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Sunday, March 24, 2013

Retroality's "Reimagine That!" podcast, episode 18! ............................................................ Chris Mann's special guest, Morgan Brittany (part 2 of 2), spills on her "Dallas" co-stars (and the TNT reboot), surviving Hollywood as a child actor and reinventing herself yet again as a Politichick; also: Chris's '90s Madonna-toxic cautionary dream!

Click here to listen to the podcast!
In the conclusion of her two-part exclusiveRetroality.TVinterview, child star-turned-Dallasdiva Morgan Brittany tells "Reimagine That!" host Chris Mann how her hardships as a child actress and her family's breadwinner shaped her as a woman who not only would survive Hollywood (including Dallas' ill-fated dream season) but also hold her own as a conservative political columnist andhost. And she's juggled multiple careers while raising two children with longtime husband and stuntman Jack Gill. Their son, Cody, is a musician and their daughter, Katie, is an actress (most recently seen playing Christie Brinkley's daughter in NBC's Parks and Recreation).

After landing her first TV role in 1959 in an episode of The Twilight Zone, the blue-eyed brunette Morgan -- under her birth name, Suzanne Cupito -- soon was cast as a guest star in several primetime series , including Sea Hunt, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, The Outer Limits, My Three Sons, The Andy Griffith Show and two additional episodes of The Twilight Zone. On the silver screen, her child star launched simultaneously thanks to her role as "Baby" June alongside Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood in Gypsy. This role led to casting in Hitchcock's The Birds and the Lucille Ball-Henry Fonda film Yours, Mine and Ours.

But her young life was anything but an easy-breezy dream. "I was basically just a doll that was trotted out to make money and then put away at night," Morgan recalls, stressing that she did not have a support system growing up. "I don't want my kids to feel that way. I want them to know that no matter what happens, I'm there. I had to learn to make it on my own. I knew that if I fell, nobody would be there to help me up."



After reinventing herself as Morgan Brittany, the actress enjoyed a career resurgence as ABC's Charlie's Angels ushered in a new era of big-haired glamour girls. Soon, she parlayed her resemblance to Gone with the Wind star Vivien Leigh into newfound fame by playing the iconic actress in the 1976 film Gable and Lombard and again in the 1980 telefilm The Scarlett O'Hara War. Shortly following the made-for-TV portrayal -- and the cult fave movie-of-the-week The Initiation of Sarah with "the other Morgan," Ms. Fairchild -- the dark-haired vixen landed the role of Dallas' original Queen of Mean, Katherine Wentworth.

In this segment of her interview, she shares her remembrances of the late Larry Hagman, Joan Collins (with whom she worked on the ABC telefilm The Wild Women of Chastity Gulch), Victoria Principal, Linda Gray and killing off Patrick Duffy's character in the series' controversial "dream season." And she shares her thoughts about how TNT's revival of the CBS series should keep moving forward as the show sets up a cliffhanger leading into a yet-to-be-greenlit third season. (Editor's note: *Cough cough* Bring back Katherine Wentworth! *cough cough*).

In the meantime, Morgan (@MorganBrittany4 on Twitter) tells us how she stays busy working as a conservative columnist and an on-camera commentator/host for Politichicks.TV. And she reveals that she's even been approached to run for office!

Finally, in our "Reawakenings" segment, "Reimagine That!" dream analyst Yvonne Ryba interprets Chris's freaky, circa 1993 dream about being injected with "instant death!" (!) by the queen of reinvention and a master of the fame game, Madonna -- envisioned here as a villainess in the back of a limo on his college campus -- as he embarked on his own odyssey to Hollywood after wrapping his journalism studies at The University of Tulsa. (Hey, we guess it beats being mowed down by a blonde-wig-clad Katherine Wentworth!)

Host: Chris Mann

Announcer: Linda Kay

Created by: Chris Mann

Producers: Linda Kay, Chris Mann

Copyright 2013 by Chris Mann/Retroality.TV (http://Retroality.TV)