Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Jane Curtin returns to the tube tonight (Feb. 7), joining the cast of "Unforgettable" as an acerbic and demanding forensic pathologist who teaches romantic poetry on the side. It's a part the "Saturday Night Live," "Kate & Allie" and "3rd Rock from the Sun" television favorite tells us came "out of left field. My agent called and said, 'You have an offer to become a regular character on a procedural cop show that started in September.' It was such a great idea. Why not? It's something I've never done, and I do like a challenge, so I'm doing it."

She hasn't asked why creators of the Poppy Montgomery crime drama thought of her for the part — and doesn't plan to do so. She knows better than that, she explains. "When I was first starting in the business, I got a commercial, and I wondered, 'God, why did they pick me?'" Then she found herself sitting next to the product manager on a plane ride, so she asked him, she recalls. "And he said, 'Your face was big enough to superimpose a drain on.'"

Curtin surmises that the "Unforgettable" series team was probably looking for her to bring some humor and lightness to her character, the tough and brilliant inspector, Joanne Webster.

She's been working with the same technical advisor who helped Leslie Hendrix learn about the medical examiner's work for "Law & Order," Curtin lets us know. And that's big, because "she set the standard for playing a medical examiner. No one's done it better than she." There are certainly an abundance of medical examiners on television — Dana Delany, Robert David Hall and David McCallum, to name just three. Curtin is well aware of that. Or, as she puts it, "Anybody who is anybody is a medical examiner these days."

Naturally, she says, "You wonder how you're going to differentiate this particular medical examiner. It's not as if people who work in that end of medicine are lacking a sense of humor.

There are times when you use it to relieve the stress. These human beings deal with a lot of stuff every day, and sometimes the only thing you can do is quote Monty Python lines."

THE WRITE STUFF: Actor and comic Richard Belzer's long-time close friendship with Jerry Lewis has resulted in Belzer occasionally speaking out on behalf of the comedy great, as he did last year when Jerry was unceremoniously dumped from the Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon into which he'd poured his efforts for more than 45 years. Belzer's high regard for Lewis also led to his having a tattoo of Lewis emblazoned on his shoulder. So it follows that Belzer, who's authored crime novels and other works, would turn his writing energies toward Lewis. And he is, with a new biography.

"Belzer will tell Lewis' whole story for the first time, through archival material and one-on-one conversations with Lewis," according to Publisher's Lunch, the newsletter of Publisher's Weekly. Belzer's Weinstein Books homage will cover Lewis' entire career, his "technical genius and innovation in filmmaking," and his Muscular Dystrophy Association.

You may recall that Lewis was feted by dozens of comedy names, including Belzer, this past December in the feature-length "Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis" Encore original documentary. In conjunction with the movie, there was also a Lewis appreciation party held by Starz in Hollywood and attended by Hollywood stars.

Good for Lewis' friends and supporters that they've turned this period of the 85-year-old entertainer's career into a time of celebration rather than humiliation.

AUDITORY PROCESSING: Filmmaker Justin Paul Miller is in preproduction on his "The Sound and the Shadow" thriller — which sounds like something that fans of such suspense films as "Blowup" and "The Conversation" might be interested in. "The Sound and the Shadow" has to do with a sound engineer who discovers clues to a girl's disappearance on his recording machine.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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