CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Mo Rocca returns with more stories about the people and things that have long fascinated him and, yes, they are all still dead. You'll learn about a President's unruly brother and the beer named after him, you'll cheer as a classic 1980's pop song spurs a sports team to a championship season in 2019, and you'll rediscover a forgotten Founding Father who needed a much better press agent.
Anna May Wong wasn’t supposed to be in the movies. Her traditionalist laundryman father was dead set against it. And Hollywood almost always used white actors in “yellow face” for Asian characters. But Wong knew what she wanted. As a young girl growing up in Los Angeles, she saw movies being made on the streets. […]
This week, CBS Sunday Morning’s hit podcast Mobituaries brings you a brand new episode taped before live audiences in Asbury Park, New Jersey and Fairfield, Connecticut. Mobituaries host and CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Mo Rocca drew sold out crowds to discuss his new hit book, and his passion for obituaries. “I inherited my love of […]
In 1971, following two decades on air, ABC cancelled the Lawrence Welk Show, a musical variety show led by the German-accented bandleader and accordionist, Lawrence Welk. Welk and his show were swept up in a series of mass cancellations that included shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction. (“The Rural Purge”, as […]
From 1854 to 1929, 250,000 abandoned or orphaned children in East Coast cities found themselves on journeys across the country. Shepherded by private organizations like the New York Foundling or the Children’s Aid Society, these orphans were resettled with families who promised to give them shelter, an education, and a place to grow up. It […]
On June 12, 2019, the St. Louis Blues made franchise history when they won the Stanley Cup, beating the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the ice hockey championship in Boston. Just after the buzzer sounded, St. Louis fans celebrated their unlikely triumph with the most unlikely of anthems: the 1982 pop song, “Gloria.” Yes, […]
On the evening of January 8, 1964, tens of millions of Americans tuned their television sets to CBS for an epic matchup. This wasn’t a fight between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston. Instead the main event was a feisty grandmother battling a kangaroo she had mistaken for a giant jackrabbit. This was the actual premise […]
On May 13, 1862, just over a year into the Civil War, an enslaved man named Robert Smalls, who labored on a Confederate steamer in South Carolina’s Charleston harbor, set into motion a daring plan. As his great-great-grandson Michael Boulware Moore explained, “He saw that the Confederate crew had left, and he knew that oftentimes […]
This past summer, guests lined up for a special event outside the legendary Greenwich Village piano bar, Marie’s Crisis. Visitors were on hand to take part in a rather unusual performance — a Mobituaries memorial do-over for a largely forgotten Founding Father: Thomas Paine. It turns out Paine died on, or near, the site of […]
America has a long tradition of unruly presidential brothers, none more famous than Billy Carter. He became so well-known for his antics, there was even a brand of beer named for him. Mo speaks to President Jimmy Carter and Billy’s widow and six children about the surprisingly complicated man behind the caricature.
CBS Sunday Morning correspondent and humorist Mo Rocca returns with more stories about the people and things that have long fascinated him and, yes, they’re all still dead. From the unruly presidential brother with his own beer to a 1980’s pop song that brought glory to a 2019 sports team, here’s a sneak peek at […]