Difference between revisions of "The Tracey Ullman Show"

Revision as of 14:58, May 24, 2024

The Tracey Ullman Show logo

The Tracey Ullman Show was a weekly American television variety show, hosted by British comedian and onetime pop singer Tracey Ullman. It debuted on April 5, 1987 as the FOX network's second primetime series and ran until May 26, 1990. The show featured sketch comedy along with many musical numbers, featuring Emmy Award-winning choreography by Paula Abdul.

The Simpsons

The Simpsons as they originally appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show

The Simpsons first appeared as short vignettes on the Tracy Ullman Show. These cartoon shorts acted as bumpers that are shown before and after commercials. The shorts were written by Matt Groening and animated at Klasky-Csupo by a team consisting of David Silverman, Bill Kopp and Wes Archer (in the later seasons, the shorts were animated by Silverman and Archer) Dan Castellanata, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith and Julie Kavner provided the voices of characters Homer, Bart, Lisa and Marge.

The characters were crudely drawn because Matt Groening assumed that the animators would clean them up after he submitted the rough sketches them. Instead, the animators simply traced over the sketches.

The first short, Good Night, was aired on April 19, 1987. Later, the shorts were given their own segment on the show before the cartoon was developed into a 30 minutes TV animated spin-off in 1989.

One unseen short that was going to be part of the short Season 4 was storyboarded in June 1989, because the producers thought the shorts were going to continue. It appears that in the short Bart watches a scary sci-fi movie late at night and has a bad dream when he goes to bed.^[1]

Cast

Tracey Ullman - Various Characters
Sam McMurray - Himself/Various Characters
Anna Levine - Herself/Various Characters
Dan Castellaneta - Himself/Homer Simpson/Various Characters
Julie Kavner - Herself/Marge Simpson/Various Characters
Nancy Cartwright - Bart Simpson
Yeardley Smith - Lisa Simpson

References to The Tracy Ullman Show on The Simpsons

Season	Episode number	Episode name	Reference
1	10	"Homer's Night Out"	The character Gulliver Dark appears, who appeared in several live-action sketches on The Tracy Ullman Show.
11	227	"Beyond Blunderdome"	The couch gag features the Ullman Simpsons, which also appears in "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses".
14	292	"Treehouse of Horror XIII"	In the 'Send in the Clones' segment, one of Homer's clones is the Ullman version of him, who says his catchphrase "Let's all go out for some frosty chocolate milkshakes!"
18	394	"Homerazzi"	Among the family photos being recreated is a '1987 Party', with the Ullman versions of Homer, Lisa, and Bart.
26	556	"Treehouse of Horror XXV"	In the 'The Others' section, the old Simpsons appear as ghosts. The section ends with a reference to the short Family Portrait.
29	623	Grampy Can Ya Hear Me	The Title screen gag contains Ullman Homer and Bart ghosts.