Ask AP 12/9/2007

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Barbara Bel Geddes was a star on stage and screen long before she landed the role of the Ewing family matriarch on Dallas in 1978. A Broadway sensation in the late 1940s, she appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1951 and went on to memorable roles in the movies Panic in the Street, Vertigo and The Five Pennies. A longtime smoker, she died of lung cancer in 2005 at the age of 82.

Q What can you tell me about Natalie Zea, who was on Passions?
—Yuki James, Acton, Calif.

The former daytime soap star now is a regular in ABC’s new primetime series Dirty Sexy Money, playing poor-little-rich-girl Karen Darling, a role that critics are calling her breakthrough. An only child, Zea, 32, grew up in Monahans, Texas, where she was seriously injured by a drunk driver when she was 17. She spent her senior year of high school in a hospital bed, but never gave up her dream of becoming an actress. In addition to Passions, you also may have spotted her on TV’s Two and a Half Men, The Shield, Without a Trace and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Q A long time ago, I saw Andy Williams and his brothers singing on a TV show. What year did he begin his career?
—Helen Allen, McCook, Neb.

The easy-listening superstar-to-be was 8 when he began singing in 1935 with his older siblings in the Williams Brothers Quartet. After creating a buzz on local radio, the group hit the big time when they were asked by Bing Crosby to sing on his hit single “Swinging on a Star.” Williams later went solo, hosted his own hugely popular TV variety series (The Best of The Andy Williams Show has just been released on DVD) and gave the world the song “Moon River” from the soundtrack of the 1961 movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Now 79, he works and performs regularly in Branson, Mo., at the showplace theater named for his signature song.

Q Is Gregory Peck dead or alive, and how many movies did he make?
—Billie Mayfield, Dos Palo, Calif.

Peck, who died in 2003 at the age of 87, appeared in 54 theatrically released films, including Moby Dick, Twelve O’Clock High, Cape Fear, The Guns of Navarone and The Omen. In 2003, the American Film Institute voted his portrayal of Atticus Finch, the Southern lawyer he played in To Kill a Mockingbird, as the greatest screen hero of all time.

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