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TV Q&A: Here’s why you don’t see O’Dell on ‘ET’

Nine-year run on entertainment news show comes to end

By Rich Heldenfels, Tribune News Service
Published: January 3, 2020, 6:00am

You have questions. I have some answers.

What happened to Nancy O’Dell on “Entertainment Tonight”? She hasn’t been on for several weeks.

More like several months. In August, O’Dell announced she was leaving “ET” after nine years with the show. In a statement quoted by EW.com at the time, O’Dell said in part, “Not long ago, a dear friend told me to make a life list, writing down on one side career milestones, and on the other side, what I still want to accomplish. … As I take on that list of things still to come, it means leaving this position, but it does not mean I am leaving the genre.” (O’Dell also worked on “Access Hollywood” before joining “ET.”) She continued: “I’ll be back and it won’t be long. I’m going to enjoy some time off with the most wonderful gal in my life, my daughter, because they grow up way too fast. She is always my priority and then I’ll focus on my new project.”

Are these folks related: Barbara Billingsley of “Leave It to Beaver,” Jennifer Billingsley of the movie “White Lightning” and Peter Billingsley of “A Christmas Story”? I’ve been curious about this for years.

I cannot find any connection between Jennifer Billingsley and the other two actors. There is a connection, albeit a brief one, between Barbara and Peter Billingsley. As the Turner Classic Movies website explains it, Barbara’s first husband, Glenn Billingsley, “provided her with her surname as well as two sons, before their marriage ended in 1947 … (and) a familial connection to future child star and director Peter Billingsley, whose mother, Gail, was her first husband’s cousin.”

Whatever happened to “I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster”? It was great. John Astin was Dickens and Marty Ingels (I think) was Fenster. What happened to him, by the way?

The comedy about two construction workers lasted just the 1962-63 season on ABC, but it was good. I still have some of its gags stuck in my head. Astin would go on to greater fame a year later as Gomez on “The Addams Family” and a long career as a character actor. The colorful, raspy-voiced Ingels continued as an actor and talent agent. But when he died in 2015, the Los Angeles Times said his long marriage to actress Shirley Jones made him “best known as half of what many thought to be one of Hollywood’s oddest couples.” A DVD set of selected episodes from “I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster” came out several years ago.

I saw a film many years ago, starring William H. Macy. I believe it was on TV but cannot locate it on standard websites such as IMDB. In the film’s story, he memorably plays a gay (rural?) policeman who falls in love with a man who is also in some kind of law enforcement. The sentiment is not returned. If my memory is not playing tricks on me, can you tell me the name of this film?

That would be “Happy, Texas,” a 1999 comedy starring Steve Zahn and Jeremy Northam as escaped convicts who, though straight, pose as the gay operators of a small-town beauty pageant. William H. Macy plays the local sheriff who falls for Northam’s character. But the cons are attracted to two women in town, played by Illeana Douglas and Ally Walker. The movie is available digitally and on DVD.

Why did the DuMont TV network cease and disappear?

The DuMont network was one of TV’s earliest and most remarkable. As I said in my book “Television’s Greatest Year: 1954,” it was home to the first network TV soap opera, the first live prime-time telecasts of the NFL, the first “Honeymooners” sketches, and the first hit outer-space serial, “Captain Video.” Decades before the arrival of Fox, DuMont was TV’s “fourth network” opposite NBC, CBS and ABC. But it was effectively over in 1955. Unlike competitors, it did not have a radio network to draw on for talent. It did not have deep pockets. Allen DuMont, who founded the network, made his money from selling TV sets and suffered as cheaper sets became available Legal restrictions kept it from owning as many stations as the other networks, and competition denied it strong affiliates. Even its successes could prove elusive, with popular stars moving to the bigger networks. As inventive as it could be on the air, it faced far too many problems off the air to survive.

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