Biography
Legendary television producer Ed Friendly (no relation to CBS News maverick Fred Friendly) launched his career in Manhattan, with stints at all three major networks during the 1950s and early to mid-'60s. In 1967, Ed Friendly migrated to the West Coast and set up his own independent production house, Ed Friendly Productions, where he developed and launched two mammoth series blockbusters between 1967 and 1983. The sketch comedy series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In premiered in January 1968 and instantly became a national phenomenon, making celebrities out of such (then) little-known comics as
Goldie Hawn,
Arte Johnson,
Lily Tomlin. and
Ruth Buzzi, and working into the American lexicon such iconic one-liners as "Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls," "You bet your sweet bippy," and "Sock it to me." In 1974, a year after Laugh-In wrapped, Friendly launched his second major effort -- a family-oriented period drama called
Little House on the Prairie that instantly shot up to qualify as the number one rated program on network television. It ran for nine seasons (through 1983) and, like Laugh-In, established itself as a venerable American institution.
As
Little House rolled ever onward, Friendly branched off into long form, with a strong emphasis on historically oriented material, such as the family-oriented telemovie Western
Peter Lundy and the Medicine Hat Stallion (1977) and the nine-hour miniseries
Backstairs at the White House (1979), a panoramic view of American political history as filtered through the perspectives of several generations of servants at the first family's residence. Friendly produced several telemovie follow-ups to
Little House in the mid-'80s, then -- following almost two decades of inactivity -- produced a six-and-a-half-hour miniseries reworking of
Little House on the Prairie for The Disney Channel in 2005. Friendly died from cancer at age 85 in June 2007. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide