, respectively.

They each had a daughter attending college in New York: Rose Cronin (played by Bethany Joy-Lenz) was an English major at New York University (NYU), and Meredith Gerard (Marisa Ryan) was a pre-med student at Barnard College. (If you're an original fan of the original show, and you don't already feel old, this means that both Mary's daughter and Rhoda's daughter are now in their early 40s, and could legitimately be grandmothers.) Joan Jett sang a punked-up version of the old theme song.

Donaldson's went out of business in 1988. But, even before that, the store behind Mary's hat-toss burned as part of a fire on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1982. Gaviidae Common, a shopping mall, was built on the site of the former Donaldson's flagship store in 1989.

On May 8, 2002, a statue of Mary tossing her hat, sponsored by the nostalgia TV network TV Land, was unveiled, roughly on the same spot, by Moore herself. It was the 1st in a series of TV Land statues of famous TV characters that also includes Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners in New York; Henry Winkler, a.k.a. "The Bronze Fonz," in Happy Days' site of Milwaukee; and Andy Griffith and Ron Howard as Andy and Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show in Griffith's hometown of Mount Airy, North Carolina.

Ted Knight died of cancer in 1986, while still starring on Too Close for Comfort. And Priscilla Morrill, not a major star of the show, died in 1994. Other than that, the cast proved to be surprisingly long-lived: Mary Tyler Moore died in 2017, after years of battling diabetes and its effects; Valerie Harper in 2019, after years of battling cancer; Georgia Engel also in 2019; and Allan Burns, Cloris Leachman, Gavin MacLeod and Betty White, all in 2021. Betty died on New Year's Eve, just 17 days short of what would have been her 100th birthday.

As of September 19, 2022, James L. Brooks, Sonny Curtis, Joyce Bulifant, Lisa Gerritsen and John Amos are still alive.

UPDATE: John Amos died in 2024.

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September 19, 1970 was a Saturday. This was also the day the 1st Glastonbury Festival began. I have a separate entry for that event.

These games were played in Major League Baseball:

* The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 7-6 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The Yankees scored 5 runs in the top of the 9th to win it, although they didn't hit a home run. Horace Clark and John Ellis each had 2 hits and 2 RBIs. Al Kaline went 0-for-4.

* The New York Mets lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2-1 at Shea Stadium. Luke Walker (not Luke Skywalker) outpitched Gary Gentry. Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell each went 1-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Montreal Expos, 8-4 at Jarry Park in Montreal. Ernie Banks did not play.

* The Boston Red Sox swept a doubleheader with the Washington Senators at Fenway Park in Boston, 7-3 and 11-3. Carl Yastrzemski only got 1 hit over the 2 games, but he got an RBI from it.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Baltimore Orioles, 4-2 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Brooks Robinson only appeared as a pinch-hitter, and did not reach base. Frank Robinson also appeared only as a pinch-hitter, and drew a walk.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Atlanta Braves, 7-4 at Atlanta Stadium (later Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). Pete Rose went 0-for-2 with 3 walks. Johnny Bench went 3-for-4 with an RBI. Jim McGlothlin was the winning pitcher, and helped his own cause with a home run. Hank Aaron did not play.

* The Minnesota Twins, which would have been Mary's team, were on the road, and beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Would you believe me if I said that Luis Aparicio hit a home run and Harmon Killebrew didn't? That's what happened in this game, although Killebrew did have an RBI on a sacrifice fly. Rod Carew did not play.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 4-1 at Milwaukee County Stadium.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 10-6 at Busch Memorial Stadium. Lou Brock went 0-for-3, but had an RBI on a sacrifice fly.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the San Diego Padres, 3-0 at San Diego Stadium (later Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). Willie Mays went 0-for-3 with a walk. Gaylord Perry pitched a 3-hit shutout.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Houston Astros, 6-5 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* And the Oakland Athletics beat the California Angels, 2-1 at the Oakland Coliseum. Reggie Jackson went 0-for-2, but drew 2 walks.

There was also college football that day. Not for preseason Number 1 Ohio State, who didn't open their season until the following week. But these games were among those played:

* Number 2 Texas beat the University of California (a.k.a. Cal), 56-15 at Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas.

