Playing Nancy Drew: Sleuth and Consequences

Season 1 is available on DVD, and Season 2 will be released this week. (The show's format devoted some episodes to the Boys -- Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson -- some to Nancy, and some to the three of them adventuring together.) Martin went on to play Fallon on "Dynasty" in the '80s, and then -- uh, well -- did we mention that she's having a really full year? Bless her "Soupernatural" soul.

There's actually another thrice-named actress who got a shot at the Nancy Drew role on the '70s series: Janet Louise Johnson replaced Martin during the final season, appearing on four episodes before the show went off the air in early 1979.

The actress, who was still in her teens when she got the job, swears that she used her middle name for Screen Actors Guild membership reasons (to differentiate herself from another Janet Johnson) -- and not because producers were hoping that viewers wouldn't notice the switcheroo with Pamela Sue Martin. Johnson came from a modeling background, and despite her brief stint on the series, "it gave me confidence to pursue acting," she says. (She later changed her name to Janet Julian.)

"These amazing actors were doing the show -- Joseph Cotten, Ray Milland, William Schallert. What an opportunity it was to work side by side with these people."

Julian describes her subsequent career as "mostly B movies," and she says she gave up the business 11 years ago to raise a family. Professional high points, she says, include the 1990 film "King of New York" with Christopher Walken, and the early-'90s cable series "Swamp Thing" -- which she considers her "best work."

Nancy Drew returned to television in 1995 for 13 episodes of a syndicated Canadian series featuring an actress, Tracy Ryan, who has scarcely been heard from since. Let's face facts, though; there are two words that should never, ever appear anywhere even close to an actor's résumé: "syndicated" and "Canadian."

ABC took another stab at the character in 2002, with Maggie Lawson as Nancy in a two-hour TV movie/pilot episode that failed to take off. Lawson's current gig is the USA Network series "Psych."

How will Emma Roberts fare after "Nancy Drew" hits theaters later this week? Can the character ever achieve the same popularity on the screen as she has on the page? (The books' estimated sales are a staggering 200 million copies.)

The director Fleming says that he's aimed for a close connection to Nancy's literary roots: "I really tried to use the books as inspirations, because I think that's what people have latched onto."

Elizabeth Rhodes, a Fairfax County children's librarian, wonders if an adaptation like the new film is really what the books' fans want -- and if it can achieve popularity on the scale of blockbuster children's-lit films such as "Harry Potter," "Lord of the Rings" and "Chronicles of Narnia."

"The success of a Harry Potter movie comes from it being so faithful to the books," says Rhodes. Nancy Drew readers may prefer a similar approach: big-screen adaptations based on individual books. "They like the fact that it's historical and old-fashioned," Rhodes says.

When she saw a preview for the new film -- with Roberts as Nancy in a broadly drawn contemporary setting and plot -- Rhodes says she had mixed feelings, knowing that any media adaptation will likely bring increased attention to the books, but also knowing that Nancy Drew's most devoted fans could be disappointed.

"I was like, oh, they're updating Nancy Drew," says Rhodes. "I hope that works out for her."

Staff writer Jennifer Frey and staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.