WISH-CRAFT: YOU, ME, AND DUPREE

At the end of August, Alan Thicke will be appearing on the soap opera 'The Bold & The Beautiful' as a talk show host.

As he hosted talk shows in the past, it's pozzble, jus' pozzble, that Thicke will be appearing as a member of the League of Themselves.

But I'd like to see him show up as Dennis Dupree, the talk show host he played in the short-lived NBC sitcom 'Hope & Gloria'.

Dupree worked for a local affiliate in Pennsylvania on that show, but that shouldn't prevent him from being seen now in a Los Angeles market (where 'B&B' takes place). The TV business - even in TV Land - is extremely precarious; and its vagabond players (both in front of the camera and behind the scenes) move from market to market, wherever the work is.

The best I can hope for is that we'll never know the name of Alan Thicke's character, so that we can just make the assumption that he's Dennis Dupree. But the chances for that will be slim - talk show hosts usually have the show named after them. And whoever is going to show up on the program - one of the Forresters, no doubt, to tout the fall fashions, - I'm sure there will be quite a publicity buildup within the show in which the character's name will be invoked.

I remember reading once of talk that Dennis Dupree might be spun off to his own show. But that was before 'Hope & Gloria' was canceled, of course. And even then it could have been just a rumor planted by a concerned party hoping to generate some buzz for the idea.

Gee.... who could that have been.....?

BCnU!
Tele-Toby