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The Tracey Ullman Show was a weekly American television variety show, hosted by comedian and onetime pop singer Tracey Ullman. It debuted in April 1987 as the FOX network's second primetime series (after Married... With Children), and ran until May 1990. The show featured sketch comedy along with many musical numbers, featuring Emmy Award-winning choreography by Paula Abdul. It also produced a hugely successful spin-off, The Simpsons.
A typical episode would begin with Ullman giving a brief introduction, ostensibly from her dressing room, leading into the opening titles (the show's theme, "You're Thinking Right", was written by George Clinton). Then two or three comedy sketches would be presented, most designed to showcase Ullman's ability to skillfully mimic various accents. One popular recurring character was timid, slow-talking Kay ("iiit's ... Kaaaaaaaayyy ..."). Typically, the final sketch of the night would include a musical number featuring Ullman and other members of the cast. The final segment saw Ullman, clad in a robe, deliver a closing monologue to the studio audience before ending the show with her catchphrase "Go Home! Go Home!" and dancing as the credits rolled.
The show ultimately won three Emmy Awards: for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Program in 1989 and 1990, for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program in 1990. *
Cast
- Tracey Ullman .... Herself/Various Characters
- Joseph Malone .... Himself/Various Characters
- Sam McMurray .... Himself/Various Characters
- Anna Levine .... Herself/Various Characters
- Dan Castellaneta .... Himself/Homer Simpson/Various Characters
- Julie Kavner .... Herself/Marge Simpson/Various Characters
- Nancy Cartwright .... Bart Simpson
- Yeardley Smith .... Lisa Simpson
The Simpsons shorts
The Simpsons family debuted in short animated cartoons on The Tracey Ullman Show before being spun off into their own half-hour series. These shorts, also called "bumpers", aired before and after commercial breaks during the first three seasons of the show.
In recent years, Ullman has jokingly stated that she "breast-fed the yellow people".
All of them were written by Matt Groening and animated at Klasky-Csupo by a team of animators consisting of David Silverman, Wes Archer, and Bill Kopp. The characters' yellow skin color was invented by colorist Georgi Peluse, so people would think the tint control was broken on their TV set, as a high tint setting can cause a fair-skinned person's skin to appear yellowish. In the beginning, the drawings appeared very crude because the animators were more or less just tracing over Groening's storyboards, but as the series developed, so did the designs and layouts of the characters and the "Simpsons drawing style" was ultimately conceived. This style evolved even more throughout the first few seasons of The Simpsons and was used more than a decade later on Futurama, another animated series created by Matt Groening.
Dr. N!Godatu was another series of animated shorts created by M.K. Brown (and animated by the same Klasky-Csupo team) that alternated every other week with the Simpsons shorts, but were dropped after the first season of the show. By this point, Groening's shorts had gained much more popularity and the producers saw no reason to continue Brown's shorts.
- See also The Tracey Ullman Show shorts for the episode guide.
External links
Variety television series | 1980s TV shows in the United States | 1990s TV shows in the United States | Fox network shows | Fox Television Studios shows
Tracey Ullman Show | The Tracey Ullman Show | The Tracey Ullman Show
"The Tracey Ullman Show"