DCS: maylia fong
Budding actress Gloria Chin was in the Paramount Pictures commissary when she was spotted by the wife of Hollywood screenwriter and producer Sidney Buchman. Gloria was quickly cast in the 1947 film noir Singapore alongside Ava Gardner and Fred MacMurray. Gloria was also given a new name — the exotic-sounding mononym “Maylia.”
Favorable reviews led to a string of films for Maylia, including To the Ends of the Earth, Boston Blackie’s Chinese Venture, Chinatown at Midnight, Call Me Mister and Return to Paradise. She became just one of a handful of Asian-American actresses to find success in the often racially- biased Hollywood. Maylia’s name was regularly mentioned in the same breath as Anna May Wong.
In 1947, Maylia met her future husband, character actor Benson Fong. The couple, seeking a steady income, opened a Chinese restaurant called Ah Fong’s in Hollywood. The restaurant was very successful, allowing the couple to branch out with Ah Fong locations in Anaheim, Beverly Hills, Encino and Westwood. The restaurants were popular with tourists and celebrities alike. Johnny Carson often gave away dinner certificates for Ah Fong’s to audience members. It even appeared in a Season Eight episode of the sitcom Bewitched.
After the release of Return to Paradise, Maylia left her show business career to focus on her family and help her husband run their restaurants. When Benson Fong passed away in 1987, there was just one Ah Fong’s location remaining. It was operated by a family member.
Maylia passed away in 2016 at the age of 90. She was survived by her five children and nine grandchildren.
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inktober52: landmark
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DCS: teri garr
On the advice of a numerologist, Terry Garr changed her name to “Teri,” a name containing no repeating letters. She was told this would lead to a successful career.
Teri appeared as an uncredited go-go dancer in a number of youth-oriented film and television productions, including Shindig!, Hullabaloo, Shivaree, as well as a musical special starring Nancy Sinatra and Pajama Party, an entry in the beach party genre co-starring Annette Funicello and Tommy Kirk. Teri also appeared in six Elvis Presley films – again, all uncredited. She had a single line in the Monkees’ experimental film Head, written by her friend and acting classmate Jack Nicholson. Later the same year she was featured in the “Assignment Earth” episode of Star Trek, which served as a pilot for a series that was never picked up. She was cast as a repertoire player on The Ken Berry WOW! Show, a summer replacement series. That role led to a long-running stint on The Sonny & Cher Show. A supporting role in Francis Ford Coppola’s acclaimed The Conversation was the turning point for Teri’s career.
Maybe that numerologist was on to something.
Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Teri retired from acting in 2011. She passed away in 2024 at the age of 79.
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inktober 2024: series 1 week 5
The final week is upon us and the final entry in the “Regional TV Horror Hosts” series is Philadelphia’s Stella.
In September 1984, Philadelphia NBC affiliate KYW-TV continued a local, but near-forgotten, tradition. They decided to follow the national broadcast of Saturday Night Live, with a locally-produced show with a home-grown host. Tapping Philly actress Karen Scioli to play the provocative street-wise, slightly-slutty “Stella,” the self-proclaimed “Man-eater from Manayunk” [a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood], Saturday Night Dead presented low-grade and long-forgotten horror movies as a vehicle for some hometown humor. During breaks in the film, Stella and her crew would perform skits fraught with double entndres that often pushed of boundaries of TV censorship. Stella, with her feather boas, low-cut gowns, push-up bra and wicked sense of humor, would spin bawdy tales of “the single life” with a very Philadelphia slant. She welcomed local “legends” of Philadelphia television, like childrens’ TV hosts Pixanne, Sally Starr and Wee Willie Webber as well as bigger names like Rip Taylor and those with Philly roots, like Bobby Rydell.
Stella and Saturday Night Dead ran for 141 episodes, until it left the airwaves in late 1990. Karen Scioli, Stella’s alter-ego, won a local Emmy for her late-night efforts in 1985. Sure, she “borrowed” a lot of her shtick from the more well-known Elvira, but Stella was just as much fun.
That wraps up JPiC’s “Inktober” for 2024. Happy Hallowe’en!
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inktober 2024: series 2 week 4
The second series — “Horror Actors of the 1940s” — concludes with George Zucco.
British actor George Zucco gained fame as an upper-crust, but often villainous, character in dozens of dramas, mysteries and serials of the 30s and 40s. He was cast as the nefarious “Professor Moriarty” in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1939. He later appeared in Bulldog Drummond, The Thin Man and Charlie Chan features.
In the 1940s, George appeared in supporting roles in a number of Universal B-pictures in the horror genre, including The Mummy’s Hand, The Mummy’s Tomb, The Mad Ghoul, The Mummy’s Ghost and House of Frankenstein. In The Mad Monster, George played a typical mad scientist experimenting in areas better left alone. In 1939, he returned to the Sherlock Holmes franchise, playing opposite Basil Rathbone in Sherlock Holmes in Washington.
