Ask American Profile 3/1/2009

Guy Fieri, Cheap Trick, Gina Tognoni

Q What can you tell me about Food Network star Guy Fieri, who hosts Diners, Drive-ins and Dives? He seems to enjoy his job so much!
—Florine Kachmar, El Campo, Texas

Fieri remembers taking an interest in food when he was 10, after his mother told him if he wanted to eat it, he could cook it! Today, with four shows on the Food Network—Guy’s Big Bite, Ultimate Recipe Showdown, Guy Off The Hook and Diners, Drive-ins and Dives—Fieri knows he’s giving small eateries publicity they would never get otherwise. “It’s really rewarding to know that it’s helping them,” he says. He does, indeed, love his work, but doesn’t particularly enjoy being away from his wife and two children and his home in northern California, near which he recently built a house for his parents. He also owns three restaurants.

Q My wife and I have a bet. Who yells “Hello, Wisconsin!” at the end of the theme song on That ’70s Show, Ashton Kutcher or Topher Grace?
—Tom Newell, Wood River, Ill.

Neither. During the show’s debut season in 1998, cast member Danny Masterson (who played Steven) added the salutation to the show’s theme song, “In the Street,” by the Wisconsin-based ’70s band Big Star. For the following seven seasons, however, the rock group Cheap Trick performed the show’s signature tune, and guitarist Rick Nielsen did the “Hello, Wisconsin!” honors.

Q I understand that the song “Unchained Melody” came from a movie in the 1950s about a man in jail. What was the name of the movie?
—Nancy H. Clark, Claiborne, Md.

The 1955 prison drama Unchained would be mostly unmemorable had it not given the world one of its most enduring love songs. “Unchained Melody,” a collaboration by pop songwriter Hy Zaret and film composer Alex North, was an instant smash, with four different versions on the American Top 40 charts at the same time just months after the movie’s release. The song went on to be recorded by many more artists, but the 1965 rendition by the Righteous Brothers—which found a new generation of fans when it became the soundtrack centerpiece of the movie Ghost in 1990—is considered the definitive version.

Q Please tell me where I’ve seen Gina Tognoni other than on Guiding Light. I know I’ve seen her sweet face somewhere else.
—Annie Richket, Pauls Valley, Okla.

You likely saw Tognoni on One Life to Live, on which she played Kelly Cramer Buchanan from 1995 to 2002. Last June, Tognoni, 34, won her second Daytime Emmy for her Guiding Light role as Dinah Marler. Her GL cast mate Beth Ehlers (Harley Cooper) introduced her to businessman Joseph Chiarello, now her fiancé. “I waited a long time for someone special like him,” says Tognoni, who in 1992 was named Miss Rhode Island Teen.

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