Ask American Profile 10/25/2009

Emma Thompson, Patricia Heaton, Al Martino, Howdy Doody

Q What can you tell me about British movie star Emma Thompson? Does she live in the U.S. or England?
—Tracy Matthews, Hartford, Conn.

Thompson, 50, who starred last year in the film Brideshead Revisited, lives in North London, England, with husband Greg Wise and their young daughter. The couple met on the set of Sense and Sensibility following Thompson's much-publicized divorce from actor Kenneth Branagh. The actress, who won an Academy Award for her role in Howards End, received her second Oscar for writing the script of Sense and Sensibility. She continues to work in films, and you may have seen her in Dead Again, The Remains of the Day, Primary Colors, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Nanny McPhee.


Q Patricia Heaton is one my favorite TV moms, but I understand she has four kids in real life. How does she do it all?
—Ellen Perkins, Hilo, Hawaii

After nine seasons on the TV series Everybody Loves Raymond, Heaton, 51, is playing a mom again on ABC's new sitcom The Middle. She says she's no different than any other working mother and tries to do the best that she can with her own four school-age sons (with actor-husband David Hunt). "I have a real problem with prioritizing," she admits. She gets up at 5:30 a.m., before her family awakes, to work out or run errands. When she is overwhelmed, she jokes that she ends up "going on the computer for an hour, because I don't want to face reality."


Q What a beautiful voice Al Martino has. I'd love to know what he's doing these days.
—Delores Blumhorst, Slater, Mo.

At 82, Martino continues to tour and perform. "I'm just as busy now as I was 10 years ago," says the crooner, who had numerous Top 40 hits, such as "Spanish Eyes," on the Billboard charts in the 1960s and '70s. He cites his career highlight as playing at Queen Elizabeth's coronation and sitting beside Winston Churchill afterward. Martino is known as well for his role of singer-actor Johnny Fontane in the movies The Godfather and The Godfather: Part III.


Q Refresh my memory about the 1950s children's show Howdy Doody.
—Fred Evans, Ada, Ohio

The Howdy Doody Show was the first nationally televised kiddie show and the most popular children's show of the 1950s. It ran on NBC from 1947 to 1960 and starred a freckle-faced, red-headed marionette named Howdy Doody and his pal Buffalo Bob, the show's host, played by Bob Smith. Each program began with Buffalo Bob asking, "Say kids, what time is it?" Then all the kids in the Peanut Gallery, a section of bleachers onstage that seated about 40 children, would holler, "It's How-w-w-wdy Doody time!" Howdy and his pals, including marionettes Heidi Doody, Mayor Phineas T. Bluster, Dilly Dally and the Flubadub, lived in Doodyville, along with human characters Clarabell the Clown, Chief Thunderthud and Princess Summerfall Winterspring.

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