Golden Age of Television Quotes

I grew up in the '50s, in New York City, where television was born. There were 90 live shows every week, and they used a lot of kids. There were schools just for these kids. There was a whole world that doesn't exist anymore.

Back in the fifties I was the hot, young comic on CBS and a regular on 'The Ed Sullivan Show.' I was also starring in shows on Broadway and acting in dramatic programs on television. Those were the glory days of television. It was like theater. It was live. If an actor forgot a line, he improvised. There was an immediacy to it.

When I started on 'The West Wing,' that was at a time when this was still a stigma, because movie stars didn't do TV. Now, every movie star is desperate to find their 'True Detective.'

I think the fact that I grew up in show business had a real effect on my personality. If you were born in New York during the golden age of television, and you grew up on Broadway, that marks you.

I watched a lot of old movies, and a lot of Carol Burnett and Andy Kaufman.

It's how the '70s were for movies, the 2000s are for TV. I think it's a phenomenal time for TV and to be involved in it.

If you had told me in the Seventies and Eighties that TV would be as edgy or edgier than most films, and more intelligently written than most films, I wouldn't have believed it. There's great stuff out there.

I always loved Sid Caesar and all the people on his program.

I like how TV used to be - 'Boys from the Blackstuff' and 'Play for Today', instead of 'Stars in Your Eyes' and 'Celebrity Come Cook With Me' or whatever. I hate all that stuff.

I rode into the dawning world of television in 1944 on a train.

It's the digital era. What makes it exciting is that it's both the Golden Age of television and the Wild West of television. Something is happening now that's unprecedented, and we know that we're a part of it. What could be more exciting or better than that? You can't lose because you're on the pony and you're staking the claim.

English television from the Fifties to the Nineties was the least bad in the world, and now it's just as bad as it is anywhere.

I do think there was an age of television back in the '90s that was a little bit more wholesome.

Most of my career up until the last couple of years has basically been a training ground for me. Actors that came up in the '50s and '60s, they had the theater, and television was in its infancy.

I'm very, very proud to have been at what I feel are two of the pivotal moments in this whole new Golden Era of television - one being 'The Sopranos' with HBO and now with Netflix expanding that whole HBO concept to the world and making it more of a global thing. It's been wonderful to witness that from those two vantage points.

I don't know if we would have stuff like 'Deadwood' and 'Boardwalk Empire' if 'Twin Peaks' had never happened.

I remember being totally enamored with Sid Caesar.

I've studied Charlie Chaplin for years. I've studied Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, all of them. I don't play around. This is not a game.

Barbara Eden is the most beautiful girl in the world.

There are terrific TV shows now. This is a golden age for TV humor, I think. There's an actual market there. Of course, I have no idea how you'd break in, but there must be a way. They have all these shows and they need jokes and somebody is writing them.

T.V. is the place to do the kind of films that were done in the 40s and 50s: the little guy against the system. There are so many opportunities in T.V. to do more character pieces. Everything is so hard-edged in features.

There was a time... when people didn't go out of their house on Tuesday night at eight o'clock because Milton Berle was on.

I love getting on You Tube to look at the old comics. I am in my element seeing guys like Jack Benny and Phil Silvers give interviews.

I love television. I think we're in a renaissance of epic proportion in television now.

I'm really aging myself, but I grew up with 'Playhouse 90' and the plays on the air - 90 minute plays.