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Tin Man See -
ROBOTS: "Doc"
Tinklepants - See "Mr. Tinklepants"
Tiny Avenger, The See - HANDICAPPED - Height
Impaired: "In Living Color"
Tiny Tim See - MUSIC & MUSICIANS
Toad Boy See - "Spud"
Today Girls, The - Network television's first early morning program
TODAY/NBC/1952+ featured a group of lovely young ladies called "The Today Girls"
(a.k.a. "Gals of the Week"). Their duties besides being attractive, shapely
women were reading temperatures and one-word descriptions of the weather in
major cities. Some famous "Today Girls" were Lee Ann Meriwether (Miss America of
1955) later of THE TIME TUNNEL/ABC/1966-67 and BARNABY JONES/CBS/1973-80; and
Florence Henderson (1959-60) later of THE BRADY BUNCH/ABC/1969-74. Once, guest Harpo Marx chased one of these beautiful girls round and round the Today Show
set. Barbara Walters parlayed her role of Today Girl over the years to a full
fledged co-host of the TODAY program by 1974. Later she moved to ABC Network as
nightly news co-anchor with Harry Reasoner (an assignment for which she received
a whopping five million dollars) and followed that position with the
magazine-of-the-air program 20/20, and a semi-regular series of celebrity
interviews.
Tonto See - LANGUAGES & PHRASES
Tool Man, The See - "The Tool Time Girl"
Tool Time Girl, The - Curvaceous assistant of Tim Taylor (Tim Allen) a cohost of
the Detroit-based cable TV Fix-It-Show on the sitcom HOME
IMPROVEMENT/ABC/1991-99. The blond and buxom Pamela Anderson played Lisa, the
first Tool Time Girl from 1991-93. When Anderson left the series for a role on
BAYWATCH, her Lisa character was succeeded by Heidi (Debbe Dunning), a
wholesome, sexy brunette (but-she-doesn't-know-she's-sexy) girl-next-door, who
sported a well-slung buckskin tool belt. The Tool Time Girl's chief
responsibilities were as sexual-object walk-ons who introduced program host Tim
"The Tool Man" Taylor with the rousing inquiry "Does everybody know what time it
is?" To which the audience cried "Tool Time!" (People Weekly 10/18/93 p. 107-110
). See also - "Dr. Fix-um"
Torque See - "The
Bionic
Man"
Toothy - First name of frontier man on the western adventure SUGARFOOT/ABC/1957-60. Toothy (Jack Elam) was described as "kinda spooky
looking, always smilin'...a man with a face people distrust." One of Toothy's
friends was a law student Tom Brewster (Will Hutchins) who got Toothy acquitted
from a murder charge.
Tootie - The nickname of 11-year-old African-American youth Dorothy Ramsey (Kim
Fields) on the sitcom FACTS OF LIFE/NBC/1979-88. Tootie was the younger of four
females (Jo, Blair, and Natalie) who bonded as a group at the prestigious
private girls school Eastland Academy in suburban Peekskill, New York. Tootie
was fun-loving, a gossip and aspired to be an actress. On the ABC Wonderful
World of Disney "Facts of Life" Reunion movie that aired on November 18, 2001,
fans of the show discovered Tootie was all grown up. She was the successful host
of the Hollywood-based TV Talk Show WAKE UP WITH DOROTHY, and a single parent
with a 10-year-old daughter named Tisha (Alexandra Johnson). Oh yeah, Tootie
didn't like being called "Tootie" anymore. She preferred that people now address
her by the name - Dorothy.
TV Guide - Real family nickname of black actor and director Robert Townsend. He
earned the name "TV Guide" because he spent so much time watching television
while growing up on the West side of Chicago. Left alone a lot as a child (his
mother worked at the Post Office and his father had passed on...to another
family) Townsend became fascinated with television. He often locked himself in
the bathroom and impersonated all the characters he saw on the tube. If someone
missed an episode of a particular TV show Townsend acted out the program
including all the character voices. His love of movies later inspired him to
create Hollywood Shuffle (1987), a comedy which he financed by charging
production costs to his credit cards. In the 1990s he starred as college
professor Robert Peterson on the family sitcom THE PARENT 'HOOD/WB/1995-1999.
See also - MAGAZINES: "TV Guide Magazine"
TW3 - Nickname for the political/news satire program THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT
WAS/NBC/1964-65 starring Nancy Ames, David Frost, Henry Morgan, Phyllis Newman,
Pat Englund, Buck Henry, Elliot Reid, Bob Dishy, Doro Merande, Alan Alda, Sandy
Baron, Tom Bosley, Jerry Damon, Stanley Grover, Burr Tillstom's Puppets and The
Norman Paris Orchestra. Zinging the weeks news makers with arrows of outrageous
comic accuracy made this program very popular. Black humor targeted at such
groups/topics as Pollution, The Pope, The Republican Party, Racial
Discrimination, and The Military Machine were quite common. The series was a
first in political humor to be followed in later years by such programs as THE
SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR/CBS/1967-69/ABC/1970/NBC/1975 and NBC'S SATURDAY
NIGHT LIVE/1975+ and IN LIVING COLOR/FOX/1990-94.
Twinkle Toes - The childhood nickname of Rose Nylund, a scatterbrained senior
citizen who lived in Miami Beach with a group of female seniors on the sitcom
THE GOLDEN GIRLS/NBC/1985-92. Rose was born and raised in the town of St. Olaf
Minnesota (the "Broken Hip Capital of the Country"). She married a tile grouter
named Charlie Nylund and when he died, she moved to Florida. She owns a cat
named Mr. Peepers and for hobbies she enjoys stamp collecting, Viking history
and cheese making. As a child in Minnesota, Rose owned a pig named Lester who
could predict the Academy Award winners by wiggling its tail.
Twinkles - Carol Brady (Florence Henderson), the mother of six youngsters (3
boys and 3 girls) on the sitcom THE BRADY BUNCH/ABC/1969-74 was called
"Twinkles" as a teenager when she attended West Side High School. During episode
No.103 "Quarterback Sneak," Carol's visiting college sweetheart "Tank" Gates
constantly referred to Carol as "Twinkles" as he nostalgically ran football
plays in her living room.
Two-Bit - Nickname of a troubled young teenager (David Arguette) on the drama
THE OUTSIDERS/FOX/1990. "Two-Bit" Matthews worshipped Elvis Presley and even had
his hair styled after his idol. His friends included the Curtis brothers, Pony
Boy (Jay R. Ferguson) and Sodapop (Rodney Harvey).
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