The Kindly Mrs. Huxtable
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
Phylicia Rashad will forever be remembered as being the wife of Bill Cosby…even though they were never married. I began watching Cosby’s groundbreaking series The Cosby Show when it first debuted in 1984, back in the day when she was still going by her maiden name Phylicia Ayers-Allen. Her named changed, naturally enough, when she was married to her third husband, NFL wide reciever and sportcaster Ahmad Rashad. Fresh from the stage, The Cosby Show was her first major screen work and she was called upon by Bill Cosby once again to be his screen wife when he began his new series Cosby in 1996, four years after the former series ended. And I might add that she starred in the pre-show of the Dinosaur ride at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Read the rest of this entry »
Some may remember the title of this posting as a line from the pathological liar Tommy Flanagan, the character played by Jon Lovitz on Saturday Night Live as he referred to his wife…Morgan Fairchild. This was of course his way of untruthfully indicating that he was married to a really hot actress, who at that time in 1985 was starring in the mini-series North and South and just beginning her one year run on Falcon Crest. 
Who here doesn’t love the voice of James Earl Jones? Raise your hands. Okay, none. It certainly is one of the most recognizable voices in the world, whether listening to him on my King James Version reading of the New Testament on CD, seeing him as a lawyer in Picket Fences, watching on the big screen in Field of Dreams, hearing him voice Mufasa in Disney’s The Lion King, or identifying him with possibly his most famous role: the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars series. 
If only…if only…if only they could all be like Willie Aames, life for the autograph collector and celebrity encounter freak would be so much easier. Although I wasn’t the biggest of fans of Eight Is Enough, it is one of those shows that I would typically catch if I was home in front of the TV when it came on during the late 1970’s. Willie Aames played Tommy, the middle of the three boys in the Bradford family.