Ask American Profiloe 2007

Q How is newscaster Bob Woodruff doing since his tragedy in Iraq?
—Robert Ellmont, Mesquite, Nev.

The 45-year-old World News Tonight co-anchor was nearly killed in January of last year when a roadside bomb explosion left him with severe brain trauma and a fractured skull. Though he no longer needs physical or speech therapy, he’s still in cognitive rehab to regain his full mental faculties. He is writing a book and putting together a TV special about the traumatic experience and his climb to recovery.

Q What can you tell me about actor Strother Martin? I found out after he died that we were cousins.
—Eleanor Martin Smith, Great Bend, Kan.

Born in Kokomo, Ind., Martin served in the Navy during World War II. Afterward, he moved to Los Angeles, where he began his acting career with bit parts and worked his way up. He appeared in three classic Westerns all released in 1969—The Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and True Grit. He probably is best known, though, for his classic line from Cool Hand Luke: “What we got here is failure to communicate.” He appeared on Saturday Night Live in April 1980 and died of a heart attack four months later at the age of 61.

Q What did Vicki Lawrence do after Mama’s Family?
—Pat Walker, Minerva, Ohio

Toward the end of Mama’s Family in 1990, Lawrence, 57, who played the TV show’s colorfully comedic curmudgeon, was tapped to host Win, Lose or Draw. “It was nice to be me on camera instead of an old lady all the time,” she says. Afterward, she hosted her own talk show for two seasons, but split after creative conflicts with the producers. Now she presents her own touring theatrical show, Vicki Lawrence and Mama: A Two Woman Show, featuring show-biz anecdotes from Lawrence and a performance by her alter ego, Mama.

Q What’s up with ABBA these days?
—Norman Grote, Crossville, Tenn.

The wildly successful Scandinavian pop quartet disbanded in 1982, trailing a string of infectious pop hits that included “Waterloo,” “S.O.S.,” “Mamma Mia,” “Fernando” and “Dancing Queen.” The act took its name from the first letters of its member’s names: Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid. Their legacy includes a musical based on their music, Mamma Mia!, which last year became one of the 25 longest-running Broadway productions of all time, and an interactive ABBA museum set to open in 2008 in Stockholm, Sweden, to display some of their costumes, instruments and other memorabilia.

Q I don’t want to appear stupid, but can you tell me what the term “Characters Welcome” means that I see on TV ads for sitcoms and weekly shows?
—Don Molitor, Lake City, Mich.

“Characters Welcome” is the new tagline for shows on the USA Network, part of a campaign to brand the channel as the TV home of “compelling, sometimes complicated, often funny characters” such as the germaphobic Monk, the muscle-bound wrestlers of WWE or the driven crime fighters on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

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