* Number 3 Southern California (a.k.a. USC), fresh off beating then-Number 3 Alabama in what became known as "The Sam Cunningham Game," were themselves sort-of upset, held to a 21-21 tie by Number 9 Nebraska at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

* Number 4 Stanford beat San Jose State, 34-3 at the old Stanford Stadium in the San Francisco suburb of Palo Alto, California. Even though these schools' respective stadiums are just 15 miles apart, this is not a rivalry. Certainly not like Stanford vs. Cal, 40 miles apart, the regular-season finale known as "The Big Game."

* Number 5 Mississippi (a.k.a. Ole Miss) beat Memphis State (now the University of Memphis), 47-13 at the Liberty Bowl (now Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium) in Memphis.

* Number 6 Notre Dame beat Northwestern, 35-14 at Dyche Stadium (now Ryan Field) in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois.

* Number 7 Penn State beat Navy, 55-7 at Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania.

* Number 8 Michigan beat Arizona, 20-9 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

* Number 10 Missouri beat Minnesota, 34-12 at Faurot Field in Columbia, Missouri. It was never mentioned if Mary Richards went to college, although the University of Minnesota is a strong possibility.

* Number 12 Louisiana State (a.k.a. LSU) were upset by Texas A&M, 20-18 at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

* Number 13 Kansas State were upset by Kentucky, 16-3 at McLean Stadium in Lexington, Kentucky.

* Number 19 Georgia were upset by Tulane, 17-14 at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.

* Alabama were now unranked, and took their frustrations out on Virginia Tech, 51-18 at Legion Field in Birmingham.

* North Carolina beat North Carolina State, 19-0 at Kenan Memorial Stadium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

* Baylor beat Army, 10-7 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York.

* And Rutgers beat Lafayette, 41-16 at Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway, New Jersey. Princeton did not start their season until the following week, and beat arch-rival Rutgers, 41-14 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton, New Jersey.

Also, in English soccer, Arsenal beat Birmingham-area team West Bromwich Albion, 6-2 at the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury, in North London.

September 8, 1973: "Super Friends" Premieres

Left to right: Wonder Dog, Aquaman, Robin, Batman,

Superman, Wonder Woman, Wendy and Marvin.

Note the early '70s bell-bottom pants on both teenagers.

September 8, 1973: Super Friends premieres on ABC, based on the superheroes of DC Comics. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, it runs in one form or another until 1986. The animation was crude by today's standards, but, as a kid, I didn't care.

The original series, narrated by Ted Knight, a.k.a. Ted Baxter of The Mary Tyler Moore Show -- "Later, at the Hall of Justice... " -- was kid-centric. Wendy Harris (voiced by Sherry Alberoni) and Marvin White (Frank Welker) were ordinary teenagers, who had no powers, but considered themselves superheroes, or at least detectives, in training.

They had a dog named Wonder Dog (also voiced by Welker, who specialized in voicing cartoon dogs), whose only special abilities were a higher intelligence than most dogs and, sort of, the ability to talk. They were taken in by the Super Friends, who can be recognized as a subset of the Justice League.

It's understandable that the show used Superman (Danny Dark), Batman (Olan Soule), Robin (Casey Kasem) and Wonder Woman (Shannon Farnon). After all, Kal-El/Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne and Princess Diana of Themiscyra/Diana Prince are what are now called "the DC Trinity"; and, as the original Robin, Dick Grayson was Batman's sidekick. It had only been 5 years since the Adam West Batman series had gone off the air, and this version of the Dynamic Duo was more like West and Burt Ward than like later "Dark Knights" and their "Boy Wonders."

Less obvious as a choice to round out the main superhero cast was Aquaman (Norman Alden). For those of you who only know later versions, showing him with long hair and looking more like Marvel Comics' Thor -- or in the darker-skinned, dark-haired, long-haired, tattooed version played by Jason Momoa in the DC Extended Universe movies -- his appearance as a very pale white man with short but curly hair might make him seem like an anachronism.

There were occasional visits from other superheroes. Knight also voiced The Flash. Alden also voiced Green Arrow and Plastic Man. But each of these characters appeared in only one episode. In flashback sequences, we saw Superman's Kryptonian parents, Jor-El (Kasem) and Lara (Farnon); and his earthly parents, Jonathan Kent (Soule) and Martha Kent (Farnon again).

