Pop culture Q&A

March 13, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

By Rich Heldenfels

McClatchy Newspapers

Q. Was Jan Smithers (Bailey Quarters on “WKRP in Cincinnati”) married to James Brolin? When?

A. Smithers and Brolin were married from 1986 to 1995, according to the Internet Movie Database. It was the second marriage for each. Josh Brolin is James’ son from his first marriage. James married Barbra Streisand in 1998.

Q. What does “TMZ” stand for?

A. The name of the gossip site and accompanying TV show refers to the “Thirty Mile Zone” (sometimes called the studio zone). As the TMZ site explains it, “Due to the growth of location shoots, studios established a ‘thirty-mile zone’ to monitor rules for filming in Hollywood. The center of the zone was the offices of the Association of Motion Pictures and Television Producers, formerly at Beverly and La Cienega Boulevards in Los Angeles. TMZ reinvented the thirty- mile zone and now serves as the Internet’s premier address for entertainment news.”

Q. There are some shows that I have not been able to find recently and don’t know whether or not they will return to TV. They are “Leverage,” “Rizzoli & Isles” and “Warehouse 13.”

A. All three will be back with new episodes this summer. “Warehouse 13,” by the way, is adding a new character for its third season. Aaron Ashmore (Jimmy Olsen on “Smallville”) will play Steve Jinks, a young ATF agent with an innate ability to detect when someone is lying.

Q. What happened to Doug McClure (Trampas on “The Virginian”)? Is Edie McClure related to him?

A. Doug McClure died in 1995 of lung cancer. He was 59 years old and had been acting for more than 35 years. As for Edie McClure, I think you mean the actress Edie McClurg, who is not related.

Q. Can you tell me the name of the blond actress that played with Clint Eastwood in “Hang ’Em High?” Was she the same actress who played the German girl that Telly Savalas killed in “The Dirty Dozen?”

A. The leading lady in “Hang ’Em High,” a 1968 Eastwood Western, was Inger Stevens, a movie and TV actress best known as the star of the TV version of “The Farmer’s Daughter.” She was not in 1967’s “The Dirty Dozen.” Stevens died in 1970.

Q. I have a question regarding the movie with the same story as “Shall We Dance,” which starred Richard Gere. I saw this story in a film that starred an Asian actor in the past.

A. The lovely movie with Gere and Jennifer Lopez is an Americanized version of a Japanese movie, also called in English “Shall We Dance?”

Q. OK, what happened to the NBC show “Undercovers”? Please don’t tell me that another black, successful show went down the drain.

A. Down it went. The NBC drama, which starred Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Rawas as married spies, was not successful enough for the network. TV Squad noted that it started with a little more than 8.5 million viewers and had dropped to 5.45 million viewers by the time it was canceled. Production ended after 13 episodes.

I leave it to you to decide whether the mass audience just did not accept a show starring an attractive, sophisticated African-American couple. It may just be that the show wasn’t that good. I tried it more than once and never got hooked.

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