TVWriter™ Contributing Editor Emeritus Herbie J Pilato is workin’ it. He’s workin’ it good!
Introducing ‘Then Again With Herbie J Pilato,’ the New Classic TV Talk Show On Amazon Prime
by Ed Gross
Imagine being a devotee of Classic TV your entire life, then getting the opportunity to speak to many of the people you admire and actually turning those conversations into biographies or companions to some of those people and shows. And then imagine those same people sitting right across from you as you interview them for your own Classic TV talk show. Well, look no further than Amazon Prime’s Then Again with Herbie J Pilato to see somebody who’s done all of that.
Herbie, the author of such books as Mary: The Mary Tyler Moore StoryOpens a New Window. and Twitch Upon a Star: The Bewitched Life and Career of Elizabeth MontgomeryOpens a New Window., laughs, “I’ve been having this talk show my entire life; my life has been a talk show. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but when it actually started moving forward, I wasn’t even thinking about it.”
As he explains it, he was doing a couple of book signings at the Burbank Barnes & Noble and, in the process, became friendly with the management. One day they contacted him, asking if he would be interested in doing a weekly event during their pop culture month. Unsurprisingly, he was — and they, in turn, suggested he could invite anyone he chose to talk as part of a presentation.
“So I, of course, dipped into my Classic TV address book,” he explains, “and the first person I talked with was Cindy Williams, who just had her memoir, Shirley, I Jest, come out. So she was my first guest. And then Kathy Garver from Family Affair, followed by Peter Mark Richman, who’s a Classic TV icon with over 500 guest starring roles on TV shows ranging from The Twilight Zone to Three’s Company, where he played Chrissy’s father, the minister. So by the end of that month, more and more people were attending the events, which wasn’t about money — it was about having fun….”