Ask American Profile 5/6/2007

Q What can you tell me about Bradley Cole on The Guiding Light? I know he played Prince Richard Winslow from 1999 to 2002 and left the show and came back as a different character, Jeffrey O’Neill. He is a phenomenal actor and very handsome.
—Carly C., Pittsburgh, Pa.

Born and raised in California, Cole, 48, studied business and drama at Pepperdine University and played college basketball until an injury forced him to quit. He left his first Guiding Light role in 2002 when his contract expired and he felt “the character had run its course.” When producers of the daytime drama approached him the following year about playing a different character, he accepted. Married and the father of a son who’ll turn 1 in July, Cole also is a singer who released his fourth CD, A Human Thing, last year.

Q Is Mariska Hargitay on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit the daughter of Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay, and was she mauled as a child by a wild animal at Jungleland in Thousand Oaks, Calif.?
—M. Filipmere, Yreka, Calif.

Yes and no. The Law & Order star, 43, is indeed the daughter of the late sex symbol and her actor/bodybuilder husband. But it was Mariska’s brother, 6-year-old Zoltan, who was mauled by a lion during a freak accident in 1966 at Jungleland while his mother was doing a photo shoot at the now-defunct animal park. Mariska and Zoltan both survived a horrific car crash a year later in which Mansfield and two other adults were killed. Hargitay has a zigzag scar on the side of her head from the accident, but she doesn’t remember anything about it.

Q Whatever happen-ed to the mentalist called the Amazing Kreskin?
—E. McCray, Tempe, Ariz.

George Kresge, also known as “The Amazing Kreskin,” is constantly on the road and in the air, performing some 300 shows a year. “I love my work and I’ve been blessed,” says the New Jersey resident, 72, who stresses that he is not a psychic or fortuneteller, but rather a “mentalist” with a special gift to read the thoughts of others. “I’ve been doing this for a living since I was 11 years old.” He has a new book, Mental Power Is Real, available through his website, www.kreskin.com.

Q Whatever became of the boy who played “Dueling Banjos” in the movie Deliverance?
—Ivan Pettit, Franklin, Pa.

Georgia native Billy Redden didn’t have any speaking lines in the 1972 classic Deliverance, but he sure made quite an impression as the banjo-playing hillbilly kid who visually imprinted the film’s musical signature. Redden, then 16, was selected from his Rabun County school for the part. But he didn’t actually play the banjo, nor could he convincingly pretend to pick one. For the movie’s “Dueling Banjos” scene, a real musician crouched behind him and reached around, and the camera framed the shot to make it appear as if Redden was playing. Now 51, Redden went on to appear in one other movie (he had a bit part in Big Fish in 2003), and today he works at a Wal-Mart in Clayton, Ga., not far from where he grew up.

Q I remember a 1940s movie called F.O.B. Detroit, starring Albert Dekker and Joel McCrea, that was filmed in one of our auto plants. I can’t find anything about it, however, and my friends think I’m “slipping a clutch.”
—Guy Bachelard, Rochester Hills, Mich.

Your memory “clutch” is in great shape! The 1941 film you recall was Reaching for the Sun, but the novel on which the movie was based was indeed titled F.O.B. Detroit, by Michigan native Wessel Smitter. The movie, a boisterous comedy about a country bumpkin who moves to the Motor City to work in a manufacturing plant, steered clear of the book’s grittier realities of factory life.

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