Writer of Pop Culture

Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers portrayed the perfect married couple in Hart to Hart. The series ran for five seasons on ABC. Wagner and Powers also appeared as the Hart couple for eight additional made-for-TV movies.

1979 – Mr. & Mrs. Hart, the Power Couple

According to assistant Max, “when Mr. H and Mrs. H first met, it was murder.” Robert Wagner starred in Hart to Hart as self-made millionaire Jonathan Hart. Sefanie Powers played a freelance journalist and the wife of the Hart Industries CEO. The pair had the perfect marriage where the couple rarely fought, if ever. And their hobby (besides lovemaking) was to solve murders. The power couple were able to do this with the help of Max (Lionel Stander) and their dog Freeway (who got his name because they had rescued him from the freeway).

Hart to Hart was an Aaron Spelling series created by novelist Sidney Sheldon. After Wagner was cast as Mr. Hart, ABC showed an interest in wanting his real-life wife, Natalie Wood, to play Mrs. Hart but Wagner disagreed. Apparently, he was afraid of public scrutiny as the couple had been the subject of gossip in the past. Instead, Robert suggested Powers whom he had worked with on an earlier TV show called It Takes a Thief. (Wood appeared in a cameo role for the show’s pilot episode though.) Oddly, both Natalie and Power’s romantic partner, William Holden, died mysterious deaths just weeks apart in November 1981. This of course caused more public scrutiny for Wagner.

Wagner also wanted Sugar Ray Robinson to portray the role of Max, but ABC disagreed with Robinson portraying a white couple’s majordomo.

About 10 Years after the show stopped airing on ABC, eight Hart to Hart movies were made from 1993 to 1996. The first five aired on NBC and the final three appeared on The Family Channel of all places.

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1835 – The Great Moon Hoax

It was on this day that a series of six articles describing the discovery of life on the moon began in the New York Sun newspaper. The newspaper, which started up just two years earlier, was known as a “penny press” paper that was cheaper and its journalism was a little…off. The whole thing of course was a hoax, but sales of the paper shot up anyway as readers did not understand the joke.

The stories were written by “Dr. Andrew Grant” who claimed that the Edinburgh Journal (which no longer existed at this time) reported that evidence of fantastic animals such as unicorns, two-legged beavers and winged humanoids had been found. Committees of Yale University scientists traveled to New York to read these articles but were sent home.

On September 16, 1835, the paper finally admitted that the whole thing was a satire, and sales of the paper did not suffer.

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