Jerry Lewis hopes to go ‘Nutty’ on Broadway

Dear Ken: We heard that “The Nutty Professor” is going to Broadway. If so, when will it premiere?

Jerry Lewis, who wrote, directed and starred in the original “Nutty Professor” in 1963, has been working on a Broadway musical version for a couple of years (with a score by Marvin Hamlisch). He would love to have it on the Great White Way before the end of this year. Born Joseph Levitch in Newark, N.J., Lewis, 85, has five sons, a daughter and a son that is deceased. As for remakes, John Travolta is interested in updating Lewis’s 1965  film “The Family Jewels.”

Dear Ken: I am enjoying reruns of “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” and seeing lots of old character actors. How many episodes were there in the series?

It began as a 30-minute anthology series titled “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” It ran from 1955 until 1962 when it became an hour show and was retitled “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” and ran for three more seasons. Over its 10-year span, there were 363 episodes. While the master of suspense, who made cameo appearances in his movies, served as host of the TV show, he only made a cameo in one episode.  

Dear Ken: Who played Mr. Haney on the 1960s sitcom “Green Acres”?

That was gravelly-voiced, Alabama native Pat Buttram, most famous as a movie and TV sidekick for cowboy star Gene Autry. The son of a circuit-riding Methodist preacher, the comedian died of kidney failure at 78 years of age in 1994. The 1995 Disney animated “A Goofy Movie” was dedicated to Buttram, who provided his voice in several Disney films. He was buried in the cemetery at the Maxwell Chapel United Methodist Church in Haleyville, Ala. Mr. Haney did have a first name: Eunace.

Dear Ken: What’s the lowdown on Paula Patton, who co-stars with Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol”?

Patton, 36, grew up in Los Angeles near the 20th Century Fox lot, the daughter of a schoolteacher mother and lawyer dad. A movie fan from a young age, she studied film

at the University of Southern California in a summer program which led to a three-month assignment making documentaries for PBS. She later took acting lessons and since 2005 has starred in the films “Hitch,” “Idlewild,” “Swing Vote,” “Déjà Vu” and “Jumping the Broom.” Patton is wed to songwriter-singer Robin Thicke, the son of Alan Thicke and Gloria Loring, and the couple has a baby son.

If you have a trivia question about actors, singers, movies, TV shows or pop culture, e-mail your query to Ken Beck at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it