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Topic: Betty Buckley

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Betty Lynn Buckley (born July 3, 1947) is an American theater, film and television actress and singer.

Betty Lynn Buckley was born in Big Spring, Texas and raised in Fort Worth, the daughter of Betty Bob (née Diltz), a dancer and journalist, and Ernest Lynn Buckley, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force and former dean of engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. She is the eldest of their four children. She has three brothers—Norman Buckley is a film editor and TV director. While a student at Texas Christian University (TCU), she was crowned "Miss Fort Worth" in 1966 and was runner-up in the Miss Texas competition. Buckley was then invited to perform at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, and it was there that she was spotted by a talent scout. After returning to TCU to earn her college degree, she toured Asia to visit soldiers wounded in the Vietnam War. After this, she worked for a time as a reporter for the Fort Worth newspaper, but went to New York City in 1969, where she landed the role of Martha Jefferson in 1776 her first day in town.

Buckley made her Broadway debut in 1969 in the musical 1776; she has been called "The Voice of Broadway" by New York magazine. Her rendition of "Memory" in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats established her reputation. She is perhaps best known for the 1977–81 TV dramedy Eight is Enough. She joined the show in its second season when the original star, Diana Hyland, died after the first four episodes of season one. Hyland's character (Joan Bradford) died, and Buckley was cast as the widower's new romantic interest, Sandra Sue Abbott (nicknamed Abby), who would become stepmother of the eight children to which the series' title refers.

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It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Betty Buckley."