Showing posts with label WDYTYA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WDYTYA. Show all posts

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Follow the Stars of Who Do You Think You Are


If you want to learn a little bit more about the subjects of Who Do You Think You Are (Season 3) and Finding Your Roots, here's some web sites and social networking locations where you can follow the celebrities.

Reba McEntire
Rob Lowe
Helen Hunt
Rita Wilson
Blair Underwood
Marisa Tomei
Kevin Bacon
Kyra Sedgwick
Paula Deen
Barbara Walters
Robert Downey, Jr.
Branford Marsalis
John Legend
Martha Stewart
Rick Warren
Jason Sudeikis
Jerome Bettis
Martin Sheen
Edie Falco
Rashida Jones

If you have a link to add, please post in the Comments section below and I'll keep the links updated.
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Saturday, January 7, 2012

Who Do You Think You Are Returns to NBC - Finding Your Roots on PBS

For those who can't get enough of celebrities and genealogy,  the coming weeks will be a blockbuster on your television screen.

NBC's Who Do You Think You Are returns for its third season on U.S. television on February 3, 2012. The popularity of the broadcast is evident since NBC has expanded the series about family history hunts to 12 episodes this season.

Among those featured:

  • Martin Sheen, actor, known for The West Wing, Apocalypse Now and hundreds of other stellar performances, and as being father of Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez
  • Marisa Tomei, actor, Oscar winner
  • Blair Underwood, actor, L.A. Law, most recently, The Event. I remember him from One Life to Live circa 1985.
  • Reba McEntire, former rodeo barrel racer turned country music superstar turned sit-com actor.
  • Rob Lowe, actor, also on The West Wing, member of the "Brat Pack" and author of the memoir, Stories I Only Tell My Friends
  • Helen Hunt, actor known for TV's Mad About You, went on to win the Oscar.
  • Rita Wilson, actor and producer known for "best friend" roles, driving force behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Oh, yeah, she's married to Tom Hanks.
  • Edie Falco, actor, The Sopranos, Nurse Jackie
  • Rashida Jones, actor, The Office, Parks and Recreation
  • Jerome Bettis, former NFL halfback with the Rams and the Steelers
  • Jason Sudeikis, known for Saturday Night Live, Horrible Bosses, 30 Rock
  • Paula Deen, celebrity chef
Martin Sheen with my friend and
fellow genealogy blogger, Jan Eloise Morris
Los Angeles, 1996
used with permission of Jan Eloise Morris

Reba McEntire
Omaha, Nebraska 1982
copyright Susan Petersen


Finding Your Roots

Henry Louis Gates of the Faces of America series is back to host Finding Your Roots on PBS. The 10 part series premieres on PBS stations on March 25, 2012. Celebrities named for this program thus far include:
  • Kevin Bacon and wife (cousin?) Kyra Sedgwick, actors; he is probably best known for the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon 'game', his credits include Footloose, Apollo 13, A Few Good Men, Diner. Sedgwick is best known for The Closer.
  • Robert Downey, Jr., actor; I'm a bit prejudiced as, in my eyes, he's one of the most gifted actors of our time. Known most recently for Sherlock Holmes, Ally McBeal, Wonder Boys (one of my favorite films), Chaplin, and several stints in jail and rehab.
  • Branford Marsalis, musician - saxophonist; in addition to a remarkable solo career, he toured with Sting for two years and was musical director of The Tonight Show when Jay Leno first took over the late night spot.
  • John Legend, singer, songwriter, actor, recipient of nine Grammy awards.
  • Martha Stewart, television personality and magazine publisher, merchandiser of her own product line. Served five months in federal prison after lying to investigators about a stock sale.
  • Barbara Walters, longtime broadcaster and interviewer, her credits include The Today Show, 20/20, The Barbara Walters Special and The View. She was the first woman to co-anchor a network news show and her $1 million salary really pissed off Harry Reasoner, who never got over it. I noticed she was in a photograph as a guest at Paul McCartney's London wedding to Nancy Shevell last year; I later read that Barbara and Nancy are cousins. So I'm curious about that family relationship.
  • Rick Warren, evangelical minister and author of The Purpose Driven Life.
As the names of other subjects on Finding Your Roots are announced, they will be posted on this blog.

With at least 12 weeks of network genealogy programming coming up, it's going to make getting through winter a lot more fun!


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Friday, August 5, 2011

Open Discussion Weekend: YOUR Ideal Season of Who Do You Think You Are?

Imagine, just for a moment, that you are the producer of the hit NBC television series, Who Do You Think You Are? What celebrities would you like to see on your perfect season of the show? And why would you choose them?
Is it because it's a particular celebrity you like or did you once read or hear something about their background that intrigued you and you'd like to learn more about?

Here are some of my choices that could make an interesting season:
  • Fashion designer Stella McCartney - Dad is Paul McCartney and some of the family roots have already been published. Strong Irish background - it would be interesting to see the places where the elder McCartney and Mohin families lived. And her mother, Linda Eastman's family name was Epstein. Linda's father changed the name. That side of the family would be interesting as well.
  • Whoopi Goldberg - just because.
  • Russell Crowe - I know nothing about his Australian heritage, and he's an interesting enough character on his own that he surely must have some fascinating ancestors.
  • Either Dan Brown or Patricia Cornwell, best selling authors. Everyone else probably wants to see J. K. Rowling, so I'd opt for a different popular author.
  • Tom Hanks - because I read once that he is related to Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks.
  • Brad Pitt - just so my friend, Jan, could meet her celebrity Hillhouse cousin.
  • Brian Wilson, founder of the Beach Boys, who is my 10th cousin, once removed, through our common Mayflower ancestor, Francis Cooke. I'd like to see how a professional genealogist documents the lineage back to the Mayflower passengers.
  • Jane Fonda, because of her family's Nebraska roots. Her father, Henry Fonda, was born and raised in Nebraska and made his acting debut at the Omaha Community Playhouse. I'd like to learn more about the older generations of that family.
Clearly, my fantasy season of WDYTYA has an unlimited budget and some private celebrities who probably would have no interest in participating. But it's my fantasy, so it doesn't matter!

