Sandy Duncan

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February 20, 1946

Henderson, TX

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Considered an "oddball" in her Texas hometown because she wanted to be an actress, Sandy Duncan refused to be dissuaded, and headed for New York fresh out of Lon Morris College. A bit too petite to stand out in the dancing chorus, Duncan was eventually being spotlighted in second-lead roles. After working in the 1968 rock musical Your Own Thing, Duncan was engaged to play Maizie, the soubrette character in the venerable musical The Boy Friend. This 1969 production was supposed to be a vehicle for Laugh-In alumnus Judy Carne, but all the critical plaudits went to Duncan. This triumph, followed by a starring stint in the Disney film The Million Dollar Duck and a few well-circulated TV commercial appearances, encouraged CBS programming chief Fred Silverman to seek out a situation comedy for Duncan. Melba Moore had been slated to star in Funny Face, the weekly saga of a struggling actress, but when the series debuted in 1971 Moore was out and Sandy Duncan was in. The actress was lauded to the rooftops as the biggest "new find" of the season, but Duncan began suffering headaches on the set--which she discovered were caused by a tumor on the optic nerve. Duncan underwent a long and delicate operation, which threatened to end not only her career but her life. Fortunately the operation was a success, even though she permanently lost the sight in one eye. Having left the airwaves in December of 1971, Funny Face re-emerged in the fall of 1972 as The Sandy Duncan Show. Network in-fighting and a bad time-slot caused this version to fail, but Duncan survived as a guest-star on other people's programs, an actress in such films as The Cat From Outer Space (1978), a stage headliner, and a commercial spokesperson. Sandy Duncan returned to the weekly-sitcom grind in 1987 in The Hogan Family, in which she moved in with her widowed brother and inherited a sizeable family of multi-aged children.

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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