In later versions, Dark would also play Batman's ally, Gotham City Police Commissioner James Gordon. Farnon would also play Wonder Woman's mother, Queen Hippolyta; Superman's girlfriend and Daily Planet co-worker, Lois Lane; and, from Greek mythology, goddess of love Aphrodite and monster Medusa.

Super Friends taught me to read closing credits. I noticed that Robin sounded an awful lot like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? So I looked at the credits of both shows, and wrote them down, and found two names in common: Kasem and Welker. When I found out from other shows that Welker was also the voices of Fred from Scooby, Astro from The Jetsons, Dynomutt the Dog Wonder (with Laugh-In's Gary Owens as the Batman-like Blue Falcon) and the title character in Jabberjaw, that narrowed him down to Marvin and Wonder Dog, and showed me that Kasem was Robin.

In the 1976-77 TV season, ABC's The Krofft Supershow had a segment titled Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, played by soap opera star Deidre Hall and car pitchwoman (as "Mean Mary Jean") Judy Strangis, respectively. This show copied Wonder Woman by having female superheroes, copied Batman by having an older hero and a younger sidekick with a corny catchphrase ("Electra-Wow!"), and copied Superman by making them reporters in civilian life. And Alden, the voice of Aquaman, played Frank Heflin, who was less their version of Batman and Robin's butler/all-around tech whiz Alfred than he was Oscar Goldman to their Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman.

Only one season of 16 episodes of Super Friends was made, although they continued to be shown in reruns. But the ABC success of Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman series and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, and The Shazam/Isis Hour on CBS, gave ABC and Hanna-Barbera the idea to try again.

In 1977, they brought us The All-New Super Friends Hour. Noting that the core audience was a little older, Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog were phased out. Phased in were the Wonder Twins. They were teenagers, from the planet Exor, and they were obviously geared toward not just older kids and teenagers, but Trekkies, because they looked like Vulcans: Vaguely Asian faces, the same hairstyles, and pointed ears.

Left to right: Batman, Robin, Gleek, Zan,

Jayna, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Superman

Unlike Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog, Zan (Michael Bell) and Jayna (Liberty Williams) had powers. Not a mind-meld or a nerve pinch like Vulcans. When they touched their hands, and said, "Wonder Twin powers, activate!" Jayna could say, "Shape of... " any animal, and transform into that animal. Zan could say, "Form of... " any version of water, from ice to boiling water to fog to a solid wall of liquid water.

Suddenly, Aquaman's sea-based powers didn't seem so silly: Zan was mainly comic relief. But if that wasn't enough, they had a pet monkey named Gleek (also voiced by Bell), with a rubber tail that could be used as a weapon and, if he spun it in the air like a helicopter's rotor, he could use to fly.

It still wasn't a full Justice League of America, but there were, again, cameos from other heroes, usually one guest appearance per episode. Barney Phillips took over as The Flash (the Barry Allen version). Michael Rye voiced Green Lantern (the Hal Jordan version). Jack Angel voiced Hawkman, and Farnon voiced Hawkgirl (never "Hawkwoman"). Wally Burr voiced The Atom.

Then there were the heroes created just for this series, having never before appeared in comic books. This was an attempt to appear diverse, or, as we would now say, multicultural. But the characters, all too often, seemed like stereotypes anyway.

While there were black superheroes before this, including DC's electric-powered Black Lightning and the John Stewart version of Green Lantern, they didn't use any of them for Super Friends. They wanted to use Black Lightning, but there was a legal wrinkle that prevented them from doing so. So, they created Black Vulcan (Buster Jones). No, it wasn't a black version of Star Trek's Mr. Spock: Basically, he was Black Lightning, with electric powers and a somewhat different black-and-gold costume. That and the name allowed them to meet the legal requirements. (The original Vulcan was the Roman name for the god of fire, known as Hephaestus to the ancient Greeks.)

The Asian hero was Samurai (also Jack Angel), who had wind-based powers, similar to the DC character Red Tornado. And there was a Native American hero, Apache Chief (also Michael Rye). He could grow to enormous size, which also gave him super strength and near-invulnerability. But their costumes were little better than how John Wayne would have imagined their peoples.

