who I've heard wasn't much of a singer, but could dance and act and was easy enough on the eyes...
Of course, if you were around in the 80s, you might also remember Michael Damian...
He played Danny on The Young and the Restless, a soap opera my father was oddly obsessed with, and was a guest star on The Facts of Life, an 80s era sitcom loved by many people my age...
Soap operas were loaded with would be singers...
Jack Wagner played Frisco Jones on General Hospital and Peter on Melrose Place. He also had a hit song in 1984. Every time I hear it, it takes me back to 7th grade.
And speaking of The Facts of Life, did you know that Lisa Whelchel (aka Blair Warner) was also a singer?
Yikes.
Of course, perhaps the most popular triple threat of the 1980s was Janet Jackson...
She played Penny on Good Times...
and Charlene on Diff'rent Strokes...
And then went on to make big bank as a singer!
Whitney Houston rather unsuccessfully tried to act in the early 90s and right before she died...
Kenny Rogers gave acting a go with a major motion picture and several made for TV films. He's also a well known photographer.
And finally, there's Tyra Banks who started out as a model, then tried to become a singer, a talk show host, and horror of all horrors, an author of teen lit!
There have been others who have tried to be two or three kinds of stars at a time. Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jennifer Lopez, Beverley Mitchell, Alicia Keys, Alanis Morrisette, Alyssa Milano and Scott Baio immediately come to mind.
We Americans love our stars who are double, triple, or in Tyra's case, quadruple threats. Or do we?
I think we like double, triple, or quadruple threats when the artist has the talent in all the areas needed to back up the threat.
ReplyDeleteLisa Whelchel is a bizarre individual. pre-Jessica Beagley (of Dr. Phil fame) she wrote a book in which she advocated putting a drop of hot sauce on a child's tongue for speaking inappropriately or lying. At least it was just a drop and not an entire mouthful, but still . . .
My mom heard her speak at a little church in a podunk town in central California when my mom was a kid and when ms. Whelchel was actually on "Facts of Life," and she said Ms. Whelchel was already bizarre even back in the day.
Jack Wagner is an interesting one to watch. Is the guitar just a prop? He puts far too much into his performance physically in comparison to what comes out sonically, if that makes sense. My mom has several DVDs that were converted from VHS tapes of various soap opera tapes. one has episodes of a soap called "Santa Barbara" which was from the 80's and maybe 90's. He played a character named Warren lockridge who was a world traveler and do-nothing who came back to his hometown and taught as a UCSB professor. (My mom got the tapes out when i enrolled in UCSB.) In the soap opera, he's a professor of a college class that doesn't seem to have a particular domain; it's just "college," just like second grade is second grade. Their teacher is "Professor Lockridge" just like my 2nd grade teacher was Sister Barbara. professor Lockridge lived in an apartment in the same building where the classroom was located, and if he didn't show up for class on a given day, the students would go pound on his door and wake him up. (Like THAT would really happen. If a professor fails to show, that's a free hour or however long the class is. Anyone who went searching for the professor would probably b killed.) the series actually took some footage from UCSB's campus, and the building where the class was supposedly held and where Warren Lockridge lived was an underused art department building.
I think Jack Wagner is on Solid Gold in that clip, which was famous for making its guest stars lip sync. I want to say Stevie Nicks was the only guest star they ever had who refused to lip sync.
ReplyDeleteI never watched "Santa Barbara" when it was on; I was a fan of "Guiding Light". However, when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Armenia, "Santa Barbara" was one of the most popular shows on TV! It was a prime time show and most people I knew who had a TV and electricity watched it religiously, even though it went off the air in the late 1980s!
I was a big fan of "The Facts of Life", especially in the earliest seasons. It jumped the shark in a big way, though... Not even George Clooney could save it. I always thought it was weird that Lisa Whelchel was this big Christian when on the show, she played a worldly snob. Apparently, Lisa's kids are musically talented. There's a YouTube clip that shows them playing music together.
I liked Jack Wagner on Melrose Place, but I fear he's totally messed up his face with excessive plastic surgery.
Speaking of Stevie Nicks, I really don't like her voice but I love "Landslide," and I only like it when she sings it. I don't think anyone else should sing it. I like the Dixie Chicks' political statements, but I don't think they should have recorded "Landslide." Natalie Maines just doesn't do anything for me.
ReplyDeleteI used to like the Dixie Chicks, but I kind of lost respect for them after that whole political debacle. I still like their music and didn't throw out their CDs, but I don't go to them for politics. I don't really like it when any entertainer uses their mic as a platform for politics, no matter what their views are.
ReplyDeleteI like Stevie Nicks and I love "Landslide". That's a very personal song for her, though, so it makes sense that she does it better than anyone. I prefer Stevie with Fleetwood Mac, but I like some of her solo stuff too.