When Steve Katz graduated from law school, he chose the entertainment industry to practice in because he decided he might as well pick a field that interested him.
“As a kid, other than playing sports, all I ever did was watch TV and go to the movies,” he said. “So, when I got out of law school, I went out of my way to find a firm that practiced entertainment law.”
Katz worked as an attorney in Los Angeles for 30 years and represented writers, directors, producers, actors and entertainers, including Dick Clark, Cher, Donald Sutherland and Michael Crichton. However, he admits some of his favorite clients were not ones that anyone would recognize.
But he did have one famous favorite — actor Danny DeVito. He said he was one of the sweetest people he ever worked with.
“Officially, he was a client of a senior partner. I was the secondary lawyer, but he and I used to socialize and hang out,” said Katz. “He was really one of the nicest guys in the business.”
In 2005, after he retired, Katz moved to Arizona and began taking classes at Grand Learning for residents living in The Grand (formerly Sun City Grand). After he attended many courses, he decided he wanted to teach. His first entertainment-related class was on the history of stand-up comedy.
After that, he started teaching film classes. “I did a class on the history of film in the 60s, which is the decade where everything in the film industry changed,” said Katz. “I did a class on the history of film music, specific genres of film, conspiracy movies and then I decided to do one exploring the earliest days of television, through 1960.”
On Sunday, Jan. 21, 2024, Katz will present “The Golden Age of Television” at 2 p.m. at Temple Beth Shalom of the West Valley (TBS-WV) in Sun City, where he is a long-time member.
Katz said putting together the television class kept him sane during the COVID-19 lockdown. He spent between five to eight hours a day, over a year, researching and putting it together.
“It’s very time consuming trying to figure out which shows you’re going to do, how to organize them, what to say about them and what clips are representative to make your point,” he said. “It’s so much fun to go back into all that nostalgia. I love seeing the people’s reactions to either what I’m saying or what they’re seeing.”
He said he has many favorite shows from that era, “You watch ’The Honeymooners’ and it makes you laugh, no matter how many times you’ve seen it.” But his top pick is “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.”
“I was an early teen at the end of the ‘50s and, at the time, it just struck a chord and I connected with that show,” said Katz.
After more than a dozen years teaching at The Grand, Katz began teaching his first class this past September through Rio Salado College’s RISE Learning for Life program, which offers non-credit, interest-based classes.
“My classes are very detailed and long,” he said. “The TV class, there’s three semesters. Each semester is 10 sessions and each session is three hours. So, you’re talking about a 90-hour class. It’s a lot of information.”
The event at TBS-WV will be an abbreviated version of his course.
In his class, he works his way through almost every show on television in the 1950s, he said. With each series, he provides background history, sometimes including business practices or legal issues. “I Love Lucy” may be a 30-minute lecture “because of all the groundbreaking things about that series,” where a lesser-known show may only need a few minutes to cover.
“I’ll have little quizzes at the beginning, before they’ve seen or heard the stuff I’m going to talk about to see if they remember,” he said. “As I’m going through my lecture and I get to something that’s a trivia question that people might know, I’ll stop and everybody chimes in with the answer. Now and then, nobody knows the answer but a lot of times, everybody knows the answer.”
He also plays theme songs from a TV series and asks the students to identify it, or he’ll ask questions about certain commercials from the 50s.
“I want to make it as much of a fun nostalgic experience as an educational experience,” said Katz. JN
For more information, visit tbsaz.org.