Clockwise from top: Superman, Hawkman, Samurai, Green Lantern,

Robin, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash,

Jayna, Zan, Gleek, Black Vulcan and Apache Chief.

The Hall of Justice was based on Union Terminal in Cincinnati,

hometown of the owners of Hanna-Barbera Productions,

Taft Broadcasting (and related to President William Howard Taft).

For the 1978-79 season, Challenge of the Superfriends (one word) was made. Now, the denizens of the Hall of Justice are a full 11-member Justice League of America (JLA): Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Black Vulcan, Samurai and Apache Chief. (But no Green Arrow, Plastic Man, Hawkgirl or Wonder Twins. By this point, Plastic Man had gotten his own show.)

And now, they had regular enemies, with a headquarters looking like Star Wars character Darth Vader's helmet (come on, let's call a spade a spade) rising out of a swamp: The Legion of Doom. Its members:

* Lex Luthor (Stanley Jones), arch-enemy of Superman. (In this series, Jones also did the voices of Superman's fathers, Jor-El and Jonathan Kent. What Sigmund Freud would have thought of that, I have no idea.)

* Bizarro (Bill Callaway), imperfect duplicate of Superman.

* Brainiac (Ted Cassidy, formerly Lurch on The Addams Family and the narrator of the opening sequence to CBS' The Incredible Hulk), robotic enemy of Superman. (Cassidy died of heart trouble during the season, only 46 years old.)

* Mr. Mxyzptlk (another Frank Welker role), magical enemy of Superman.

* Solomon Grundy (Jimmy Weldon), an incredibly strong and durable zombielike creature that debuted in the 1940s an enemy of the "Golden Age" Green Lantern, Alan Scott, but later became an enemy of Superman and, occasionally, other heroes.

* The Toyman (another Frank Welker role), enemy of Superman, but hardly on the same level as the preceding.

* The Riddler (Michael Bell, also Zan and Gleek), enemy of Batman. (The Riddler was chosen because they couldn't get the legal rights to use the Joker or the Penguin. It's just as well: The Riddler is smarter than either one.)

* The Scarecrow (Don Messick), enemy of Batman. (Messick was also the original voice of Scooby-Doo.)

* The Cheetah (Marlene Aragon), catlike arch-enemy of Wonder Woman.

* Black Manta (also Ted Cassidy), arch-enemy of Aquaman.

* Sinestro (also Don Messick), arch-enemy of Green Lantern.

* Gorilla Grodd (Stanley Ralph Ross), a member of The Flash's "Rogues Gallery." (Ross had been a writer on the 1966-68 Batman series, and a co-creator of the 1975-79 Wonder Woman series.)

* Captain Cold (Dick Ryal), also a Flash enemy. (Cold's sometimes partner, at the other extreme of temperature, Heat Wave, never appeared. Nor did the Flash's true nemesis, Professor Zoom, a.k.a. the Reverse-Flash. In a flashback sequence, Ryal also voiced Abin Sur, the dying Green Lantern who gave his power ring to Hal Jordan.)

* The Pied Piper (Bob Hastings), also a Flash enemy.

* Giganta (Ruth Forman), a giantess created for the series. Being a woman, she would seem to be an opponent for Wonder Woman. However, an episode explained that she got her powers at the same time, and from the same source, that Apache Chief got his, making for a dual origin story.

New versions of the series would continue until 1986, by which point I was too old to watch. But there would be live-action versions to come, with Superman getting 4 movies and 2 TV shows (Superboy and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, plus a Supergirl movie), Batman getting 4 movies, and The Flash getting a single-season TV series on CBS. There would be the NBC special Legends of the Superheroes in 1979, which had the first live-action versions of The Flash, Green Lantern, The Atom and Hawkman. However, a typically small TV special-effects budget rendered it ridiculous.

Superman: The Movie came out in late 1978, and when Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) meets Superman (Christopher Reeve) for the first time, she asks him, "Who are you?" Not yet having been named Superman (in this version, it was Lois who gave him the name in her article), he says simply, "A friend." It may not have been intentional, but, in hindsight, it seems like an "Easter Egg" for Super Friends fans like me.