Be as creative, inventive or as selfish as you like. Provide your list and your reasons in the Comments section below. Have some fun with this one!
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Saturday, February 26, 2011

What To Do With Skeletons in the Closet

Last evening's broadcast of the NBC hit genealogy show, Who Do You Think You Are, featured Kim Cattrall's search for her grandfather who had abandoned his family. He ran off and left three young daughters who grew up without ever knowing their father.

He then married another woman (without having gotten a divorce!) and began a new family with her.

Upon learning this information, and that she had living relatives, Cattrall chose not to follow-up and meet her grandfather's other family. Most of the people who were discussing the program on Twitter (#wdytya) last evening were in agreement that it was a very emotional episode.

What do you do with YOUR skeletons?


This brings me around to a question I would like to pose to readers of this blog.

What do YOU do with the skeletons in YOUR closet? Most of us have them. Mine include illegitimate children, kidnapping (if it's your own child, is it really kidnapping?), several suicides, and probably the worst of all, a third great-grandfather who killed his daughter and then committed suicide in 1851.

Last night's discussions on Twitter as well as on Geneablogger Radio brought out a lot of firmly held beliefs on what to do with this type of information when it is discovered in your family history research.

Points to consider:

  • Do you lay it on the line, share with family and publish your findings?
  • Do you keep it close to the vest and not share it?
  • Do you attempt to rewrite history? The genealogist who published a family history that included the ancestor who murdered his daughter changed the entire context of that story, making him out to be a hero who tried to save his daughter's life. Newspaper reports from the time were quite different.
  • Is there a "statute of limitations" on privacy? For example, if an incident occurred four or five generations back, do you treat the information differently?
When I began gathering information from living family members, a relative asked that I not include her first husband in her genealogy. I was rather astounded by the request, because how would I explain where her three children came from?

I definitely understand and respect privacy issues regarding living individuals; that isn't the point of this discussion.

But I am very interested in how other genealogists deal with the skeletons in your closet. This is an open discussion, so please leave your comments below.
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Friday, February 25, 2011

Who Do You Think You Are - Kim Cattrall

It's Friday! And that means another episode of the hit NBC genealogy show, Who Do You Think You Are (WDYTYA).

Tonight's episode features Kim Cattrall in a search for the grandfather who abandoned his family. This episode first aired in the BBC version of the series. Watch a preview here. The show airs at 8:00 p.m. EST and 7:00 p.m. Central.

You can chat along with the first airing of the show on Twitter using the hashtag #wdytya. If you live in the Mountain and Pacific time zones and don't want any spoilers, I suggest you avoid Twitter and Facebook until the show airs in your area! The tweeters get pretty excited during the online viewing party.

Live Viewing Party on Twitter

Last week, Rosie O'Donnell live tweeted throughout the broadcast, although she was not using the #wdytya hashtag. If you don't quite have the hang of Twitter (I have a love/hate relationship with the little blue bird), I recommend the free software, TweetDeck. It makes keeping track of multiple "conversations" much easier. This software also provides several shortcuts for replying, responding to and re-tweeting messages as well as providing a one-click method for inserting those hashtags.

Here's where you can find me on Twitter.

Geneablogger Radio


Then you will definitely want to stick around for the fourth episode of Geneablogger Radio, hosted by the chief geneablogger, Thomas MacEntee. Topics for this call-in web-based radio show will be tonight's episode of WDYTYA, webinars, genealogy news and some door prizes as Thomas divests himself of some of the conference swag he picked up at the Roots Tech conference last weekend. You can listen to the radio show and join the chat room by following this link. If you happen to miss the show, you can listen to a repeat performance later by following the same link.

See you tonight!
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Sunday, January 30, 2011

Countdown to Season 2 of Who Do You Think You Are

The much awaited second season of NBC's celebrity-based genealogy program, Who Do You Think You Are, has finally arrived. This season opens with a look into the ancestry of Vanessa Williams. The show airs this coming Friday, February 4 on NBC.

Watch a sneak-peek below.



http://www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are/

Links:

Official NBC site

Follow Who Do You Think You Are on Twitter

Tweet with other viewers on Twitter during the broadcast #wdytya
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Saturday, January 15, 2011

Who Do You Think You Are comes to DVD March 15

If you didn't get enough of Season 1 of Who Do You Think You Are (US edition) on tv or online, it is being released March 15, 2011. List price is $39.99, but Amazon.com has it available at a pre-order price of $27.99. There are 2 DVDs and the running time is 293 minutes. I haven't found out yet if there are any extra features. But based on the running time and the number of episodes, it would appear not. If you have information to the contrary, please post in the Comments section below.

I've ordered this because I can easily watch the series 2 or 3 more times - for inspiration. And it gives me something to do when I'm frustrated by a brick wall. After I've had my fill, I'll donate the DVD to either my local genealogical society or city library.

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