Television Suits You

In the second half of the twentieth century, the Botany 500 name for the wardrobe ending credits of many television programs was as common as Gunsmoke. The brand's association with television personalities helped it become a household name. Throughout the 1970s, Botany 500 provided menswear for many game show hosts and countless television stars. That list can be found online. Botany 500 often paid for the clothes of television celebrities and did not always provide the clothes themselves. They were sometimes custom-made by other tailors.

Botany 500 was a brand name owned by the Botany 500 Group of New York. Beginning in 1889, their men's suits and sport coats were manufactured in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by H. Daroff and Sons, who were contracted with Botany Mills of Passaic, New Jersey, to produce products and later bought the firm outright. Given the exaggerated proportions of the 1949 illustrated man above, one could assume he was once the center of an NBA team. His forty-inch inseam would not be a challenge for Daroff.

Daroff and Sons and the Botany group went bankrupt in the summer of 1973. An attempt was made to turn the company over to another company, still operating profitably. Because of resistance by the company's employees, they backed out of the deal. By the winter of 1973, Cohen and Sons bought the Botany 500 name and assets for $4 million. They planned to keep the labels, marketing, sales, and distribution of Botany as a separate Botany 500 line produced in Philadelphia.
The Botany 500 name lives on as a licensed property of several foreign clothing manufacturers, ending the exclusivity of Botany 500's glory days. In 2021, the Botany 500 name resurfaced as a brand name sold by the mail-order company Haband. 

Broadcast Pioneers

Roger Mudd (1928-2021) was an American broadcast journalist who was a correspondent and anchor for CBS News and NBC News. He was the recipient of the Peabody Award for his interview with Sen. Ted Kennedy, the Joan Shorenstein Award for Distinguished Washington Reporting, and five Emmy Awards. His smooth, comforting delivery added credence to his long-standing career of accurate and unbiased reporting. 

"Journalists, who are skeptical to begin with, simply do not like to be lied to or made fools of." ~Mudd

The Washington, D.C. native graduated from Wilson High School in 1945, later earning a Bachelor of Arts in History from Washington and Lee University. Mudd began his journalism career in Richmond, Virginia, as a reporter for The Richmond News Leader and for radio station WRNL. In the late 1950s, Mudd moved back to Washington, D.C., to become a reporter with WTOP News, the news division of the radio and television stations owned by Washington Post-Newsweek. Mudd quickly came to the attention of CBS News and joined the Washington bureau in 1961. For most of his career at CBS, Mudd was a Congressional correspondent. He also was the anchor of the Saturday edition of CBS Evening News and frequently substituted on the weekday and weeknight broadcasts when regular anchormen Douglas Edwards and Walter Cronkite were absent.

"The relationship between press and politician - protected by the Constitution and designed to be happily adversarial - becomes sour, raw and confrontational." ~Mudd

After losing the CBS sole anchor position to Dan Rather, Mudd went to NBC in 1980. He was co-anchor for the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw until Brokaw became the sole anchor. Beginning in 1987 Mudd was an essayist and political correspondent with the MacNeil–Lehrer Newshour and a primary anchor for over ten years with The History Channel. Though Mudd retired from full-time broadcasting in 2004, he remained involved with documentaries for The History Channel.

An Actor With a Busy Agent

 

Robert Hogan (1933-2021) was an American actor best known for his prolific career in American television. Viewers were never quite sure where handsome Hogan would show up next, whether in a sitcom or police drama. He was one of the most in-demand and versatile actors in Hollywood.

Hogan portrayed numerous recurring characters on many daytime soaps with over sixty appearances on the primetime soap, Peyton Place. More primetime shows were in store for Hogan throughout the 1960s on Cheyenne, Bonanza, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Hawaiian Eye, I Dream of Jeannie, Hogan's Heroes, and Twelve O'Clock High, among others. There were no lulls in the 1970s with appearances on everything from The F.B.I, Hawaii Five-O, and played Sgt. Coopersmith on The Rockford Files, a role he would revive for Richie Brockelman, P.I. Hogan fit right in for numerous sitcoms like M.A.S.H., Mork & Mindy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and many more. His agent was constantly busy as Hogan made appearances on similar shows in the 1980s. By the 1990s, his career became more centered on theater with his Broadway debut in 1989. Hogan continued his television work until 2018.