In 1992, Batman: The Animated Series would launch "The DC Animated Universe," which ran until 2006. Among the other series included in it were Superman: The Animated Series, The New Batman Adventures, Batman Beyond (set in a future with an elderly Bruce Wayne training a teenager, Terry McGinnis, to be a new, updated Batman, rather than the latest in a long line of Robins), Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. These shows were definitely meant for older kids, who would understand the dark themes of the Batman mythos, not little kids.

A 1997 Justice League of America movie would have only second-tier heroes, including the first live-action version of J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, because getting the legal rights to use Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman would have been prohibitively expensive. Between 2005 and 2010, The CW's Superman prequel series Smallville would feature the first live-action versions of Aquaman, Green Arrow, and the Wonder Twins, plus new versions of some other heroes.

And, in 2020, in the last episode of The CW's Crisis On Infinite Earths, a Justice League consisting of Superman (Tyler Hoechlin), Supergirl (Melissa Benoist), Batwoman (Ruby Rose), The Flash (Grant Gustin), the White Canary (Caity Lotz), the Martian Manhunter (Dorian Harewood) and Black Lightning (Cress Williams) gathered for the first time, with an empty seat at the table in memory of Green Arrow (Stephen Amell), who had sacrificed his life to restart the multiverse.

Their building looked like the Hall of Justice. And at the end, while the old Super Friends theme played, the camera panned up to an open cage marked "GLEEK." I have to say, despite having just turned 50, I got a kick out of that.

*

September 8, 1973 was a Saturday. These games were played in Major League Baseball:

* The New York Yankees beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 15-1 at the original Yankee Stadium, in its last month before closing for a 2-season renovation. George "Doc" Medich went the distance for the win. Graig Nettles hit a home run (not a big surprise), as did Fred "Chicken" Stanley (a huge surprise).

* The New York Mets lost to the Montreal Expos, 3-1 at Jarry Park in Montreal. Steve Rogers -- no, not Captain America -- outpitched Tom Seaver.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Boston Red Sox, 6-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. Al Kaline did not play. He was better off than Carl Yastrzemski, who went 0-for-5.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-3 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Willie Stargell went 3-for-3 with an RBI. Rookie Mike Schmidt went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Cincinnati Reds, 3-2 at Atlanta Stadium (later Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). Hank Aaron hit the 709th home run of his career. Dusty Baker and Davey Johnson, both now better known for being managers, also homered for the Braves. For the Reds, Joe Morgan hit a home run, but Pete Rose and Johnny Bench each went 0-for-3 with a walk.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Cleveland Indians, 6-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Brooks Robinson went 3-for-4 with a solo homer. Jim Palmer went the distance for the win.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-1 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Ron Santo homered for the Cubs. Lou Brock went 1-for-3 with a walk and 2 stolen bases.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-2 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Neither Harmon Killebrew nor Rod Carew played for the Twins in this game.

* The California Angels swept a doubleheader from the Kansas City Royals at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City, 9-6 and 4-3. Frank Robinson went 1-for-10 with an RBI for the Angels. George Brett, who had made his major league debut a month earlier, did not appear in the opener, and only appeared in the nightcap as a pinch-runner and a defensive replacement, never coming to bat.

* The Texas Rangers beat the Oakland Athletics, 4-3 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. Reggie Jackson went 0-for-1, then left the game due to an injury.

* The San Diego Padres beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 9-6 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Jerry Morales doubled home the winning run in the top of the 11th inning.

* And the Houston Astros beat the San Francisco Giants, 9-7 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

Since it was Saturday, there was college football. However, most teams, including Number 1 USC, Number 2 Ohio State, Number 3 Texas, Number 5 Michigan, Number 6 Alabama, Number 7 Penn State and unranked Navy, opened the next week. Number 8 Notre Dame, unranked Army, and, locally, Rutgers opened the week after that; and Princeton and Columbia the week after that.

The only game this week involving a Top 5 team also happened to involve another Top 10 team: Number 4 Nebraska beat Number 10 UCLA, 40-13 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska. It was the Cornhuskers' 1st game under head coach Tom Osborne.

Also, Arsenal lost 2-0 at home at Highbury to Leicester City.