Ask American Profile

Julie Andrews, Richard Dean Anderson, Li'l Abner and Alley Oop

I saw the movie The Princess Diaries, co-starring Julie Andrews. She’s always been a favorite performer of mine. What can you tell me about her?
—Ruth N., Tennessee

It’s hard to know where to start. The 66-year-old actress and singer has had such an illustrious career and interesting life. Born in England, she showed a talent for singing as a young child and performed with her parents at England’s music halls. Her first solo performance came at age 11, when she sang for the Queen Mother Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. Before she turned 20, she came to America and starred on Broadway, first in The Boyfriend and most famously in My Fair Lady opposite Rex Harrison. Her first movie was Mary Poppins, followed by The Sound of Music, and America fell in love with the young, vibrant star. She continually impressed and surprised her fans, ably handling comedy, drama, and always singing beautifully, with an incredible four-octave vocal range. Sadly, in 1997 she underwent throat surgery that left her unable to sing afterward. Married to film director Blake Edwards, she has raised five children and has written children’s books. She and Edwards live in New York. Andrews received the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors last year for lifetime achievement as an actress.

I’d like to know about the man who played the lead in the show MacGyver.
—Nancy A., Iowa

He’s Richard Dean Anderson, and you can catch him on the Showtime sci-fi series Stargate SG-1, for which he is also executive producer. The series also began airing on the Sci-Fi Channel this year. On the show, Anderson plays Col. Jack O’Neill, head of a military team that travels through space via a stargate. It’s based on the 1994 film of the same name. The 52-year-old Anderson was born in Minneapolis and set out to carve a career as a professional hockey player. He broke both arms while playing the sport, so he turned toward other career options. With a musician father and an artist mother, it was natural that he chose the arts and studied drama while attending St. Cloud State College and Ohio University. After graduating, he moved to Los Angeles and made a living as a street mime, juggler, jester, and from various other jobs. Eventually, he played Dr. Jeff Webber on General Hospital, staying there for five years. A few prime-time series followed, all of them short-lived until MacGyver. That show lasted seven years, and the character’s ingenious use of everyday objects as handy tools to get him out of fixes led to a new slang term. (To MacGyver something means using it in an unexpected way.) Anderson has a 3-year-old daughter, Wylie. They and Wylie’s mother divide their time between homes in California and British Columbia.

Are the comic strips Li’l Abner and Alley Oop still in production?
—Phil P., Texas

Reprints of the original Li’l Abner comic strip appear in some newspapers today, but it ceased production in 1977. Created by cartoonist Al Capp, the comic strip about the daily doings of Dogpatch, USA, started publication in 1934. Capp fearlessly tackled the issues of the day through the life of an innocent hillbilly family, and his audience—hit hard by the Depression—embraced his biting social satire. Capp died in 1979. Alley Oop, on the other hand, still runs new strips each day. Created in 1933 by V.T. Hamlin, the comic strip follows the adventures of caveman Alley, who uses his friend’s time machine to travel from prehistoric Moo into the 21st century. Hamlin worked on the caveman comic strip for 40 years, before retiring and handing it over to his assistant, Dave Graue. Graue brought Jack Bender in as an assistant artist in 1990, and a year later he was drawing Alley Oop full time. When Graue retired in 2001, Bender’s wife, Carole, came in as the writer.

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