Dear Ken: Please share some information on Melissa McCarthy, the star of “Mike & Molly.”

McCarthy, 41, was born in Plainfield, Ill., and grew up on a farm in a large, Irish-Catholic family. Before her current role, which won her an Emmy Award last year, she played Sookie St. James on “Gilmore Girls” and was in the movies “Bridesmaids,” “Life as We Know It,” “The Nines” and “The Back-up Plan.” She and her husband, actor Ben Falcone, have two daughters, ages 4 and 1. She will star later this year in the film “This Is Forty” and is slated to make two more movies, “ID Theft” and “Tammy.” The actress, who plays a schoolteacher on the show, says she often hears from fans about how the show seems to be about real people: “I get a lot of comments that they love, that, you know, that ‘I’m a teacher’ or ‘I have a sister that is a teacher. You look like a teacher. You dress like a teacher.’ I’ve always had a thing where I hate where somebody is talking about, ‘I can’t pay the rent.‘ I’m like, ‘You have a $3,000 handbag.’ We try to just stay real to the characters. They do such a great job . . . writing this kind of great little story and luckily we get to stay true to it.”

Dear Ken: I remember a TV series from the early 1960s about two guys who were skydivers? What was the name of that show and who were the stars?

That was the 1961-1962 series “Ripcord,” which ran for 72 episodes and starred Larry Pennell as Ted McKeever and Ken Curtis as Jim Buckley. Pennell later had a recurring role on "The Beverly Hillbillies" as Dash Riprock and starred on “Lassie” from 1972 to 1974. The actor turns 84 on Feb. 21 and was in a horror film, “The Passing,” last year. Ken Curtis went on in 1964 to join the cast of “Gunsmoke” as Festus Haggen. He died in 1991 at the age of 74.

Dear Ken: Didn’t Gregory Peck make a movie somewhere in Middle Tennessee? If so, when and where?

That was the 1970 film “I Walk the Line,” directed by John Frankenheimer, about a middle-aged sheriff who falls head over heels for the teenage daughter of a moonshiner . It was filmed in 1969 in the Gainesboro and Cookeville areas as well as at Center Hill Lake. The movie also starred Tuesday Weld, Charles Durning, Ralph Meeker and Estelle Parsons and featured the voice of Johnny Cash singing the soundtrack. A number of Gainesboro residents were used as extras in the film.   

Dear Ken: Who performs the theme song for the TV show “The Big Bang Theory”?

The song, titled “The History of Everything,“ is performed by Canadian alt-rock band Barenaked Lades. The tune was written by Ed Robertson, the group’s lead singer and guitarist. By the way, three of the actors in the series, Johnny Galecki, Sara Gilbert and Laurie Metcalf, were also co-stars on the TV series “Roseanne.”

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