Sandy Duncan

Short Biography

Sandra Kay "Sandy" Duncan (born February 20, 1946) is an American singer and actress of stage and television. Her more notable traits are her pixie cut blonde hairdo and her perky demeanor. Among her more prominent roles are the title role in the Broadway production of Peter Pan, and Sandy Hogan on the sitcom The Hogan Family.She was born in Henderson, Texas, and grew up in Tyler, Texas. In the fall of 1971, during her first season of the television series Funny Face, she was treated for a tumor behind her left eye, which damaged the optic nerve. She lost sight in the eye, but is still able to move it normally. She met singer-actor Bruce Scott in Your Own Thing, and from either 1968-72 or 1969-71 they were married. Her second marriage was to Dr. Thomas Calcaterra from 10 January 1973-79. Dr. Thomas Calcaterra is a head/neck oncologist who practices at UCLA Medical Center Division of Head and Neck Surgery and teaches surgery at UCLA Medical School. They met when Duncan had the tumor removed from behind her left eye. Since 21 July 1980 she has been married to Don Correia. They have sons Jeffrey (b. 1983) and Michael (b. 1984). "I gained 60 pounds with each baby—it`s just the way I do pregnancy" she said. In Taylorville, Illinois (about 30 miles southeast of Springfield, Illinois) a street was named "Sandy Duncan Drive" in her honor, due to the fact that her character, Sandy Stockton, from Funny Face and The Sandy Duncan Show was from Taylorville, Illinois.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_DuncanSandy DuncanActive - 1971 - 2001 | Born - Feb 20, 1946 in Henderson, TX | Genres - Children's/Family, Comedy, FantasyBiography by Hal EricksonConsidered an "oddball" in her Texas hometown because she wanted to be an actress, Sandy Duncan refused to be dissuaded, and headed for New York fresh out of Lon Morris College. A bit too petite to stand out in the dancing chorus, Duncan was eventually being spotlighted in second-lead roles. After working in the 1968 rock musical Your Own Thing, Duncan was engaged to play Maizie, the soubrette character in the venerable musical The Boy Friend. This 1969 production was supposed to be a vehicle for Laugh-In alumnus Judy Carne, but all the critical plaudits went to Duncan. This triumph, followed by a starring stint in the Disney film The Million Dollar Duck and a few well-circulated TV commercial appearances, encouraged CBS programming chief Fred Silverman to seek out a situation comedy for Duncan. Melba Moore had been slated to star in Funny Face, the weekly saga of a struggling actress, but when the series debuted in 1971 Moore was out and Sandy Duncan was in. The actress was lauded to the rooftops as the biggest "new find" of the season, but Duncan began suffering headaches on the set--which she discovered were caused by a tumor on the optic nerve. Duncan underwent a long and delicate operation, which threatened to end not only her career but her life. Fortunately the operation was a success, even though she permanently lost the sight in one eye. Having left the airwaves in December of 1971, Funny Face re-emerged in the fall of 1972 as The Sandy Duncan Show. Network in-fighting and a bad time-slot caused this version to fail, but Duncan survived as a guest-star on other people's programs, an actress in such films as The Cat From Outer Space (1978), a stage headliner, and a commercial spokesperson. Sandy Duncan returned to the weekly-sitcom grind in 1987 in The Hogan Family, in which she moved in with her widowed brother and inherited a sizeable family of multi-aged children.