Thursday, December 01, 2005

And I won't work for nobody but you

Like Mark, I was sorry to see last night that the actress Wendie Jo Sperber had died. Like most people, it seems, I remember her best as a supporting player on "Bosom Buddies"-certainly it's the work most often mentioned in the headlines of her various obituaries. I thought that series was underrated, and remembered only for giving Tom Hanks a breakthrough (Hanks gave an appropriately tasteful quote on her death). But it seems there are more than a few of us who remember it fondly.

She was also Michael J. Fox's sister in the "Back To The Future" films, and other films of, shall we say, varying success (two words: "Stewadress School") in the '80s. I remember feeling bad for her in those that seemed to use her only as a fat-girl punchline. From Bosom Buddies, I knew she had greater gifts.

And in the category of short-lived, seemingly forgotten TV series, I remember a sitcom she did on FOX in the late '80s. It had the unpromising title of "Women In Prison," but I remember it as being really quite funny. Who knows if it would hold up, but I'd kinda like to see it again.

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