You’ve Seen This Retired Kentucky Man on TV More Than You Realize

I was searching for TV series from my childhood on YouTube. Google's bottomless pit of entertainment always delivers, and it did this time. There are old shows on YouTube you won't find on streaming services, and one of them is the perfectly awful anthology series Love, American Style. It was popular and edgy in its day, and it's worth watching as a time capsule from the period, but it's horribly dated. Keep reading, and you'll know what I mean.

Bad Television on YouTube

When I run across these old shows, I like to look up the actors who appeared in them. Love, American Style made it easy; the names of the show's guest actors are featured in the opening credits along with their images. An actor, now retired and living in Kentucky, is the first face you'll see in the credits for this episode. (He's the guy with his back to the camera in this featured image.)

Did you watch the episode? I can understand if you didn't. I told you so.

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A Very Busy Former Actor Gave It Up for Academia

Actor Michael Burns was vaguely familiar to me when I saw him; then I found his credits and knew why. He'd done so many guest shots, his face was in my memory banks, even if his name wasn't. And very early on in his career, he was interviewed by an icon on an iconic TV series...

Actor Michael Burns - a Retired Kentuckian

Burns left acting behind long ago and became a professor at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where he taught history until his 2002 retirement, after which he earned the "professor emeritus" designation. Burns is also a published author.

Since his retirement, he and his wife, Elizabeth, have been living in Danville, Kentucky, where they've been keeping themselves quite busy. They restored the Cambus-Kenneth Estate and have been successfully raising thoroughbreds, raking in more than $274,000 in annual revenue.

So if you're ever in Danville and you run into Professor Michael Burns, ask him about the time Dick Clark interviewed him when he was a teenager. Or chat him up about his appearances on Love, American Style or Wagon Train.

I guarantee you I would.