NO PAIN, NO GAIN

Your March 31 cover states that Cybill Shepherd can still be “cranky” about history. In my opinion, you’ve done Cybill an injustice by summing up her feelings about the past with such a seemingly sexist and derogatory statement.

I will venture that most women who have survived the injustices of the predominantly male-driven entertainment industry would side with Cybill. Forgive, but at the risk of losing your sanity and career goals, don’t ever forget.

Cybill hasn’t forgotten the pain and, in my opinion, it has helped to make her the successful actress-executive she is today.

PATRICIA SPELLMAN

Van Nuys

So Cybill Shepherd and Christine Baranski aren’t best friends in “real life” (“It’s Payback Time,” by Hilary de Vries). So what? It doesn’t necessarily follow that they are feuding.

When will entertainment writers disabuse themselves of the notion that the only way actors can give a convincing performance as friends is by actually being friends? Maybe Shepherd and Baranski give such convincing performances because they are both talented actors--or is that too much to believe?

ELLEN DIAMOND

Newport Beach

I thought Cybill Shepherd’s first comeback, her arrival on series television, was not on “Moonlighting” but on the 1983-84 series “The Yellow Rose.”

SCOT BOLAND

Los Angeles

THIS ONE’S FOR YOU

Having achieved new visibility as a star of TV ads for defeated ballot propositions, Charlton Heston now seems intent on establishing himself as a rewriter of television commercials (Film Clips, March 31). In the wake of Heston’s commercial for Bud Light, he’s working hard to distance himself from the ranks of the alcohol pitchmen he now joins (Bob Uecker, Spuds McKenzie), bragging about his salary and his creative input into the commercial.

And in detailing his creative process, even as Heston quotes Lord Olivier’s advice not to tell stories in which you appear to be boasting, he’s breaking the advice, explaining how the original dialogue was “hideous” and how he, Charlton Heston, saved it. It’s hideous, apparently, for an actor to talk about how he really directed a scene, but no problem to talk about how he really rewrote it.

But why complain? The more work Heston gets, the less likely he’ll have time to express his tired reactionary views in places like Calendar’s letters section. And in Heston’s own words (or were they actually written for him?), that’s something not even a lawyer could argue with.

BRIAN NELSON

Van Nuys

Charlton Heston says that, in his beer commercial, “I allowed the audience to laugh at me.” Don’t worry, Chuck, we often snuck in snickers without permission. (Remember “Secret of the Incas”?)

And sorry to play the race card, but that chariot donnybrook was directed by Andrew “Bondy” Marton, not Yak Canutt.

AL HIX

Hollywood