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1-8 of 8
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Most baby-boomers remember actress Elena Verdugo from her pleasant, plain but rather dowdy Emmy-nominated role as "Consuelo Lopez", the altruistic assistant and sometime aide-de-camp to Robert Young's general practitioner for several seasons on the popular Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969) dramatic series. However, decades before donning her drab white nurse's hat, she was an alluring 40s Universal player who displayed her best assets in their "B" adventure yarns and horror opuses. One who was probably wise to keep a set of hoop earrings nearby at all times, Elena reliably hauled out a reliable number of gypsies, harem dancers, peasant girls, Indian maidens and senoritas over the years before TV instigated the second stretch of her career.
Elena was born April 20, 1925, in Paso Robles, California, and began putting on dance shoes as a kindergartener. At age 6, she made her movie debut in the western Cavalier of the West (1931) starring Harry Carey, but didn't come back to films until her teen years. She nominally provided exotic footwork for such movies as Down Argentine Way (1940) with Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda, the Tyrone Power starrer Blood and Sand (1941), and the war picture To the Shores of Tripoli (1942), among others. She received her first big break featured as the object of desire of George Sanders's impressionist painter Paul Gauguin in The Moon and Sixpence (1942).
Universal used her consistently in the mid- to late-40s, starting her off as the touching and vulnerable gypsy girl "Ilonka" in the multiple monster bash House of Frankenstein (1944) which featured the holy horror trinity of Dracula, the Werewolf and Frankenstein's Monster. A natural blonde who got plenty of wear out of the dark wigs handed to her for these kinds of roles, her best scenes in the movie were with the doomed lycanthropic "Larry Talbot", played by Lon Chaney Jr.. She went on to appear with Chaney again in The Frozen Ghost (1945). While filming the Abbott and Costello comedy Little Giant (1946), she met and married movie writer Charles R. Marion, who also wrote for the comedy duo's radio show. The couple had one son, Richard Marion, who later became an actor/director in his own right. A real trooper despite her stereotype, Elena forged on in nothing-special "easterns" (i.e., Song of Scheherazade (1947); Thief of Damascus (1952)) and westerns (i.e., El Dorado Pass (1948); The Big Sombrero (1949)) playing whatever ethnic the script called for.
Television became a reality in the early 1950s. She found herself in a major sitcom hit playing a Brooklyn-born secretary for four seasons on Meet Millie (1952), initially replacing Audrey Totter in the lead role on radio. Elena retired for a time after this but eventually returned to perform on the occasional musical stage and on the small screen. After her big success as the nurse/receptionist on the "Welby" series, she slowed down considerably, but she and Young did reunite on The Return of Marcus Welby, M.D. (1984), sans the other series' star, James Brolin, a decade later.
Verdugo, who later married psychiatrist Charles Rosey Rosewall after her divorce from writer Marion, has since appeared occasionally at nostalgia-based film/TV conventions. In 1999, she suffered the loss of her only child, actor/director Richard Marion, to a heart attack. He was only 50. She survived her second husband, who died in 2012, by five years, dying at age 92 on May 30, 2017, in Los Angeles.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Christine Clayburg was born in Paso Robles War Memorial hospital to a Vietnam combat medic and a homemaker. Her mother became school cafeteria employee of the year and supported the family after her father was disabled. She is the eldest of 5 daughters.
Her first big break as a director came from recruiting her little sisters as actors and crew to make picture book stories using disposable Kodak film cameras. She studied the performing arts rigorously in church, high school, and community college and landed her first student film at Robin Williams Alma Mater, Allan Hancock College. A college advisor heard her sing at a local opera cafe, and set up a unique internship for her in the KCRA weather department in Sacramento.
Since then, she has hosted, anchored, forecast and headlined newscasts across the nation including KABC in Los Angeles, WCCO in Minneapolis, WHDH in Boston and KHQ in Spokane, WA where she also became known as an audio book reader for Books in Motion. She was quickly nominated for an Emmy for her work as a Meteorologist in Minnesota and also named "Boston's Best Meteorologist" by Improper Bostonian magazine. Her live severe weather coverage and severe weather programming garnered several station Emmy Awards and her work as host of "The Snow Snow" in Minnesota led to a Hirsch Broadcasting award for Sports programming in it's first season.
On stage she has played Mary Bailey in the musical "It's a Wonderful Life," Sarah in Sondheim's "Company," Gloria Upson in "Mame," Lydia in "The Vampyre," and Grace Bradley in "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever." She also performed as an ingenue at a regional melodrama on the California Central Coast and has spoken for many organizations across the country advocating for women in STEM.
A military veteran with a legacy of service that dates back continuously to the American Revolution, Christine flew with the Air National Guard with units in Minnesota and California as a C-130 Hercules Loadmaster, instructor and Aerial Firefighter. She is a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan as well as many peacetime and readiness airlift missions around the globe.
Before her military service, she climbed numerous North and South American peaks as high as 22,842', kayaked solo for a week through the Apostle Islands on frigid Lake Superior, bicycled from San Francisco to Los Angeles along the Pacific Coast Highway, completed Olympic length triathlons and traversed the Sierra Nevada alone.
She holds a B.S. in GeoScience and an MFA in TV and Film Screenwriting.- Stunts
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Frank Clarke was born on 29 December 1898 in Paso Robles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Tailspin Tommy in the Great Air Mystery (1935), The Flying Fool (1929) and Criminals of the Air (1937). He died on 12 June 1948 in near Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Mark Steensland was born on 28 June 1965 in Paso Robles, California, USA. He is a director and writer, known for Jakob's Wife (2021), The Special (2020) and Peekers (2008).- Actor
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Charles Sargent was born on 22 September 1894 in Paso Robles, California, USA. He was an actor and composer, known for A Tenderfoot Goes West (1936), Down the Wyoming Trail (1939) and The Deadly Game (1941). He died on 25 December 1971 in Kernville, California, USA.- Make-Up Department
- Actress
- Transportation Department
Donna Dunne was born on 23 February 1966 in Paso Robles, California, USA. She is an actress, known for Were the World Mine (2008), Mariachi Gringo (2012) and Formosa Betrayed (2009).- Towers Monico was born on 14 June 1956 in Paso Robles, California, USA. He died on 26 September 1996 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- John Crockett grew up around horses, and was working on a ranch in the San Joaquin Valley as a "horse breaker" before joining the Los Angeles County Police Department as a patrolman in late 1919. His tenure as a policeman was short-lived, as he was subsequently discharged from the position in October of 1921 for being absent without leave for a period of several days.