The White Shadow

The White Shadow was a television series that ran on the CBS network from 1978 to 1981. It starred Ken Howard as a (white) ex-NBA basketball player who was hired as head basketball coach at an all-black, inner-city high school.

Related Topics:
Television - CBS - 1978 - 1981 - Ken Howard - NBA

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When a professional athlete busts his knee, there are a few vocational routes to take. There's sports commentary, the autobiography business, personal appearances at used car lot grand openings, and the lecture circuit?all careers that A.E. Housman may have been thinking of when he wrote his poem "To An Athlete Dying Young." But more than all of those other post-athletic activities, there's coaching, shaping young talent with the wisdom accrued in years of experience.

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Fictional Chicago Bulls forward Ken Reeves was talked into the latter career by his old friend and teammate Jim Willis, and that was the premise behind TV's White Shadow. Jim was a principal at Los Angeles' Carver High School, nestled right inside an inner-city, working-class neighborhood?and though Reeves was new to the world of clipboards and de facto paternal responsibilities, coaching soon appeared to be his true calling.

Related Topics:
Chicago Bulls - Los Angeles

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The White Shadow was created by TV producer (and big basketball fan) Bruce Paltrow, later of St. Elsewhere and father of Gwenyth Paltrow. It was about the sport, of course, but it was also about a growing up in a tough neighborhood at a tough time. The kids on the team had to face drugs, gangs, race hostility, learning disabilities, financial hardship, and more?so it wasn't all towel rattail fights in the locker room. Whatever the dilemma, Coach Reeves figured into the solution, be it through good advice or hands-on intervention. His players trusted him, and given the general mistrust they had for people older than them, that was really saying something.

Related Topics:
Bruce Paltrow - St. Elsewhere - Gwenyth Paltrow

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In the 1979-80 season, one of Reeves' players, Curtis Jackson, was shot while standing in a liquor store that was being held up. That was also the year that a load of players "graduated" from high school and moved on, and a new batch of actors came in to take their place. In its third season, the show lightened up?there were more laughs and decidedly more singing in the shower, which some would argue the Carver players did as well as they played hoops.

Related Topics:
1979 - 80

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On the court or off, the young men on the Carver High basketball team were a funny and eclectic group, and their coach, their "white shadow," was always there to lend an assist.

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Produced by Paltrow, the show stood alongside Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere for their humorous, full treatment of characters. It was a sophisticated forerunner to shows such as ', The Sopranos, Boomtown and Six Feet Under. Sadly, the series has not yet emerged on the DVD format.

Related Topics:
Hill Street Blues - The Sopranos - Boomtown - Six Feet Under - DVD

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