Ask American Profile

Anne Murray, Conan O'Brien, Ned Beatty

Can you give me some current information on singer Anne Murray? Is she still performing and touring? How old is she?
—Margie S., Louisiana

Songbird Anne Murray released Country Croonin’, a double-CD set with 31 country songs, including such classics as I Fall to Pieces and The Tennessee Waltz, in 2002. She also sings a duet of Let It Be Me with country star Vince Gill. “The musicians loved doing it, and I was born to sing these songs,” Murray says. The singer, 57, will be touring the United States throughout the year. The four-time Grammy and three-time Country Music Association award winner was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame on Sept. 9. Murray grew up in the small coal-mining town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, and now lives in Toronto. She has two children, William, 26, and Dawn, 23. Murray recorded a duet with her daughter, a singer and songwriter, on her 1999 inspirational album, What A Wonderful World.

I’ve noticed that Conan O’Brien has been wearing a wedding ring. I thought he was single. Is he married? If so, when and to whom?
—Maxine D., Ohio

The 39-year-old late night talk show host is indeed a married man. He married Liza Powel, an advertising executive Jan. 12, 2002, in her hometown of Seattle. The two met when she appeared in a skit about advertising on his show in the spring of 2000. They talked on the phone a few times before getting together for an actual date. O’Brien recalled seeing Powel arrive in an interview with The New York Observer. “It’s very hard to explain, but I just knew.” A Brookline, Mass., native whose career in comedy includes writing stints with Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, O’Brien took over David Letterman’s old time slot on NBC in 1993 and has succeeded in the competitive late-night market.

I saw a movie called Hear My Song starring Ned Beatty. Did he actually perform the songs?
—Fred W., Nevada

Sorry to spoil the illusion, but no. The wonderful voice that appears to be coming from Ned Beatty’s mouth is actually that of Vernon Midgley, a respected operatic tenor from England. Beatty is greatly talented as an actor and may even be able to carry a tune. Although Hear My Song is fiction, Beatty played a real singer, Josef Locke, so the voice had to be of operatic quality. The director of the film wanted Locke to play himself, but to get investors to finance the movie he needed a known actor for the part. The filmmakers felt that Locke’s voice, though still strong, didn’t fit Beatty’s face, so they didn’t have him provide the vocals. The quality of his past records wasn’t suitable for the film either, so Midgley was brought in. Locke died in October 1999 but was pleased to be involved with the film that used him as its centerpiece.

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