TICKLED PINK

Can a brunette comedian forgive her blond best friend for stealing the show? Eventually.

Heading for New York from Miami after her mother’s death from cancer, teenaged Mindy Solomon hopes to make it big on Broadway—but changes plans after two men who were supposed to catch her during a dance routine . . . didn’t. The injuries force her to hang up her tap shoes and turn to comedy, delighted to find that she has a gift for making people laugh. Meanwhile, beautiful Ursula Duran, illegitimate daughter of a self-absorbed shrew who neglected her, struggles to find work as a model and suddenly skyrockets to fame when her heretofore-indifferent mother, Eva, wakes up, smells the money—and appoints herself manager. She arrives on the scene just in time to rescue Ursula from the amorous designs of Brandon Holmes, former advertising exec turned TV honcho. Yes, he’s Ursula’s long-lost father . . . just one of many unpleasant surprises life has in store for both women. Mindy’s road to success is equally bumpy, but guest appearances on David Letterman and other shows get her noticed, and soon she’s tapped for the lead in a new sitcom. Unfortunately, loathsome studio head Leonard Felk thinks that blonds are better—and Ursula’s mother Eva has been hanging around with him, displaying her enormous, brand-new boobs and other expensive plastic surgery. Mindy is aghast to discover that she’s been demoted to writer and that Ursula will star. She knows her friend can’t act—but she can’t help being wildly jealous. Mindy ends up in bed with Ursula’s ex-husband, a comedian—and gets pregnant. Understandably, she can’t bring herself to tell Ursula—and then a car accident puts her former friend into a coma. Stricken with guilt, Mindy makes a bedside confession, and . . . Ursula wakes up.

A witty, droll foray into fiction for Rudner (Naked Beneath My Clothes, 1992).