Q: With the planned spinoff of “Young Sheldon,” is there any chance Annie Potts will be on the show? I think she is great as Meemaw.
A: Lots of folks have been wondering about the cast on “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage,” the sequel to “Young Sheldon” focusing on Sheldon’s older brother and his wife, and how much it will overlap with “Young Sheldon” and “The Big Bang Theory.” At the recent Television Critics Association summer event, TVLine reported that Potts, Zoe Perry (who plays Mary Cooper) and Raegan Revord (Missy Cooper) are all set as guest stars — Potts and Perry in the first episode, Revord in the second. The series premieres Oct. 17.
Q: My nephew is a fan of old boxing movies but has never seen “The Great White Hope” (1970) with James Earl Jones, “The Harder They Fall’ (1956) with Humphrey Bogart and “Monkey on My Back” (1957) with Cameron Mitchell. Is it possible to purchase them on DVD?
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A: I found all three for sale on DVD on Amazon.com. “The Harder They Fall,” by the way, is one of my favorites.
Q: Can you help with what movie had the song “I Wish I Was in Love Again”? The only part of the song I remember is “the conversation with the flying plates.”
A: Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland perform the song (actually “I Wish I Were in Love Again”) in 1948’s “Words and Music,” a movie musical loosely about the legendary Broadway team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. (Rooney plays Hart, Tom Drake is Rodgers, and Garland plays herself.) The song is originally from the 1937 Rodgers and Hart musical “Babes in Arms”; the show inspired a 1939 movie of the same name, also with Rooney and Garland, but that movie did not include “I Wish I Were in Love Again.”
Q: Gigi Edgley of “Rescue: Special Ops” looks so much like the woman who played Adrian Monk’s assistant Natalie that they must be twins. Are they, or is it the same actress in both series?
A: Neither. Traylor Howard, who played Natalie on “Monk,” is not related to Edgley from the Australian series “Rescue: Special Ops.”
Q: My friends and I really like the original “The Parent Trap” with Hayley Mills. The newer one doesn’t hold a candle to it. We don’t stream, so where do we find this?
A: There are DVD and Bluray releases of the 1961 film with Mills as twins who, after a long separation, meet again and plot to reunite their divorced parents (Brian Keith and Maureen O’Hara). If you have a friend who does stream, it’s also on Disney+.
The newer version you refer to is, of course, the 1998 film “The Parent Trap” starring Lindsay Lohan as the twins and Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson as the parents. But there were also three made for-TV movies — “The Parent Trap II,” “Parent Trap III” and “Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon” — in the 1980s, each including Mills.
Do you have a question or comment about entertainment past, present and future? Write to Rich Heldenfels, P.O. Box 417, Mogadore, OH 44260, or brenfels@gmail.com.
