Television Trivia

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Cross-dressing Corporal Max Klinger on the TV sitcom M*A*S*H, wore size 10 pumps.

Demand was great for I Love Lucy merchandise in the late 1950s. A Little Ricky doll debuted in department and toy stores, and its manufacturer couldn't keep up with thousands of reorders. Neither could an overworked furniture manufacturer who sold an unprecedented 1 million I Love Lucy bedroom suites to the show's fans in just 90 days.

Desi Arnaz's fractured English evoked a great deal of laughter throughout the years on the 1950s hit TV sitcom I Love Lucy. While it was not written into the scripts, his heavy Cuban accent often made retakes necessary. His oration of “recognized talent” came out as “recognize Stalin.” He said “ever thin” for “everything,” "mushing peectures” for “motion pictures,” “won't” was “wunt,” and “Fred Mertz” was “Frat Mers.” Arnaz saw a dubbed Lucy show while in Japan and heard himself "speaking" Japanese. "It sounded so genuine,” he later recalled, “that I had to ask how they handled my lousy English. ‘It was easy,' said the producer. ‘We just hired an actor who speaks lousy Japanese.'”

Dick Clark of American Bandstand fame is the host of the CBS trivia game show Winning Lines. Clark is also the producer of rival network Fox's game show Greed.

Diminutive actor Felix Silla played the hirsute role of Cousin Itt on the bizarre 1960s sitcom The Addams Family. Years later, he was Twiki on television's Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and also was one of the countless Ewoks in Return of the Jedi.

During its debut 2000 season, the island location used for TV's Survivor was a staging post for modern-day pirates. These pirates, with high-tech speedboats, used the remote island for international black marketeering. In retaliation for the invasion of privacy brought on by the Hollywood crew, several bad guys one day chased the show's creator, Mark Burnett, in their speedboat. Burnett later said he thought he had feared he would be killed.

During the 1960s, cast members from The Andy Griffith Show, Green Acres, and Gomer Pyle served as spokespeople for Jell-O instant pudding in nationally-televised commercials.

During the show's first six years, nearly all cars used on the sitcom Bewitched was a Chevrolet. The car company was one of the show's original sponsors.

Each generation has its runaway hits in television and film. TV's I Love Lucy was the Number 1 show on the air in the 1950s, and the merchandising of hundreds of "Lucy-inspired" trinkets and toys were in tremendous demand. At the height of the show's popularity, a person could buy official I Love Lucy aprons and Lucy dolls. Thirty-two thousand white, heart-bedecked aprons and 85,000 dolls were snatched up by fans in one 30-day period in late 1952.

Ellen DeGeneres was the first stand-up comedienne Johnny Carson ever asked to sit on The Tonight Show guest couch during a first appearance.

Jennifer Aniston of Friends is the daughter of actor John Aniston of the daytime drama Days of Our Lives. John was born in Crete, Greece, and the original family name was Anastassakis; he changed it when the family moved to the United States.

Jerry Seinfeld's five favorite episodes of Seinfeld were "The Contest"; The Outing"; "The Marine Biologist"; "The Race"; and "The Boyfriend/JFK."

Joe Trela, age 25, became the youngest winner to date on American TV's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in March 2000. One question about baseball took Trela 15 minutes to correctly answer, shy of the then-record of 17 minutes; the aired sequence was edited to under five minutes.

Johnny Carson delivered 4,531 opening monologues during his 30 years as host of The Tonight Show.

Julianne Moore started her career on the television soap opera As the World Turns.

Kramer made his "entrance" into Jerry Seinfeld's apartment 284 times.

Kurt Russell's father, Bing Russell, appeared as Clem, the deputy sheriff, on TV's long-running Western series Bonanza.

Lisa Kudrow was originally cast as producer Roz on NBC's Frasier, but was fired and replaced before filming began. She had a recurring bit part as inept waitress Ursula on Mad About You before landing the role of ditzy free spirit Phoebe on NBC's Friends.

Long before The Tonight Show, Jay Leno was a regular cast member on the 1977 TV variety show The Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. Show.

Long before her rise to fame in the 1960s fantasy-sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, Barbara Eden was a former all-American cheerleader and a teenage pop singer.