*** This page is a Bobby G work in progress.  Please excuse the brevity, nonsensical brain dump of thoughts and/or grammatical errors.  Check back later for the full scoop. ***

“People let me tell you ‘bout my best friend…”  You remember this theme song?

Originally the theme song was done by Nilsson as "Girlfriend"

The Courtship of Eddie’s Father was a big favorite of mine as a kid.  Who has a dad like that?!?!  Bill Bixby was more ideal and real than Mike Brady! 

Oh, yeah, and let’s not forget that Bill Bixby starred with Ray Walston in My Favorite Martian (and The Magician, and The Incredible Hulk)

Brandon Cruz played Eddie - my friend Michael Augustine-Reed auditioned for the role - just missed!

James Komack played Norman Tinker - good friend of Eddie and his father (Tom). Komack was also a director of “Chico and the Man” 

Kristina Holland, with those huge eyes of hers, played the giddy and fun Tina Rickles, Tom's secretary. I love this original still of her.

Miyoshi Umeki is the big-ticket autograph in this group. Here's a video of her winning Best Supporting Actress 

Miyoshi had quite a nice voice and I have a few of her LP's. Here's a lovely version of her singing "Over the Rainbow"

THIS IS FROM A 2018 article about Miyoshi: It can be a little cringe-inducing now to watch this Oscar-winner in a role that does little more than reinforce a Western fantasy of Asian women, but like most minority actors of her era, Umeki—who died in 2007 at 78 of complications from cancer—faced what must have been an agonizing choice between being visible, in roles that were beneath her, or being unseen altogether. She chose the former, remaining an enigma in the public imagination, but her true feelings about Hollywood may have been more complex. "I asked her, 'Why did you agree to do the pidgin English?'" her son, Michael Hood, says now. "Her answer was very simple: 'I didn't like doing it, but when someone pays you to do a job, you do the job, and you do your best. 

Still, she found ways to express how she really felt. Cruz, who starred as Eddie on Courtship until he was 10, remembers Umeki's commitment despite her thankless part. "From growing up around Miyoshi for four years, I didn't sense a lot of joy, but I felt her strength and her determination," he says, adding that instead of complaining, Umeki used her standing to open doors for fellow Asian actors—including Pat Morita and George Takei, who both guest-starred on the series—and to improve on-set life. Once, after noticing how Bixby relocated his dressing room closer to the stages, she made her own request. "Miyoshi just looked around, saw what was happening, and said to the producers, 'I want a trailer, and I want it parked outside,' and she got it," Cruz says, noting that Umeki began helping to negotiate them for everyone else. "Miyoshi got what she wanted by just being smart and quiet." 

Quiet, sure, but never meek. Hood says she chose to retire from acting after Courtship was canceled in 1972. "I know it sounds weird nowadays, but she wanted to be a housewife and a mother," Hood says. "When I asked her why years later, she said she had achieved everything she wanted to achieve. Her dream was to come here and entertain." 

That dream, though, seems to have come at a cost to her spirit. Shortly after her husband, Randall Hood, passed away in 1976, Umeki etched out her name on her Oscar and then threw the trophy away. To this day, her son isn't sure why she disposed of it, though he says the circumstances of her life at the time—as a newly single mother raising a teenager—probably didn't help. ("When my father passed away, Mom took it real hard," he remembers.) But even though it seemed to have been an act of rage, her explanation to him at the time appeared to avoid any expression of strong emotion. "She told me, 'I know who I am, and I know what I did,' " Hood says. "It was a point of hers, to teach me a lesson that the material things are not who she was." 

Her adopted son Michael Randall Hood 1964-2018 

Despite his outward appearance of happiness and success, Michael struggled with mental health issues for most of his life. He suffered from depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and bipolar disorder. He also had a history of substance abuse and addiction. 

Michael’s mental health problems were likely influenced by several factors. One of them was his traumatic childhood. He was abused by his adoptive father, who was an alcoholic and a gambler. He also witnessed his mother’s decline due to cancer. She died in 2007 at the age of 78.