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August 2, 1996
Dear Mr. Showbiz, Could you tell me more about this young actress? Is this her first role in a movie? And please, tell me . . . is that her real name? Ray Garton
Dear Ray, Angel was discovered by top modelling agent Eileen Ford when she was just sixteen years old. In no time, she had left her hometown of London, England, for New York--and the covers of Vogue and Cosmopolitan. Angel, who is now thirty-three, made her feature-film debut as a kinky cosmonaut in the 1985 John Landis comedy Spies Like Us. She went on to small roles in such duds as Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992) with Sly Stallone , and the tepid 1994 comedy Sleep With Me. If you want to see Angel's one leading role, search the racks of your local video store for the 1991 erotic thriller, Killer Instinct (a.k.a. Homicidal Impulse). If you see that film, we think you'll agree that television has been much kinder to Vanessa Angel. She's logged guest appearances on Murder, She Wrote and Melrose Place, and for one season, she enjoyed the recurring role of Peggy Elliot on NBC's Reasonable Doubts. But, Ray, your favorite Angel is best-known as Lisa in Weird Science, the USA Network series based on John Hughes' strange 1985 film of the same name. Weird Science is now in its third season. Angel plays the computer-created "ultimate woman," who keeps those two teenage nerds out of trouble. And yes, Ray, Vanessa Angel is her real name. She once considered changing it, so that people like you wouldn't think she was a porn star, but she decided to keep it in the end. She did, however, have an epiphany while she was filming Kingpin. The film, says Angel, "made me realize how much I want to do roles where the beauty factor is very much a sideline." Now there's a girl with a head on her shoulders. Mr. Showbiz
July 31, 1996
Dear Mr. Showbiz, Elaine
Dear Elaine, But as you know, Elaine, the story has a happy ending. You see, halfway through Dutton's first prison stay, a friend sent him an anthology of black playwrights, and the stories awakened a latent interest in acting. Once the troubled youth had found something to believe in, his life began a rather dramatic turn-around. Dutton read more plays, and organized a prison theater troupe. After he left prison for good in 1976, Dutton got a degree in drama from Baltimore's Towson State University, then went on to earn a master's degree from Yale. Since then, he has put all that training to good use, delivering well-reviewed performances in Broadway's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Blues (1985) and The Piano Lesson (1990), in the films Alien 3 (1992) and Menace II Society (1993), and on the Fox-TV series Roc (1991-94). In A Time To Kill, Dutton appears--on the right side of the law--as a small-town sheriff. Mr. Showbiz
July 29, 1996
Dear Mr. Showbiz, Lisa
Dear Lisa, There's one final twist to the story: producer-biographer Robert Slatzer, who claims he was briefly married to Marilyn Monroe in 1952, pledged to pick up where DiMaggio left off. Slatzer even vowed that he would amend his will to make sure that Marilyn's crypt had flowers in perpetuity. It didn't happen. When Slatzer failed to pay his bill, the florist finally cancelled the order. That was back in 1983. But with more than ten thousand visitors annually, many of them bearing gifts, Marilyn's crypt is never without floral decoration. Mr. Showbiz DiMaggio Photo: © 1996 Archive Photos |
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