After a small role in 1951’s David and Bathsheba — George’s 99th film — he suffered a stroke, causing his role in the upcoming The Desert Fox to be recast. The stroke brought on dementia and George never recovered. He died at a Hollywood nursing facility in 1960 at the age of 74.
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inktober52: expedition
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DCS: peter green
See if you can follow this…..
When Aynsley Dunbar left John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers to form Faces with Jeff Beck and a young singer named Rod Stewart, guitarist Eric Clapton suggested drummer Mick Fleetwood as a replacement. Clapton then asked Peter Green to fill in for him for a few gigs with The Bluesbreakers. When Clapton left the band, Mayall hired Peter Green as his full-time guitarist. He was so happy with Peter’s contributions to the band, he rewarded his new guitarist with some studio time to record his own songs. Peter, along with Fleetwood, second guitarist Jeremy Spencer and bassist John McVie, recorded those songs and decided to form their own band. Peter had written an instrumental as a tribute to this small group’s rhythm section. The song was called “Fleetwood Mac” and he chose to give the new band that name as well. McVie, however, decided to stay with the security of The Bluesbreakers instead of venturing into the unknown territory of a new, unproven band. Peter signed another bass player and performed as “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac featuring Jeremy Spencer.” Soon, McVie relented and joined, flattered by the inclusion of his name as part of the band name. Peter stayed with Fleetwood Mac for three albums before relinquishing the role of band leader to Mick Fleetwood. Peter appeared — uncredited — on two subsequent Fleetwood Mac Albums.
Peter passed away on July 25, 2020 at the age of 73.
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inktober 2024: series 1 week 4
JPiC’s Inktober offers the fourth entry in the “Regional TV Horror Movie Hosts” series.
After the death of Larry Vincent, Los Angeles’ TV’s local horror movie host “Sinister Seymour,” station KHJ was looking to revive the weekend broadcast. At first, they contacted Maila Nurmi, who played TV hostess “Vampira” in the 1950s. While Nurmi was not interested herself, she suggested singer-dancer Lola Falana for the role. Instead, producers held auditions. They selected vivacious Cassandra Peterson, who created the goth vixen “Elvira.” Nurmi was infuriated and sued the station for infringement, claiming the character was too close to her own “Vampira.” An eventual court battle was found in Cassandra’s favor.
Elvira’s stint as the host of “Movie Macabre” was an instant hit. With her slinky black dress, prevalent cleavage and Valley Girl attitude, Elvira dropped double entendres left and right in a cross somewhere between Morticia Addams and Little Annie Fanny.
Elvia’s popularity grew and soon she was making appearances on The Tonight Show and in a series of commercials for Mug Root Beer and Coors Beer (where her trademark cleavage was covered up). She also popped up, in character, on various TV series like CHiPS and The Fall Guy. She hosted Hallowee’en events at California’s Knott’s Berry Farm. The “Elvira” brand was everywhere, including action figures, trading cards, perfume, pinball machines and many other properties. She even starred in two theatrical films.
More recently, Cassandra has retired the “Elvira” character, but has been known to “unretire” her now and then.
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inktober 2024: series 2 week 3
Week 3 of the “Horror Actors of the 1940s” series in JPiC’s “Inktober” continues with Rondo Hatton.
Rondo Hatton was a star athlete at Hillsborough High School in Tampa, Florida, excelling in track and football. He was also voted Most Handsome Boy in his senior year. After high school, he worked as a sportswriter for The Tampa Tribune. Soon after service during World War 1, Rondo began to develop symptoms of acromegaly. The disease distorted the shape and definition of his head, face and extremities. The disease, incorrectly identified as elephantiasis, was believed to have been contracted from mustard gas exposure during the war, which was also a misdiagnosis.
Director Henry King discovered Rondo while he was covering production of King’s film Hell Harbor for the Tampa Tribune. King, finding his unusual look somewhat appealing, cast Rondo in a small role. This led to a larger, though still uncredited, role in 1939’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame as well as an extra in The Ox-Bow Incident as a member of a lynch mob.
Universal Studios used Rondo’s image to promote its horror movies, cast him as “The Hoxton Creeper” in the Sherlock Holmes film The Pearl of Death. He made two more big-screen appearances as “The Creeper,” the hulking figure with which he became closely associated.
Rondo’s acromegaly brought on a series of heart attacks in 1945. In early 1946, a massive heart attack claimed his life at age 51.
Many years later, Rondo’s familiar face has been featured, copied and parodied in a number of films, television shows and even cartoons. “The Creeper” character in Scooby Doo was an homage to Rondo, as was the fearsome “Lothar” in Disney’s 1991 adaptation of the 80s comic The Rocketeer. Since 2002, the “Rondo Award” is presented to outstanding achievement in various forms of the horror genre.