Older Dataloungers...Can anyone explain why Dinah Manoff had a career? And oh Jesus, the laugh track...

Dinah won a well deserved Tony but ended up doing crappy tv. The real question is why didn't she have a better career. Poor management? Bad choices? Lack of ambition, maybe. But not lack of talent.

How many of her early opportunities came as a result of being Lee Grant’s daughter?

Soap studs Michael Sabatino and Christopher Rich...yum!

Empty Nest was unwatchable. I don't blame her, though.

I liked I'm a Big Girl Now with Danny Thomas and Marty Short.

She was good, but almost always in bad shows, or at least given bad material.

No, dear one. I cannot.

Unless, considering the soul-sucking experience of only a few moments of that thing, there is a malevolent horcrux hidden inside for access by Templar aliens.

Nepo!

I like her scene in Ordinary People, she was far better than Elizabeth McGovern. She was great as the neurotic Carol Weston on Empty Nest. Marty from Grease goes without saying.

Dinah admitted that she went into acting because she was living 24/7 on Malibu Beach doing drugs and partying and she knew she had to clean up her life.

It's so bad, OP, I have to refrain from "oh, dearing" the lack of an opening parenthetic for your ejaculative invocation and the missing comma for the inferred direct address in the same phrase.

That's how bad it is.

I am 76 years and am at a loss. You're on your own

She was amazing on Soap. Her early comedic turns with acidic one liners, were a scream. When she has her monologue about her father rejecting her on the night her sister died, she pulled the character together in spectacular fashion.

R12,

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

Leave Dinah alone! She has actual talent.

As a huge Soap fan, I second R12's suggestion that she was excellent as the bratty mobster's daughter you end up caring about. That monologue, and her death scene, still choke me up when I rewatch them today.

Some people are just nepo babies, and some people inherit their parent's formidable talent.

Digressions:

Has anyone heard from Susan Harris recently? She's 84 and still with us.

Why didn't Susan et. al. approach Lee Grant about playing Mary Campbell on Soap, since they had done Fay with her two years before? Cathryn Damon was wonderful, but they had a hard time getting to her. There were three Soap pilots with three different Marys. They must have approached Lee.

Here is a roundup of the Danny and Elaine scenes from Soap.

The sister monologue is the first up.

Oh ignore R15. I didn't realize it had that shitty music.

Here is the monologue:

And her death scene:

She was my favorite thing about “Empty Nest”. I thought she was quite funny.

She was one of the only actors in “Grease” who was close to high school age.

I've seen clips of her singing on Broadway in Leader of the Pack. I thought she was quite enjoyable.

That looks like a renovated version of the Jeffersons' apartment.

Dinah Manoff was terrific! Loved her as Marty in Grease and she was the best thing about Empty Nest. I actually think it's too bad she retired from acting years ago as I think she definitely could have had an even better career as she aged. I might be one of the few Dinah fans who is not a fan of her mother, who I find hammy and over the top in everything.

[quote] Jerry Hall was with Rupert Murdoch!

No she wasn’t.