Winnipeg Free Press

Fan wants city-born actress to get star on Walk of Fame

Morley Walker

It worked for Dauphin's Frances Bay, and now there's a petition afoot to get Winnipeg-born actress Belinda Montgomery installed on Canada's Walk of Fame.

Isabelle Pereira, a Toronto web designer and translator, might be the world's biggest fan of Montgomery, who had a busy career as a supporting actor in the '70s and '80s.

Her claims to fame were playing Don Johnson's ex-wife in the Miami Vice TV series and Doogie's mother on Doogie Howser M.D.

Now 57, she is a visual artist in Los Angeles.

Pereira has started a petition at petitiononline.com to get the Montgomery ball rolling, just as Bay's Winnipeg cousin, Anrea Zaslov, did last year for Bay.

She was delighted to see that signature No. 37 is from the actress Angela Lansbury.

"I have followed Ms. Montgomery's career for over 30 years," Pereira, 44, said in an e-mail. "She is my hero."

Pereira caught the Montgomery bug when the actress played Dr. Elizabeth Merrill in the 1970s TV series Man from Atlantis.

"I know it wasn't much of a hit in the U.S., but it was immensely popular in my native Brazil, where I was living at the time.

Pereira says Montgomery left Winnipeg at age 11 when her folks moved to England for two years before settling in Toronto.

Montgomery's father was the CBC actor Cecil Montgomery, and her brother, Lee H., was the former child actor.

Zaslov, a public relations professional, has agreed to help Pereira in ramping up the Montgomery publicity machine.

"Isn't that lovely?" Pereira says. "What a marvellous spin-off effect of one actress helping another."

The L.A.-based Bay, 89, started her stage career as a teenager in Winnipeg before moving on to supporting screen roles with Adam Sandler and Jerry Seinfeld.

In her early days, she was in a play at the Dominion Drama Festival in London, Ont., with pre-politicians Joe Zuken and Saul Cherniack.

She will be formally inducted into the Walk of Fame in September.


morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca