went on to work for three years doing more TV commercials. In fact, I did so many Commercials during this period that my friends were beginning to call me the “Comm-Kid.” In 1958, I ended up in the Ben Bard school at 20th Century Fox and was under contract to that studio for a time. I did a pilot for a series about the helicopter branch of the Marines, called HELIMARINES, with Cal Bolder and Ron Ely, but the series was so expensive to produce, Fox never found a sponsor.


You have worked under several different names. Did you ever use your real name as your profes- sional name?


Rodd appeared with Jerry Lewis in the 1957 NBC one-shot, THE JERRY LEWIS SHOW.


summer class. Shirley Knight was in my second year class, along with several delightful people who went on to make a fair living in television, such as Hank Delgado [aka Henry Darrow] who was in several episodes of the ZORRO TV show and the wonderful Carolyn Kearney. I can’t remember if Carolyn was in my first or second year class, but she was really a nice gal and did a lot of TV work. A good friend was a gal by the name of Ruth Buzzi who went on to fame and fortune on LAUGH-IN. My friend Joe E. Tata, who had a lucrative career mostly on TV series like THE ROCKFORD FILES, was also there.


In 1955, I left the Playhouse for a semester to work in the Dan O’Herlihy workshop in Hollywood, and then later returned to complete my studies at the Playhouse. Following graduation, I set out for the big-time in NY where all the “big-time” I was able to manage was a series of TV commercials and an off Broadway production of DETECTIVE STORY under the direction of Herbert Berghoff. I quickly made my way through the stereotypical dream of being discovered and turned into the next Broadway sensation. My girlfriend during those months in the Big Apple was a pretty dancer with the Radio City Music Hall Company, Valerie Harper, who would go on to the top of the heap with Mary Tyler Moore and then on to her own series, RHODA.


Then you returned to the West coast? After finding out that doing TV commercials and modeling for Fruit of the Loom underwear was not the kind of meteoric success ride I had hoped for, I pocketed my residuals and returned to LA to work with John Barrymore, Jr. and Mar- garet O’Brien in the Matinee Theatre’s version of ROMEO AND JULIET at the Pasadena Playhouse. I


All of my work at the Playhouse was under the name Roger Francke and, as New York beckoned, I decided that Robert Forrest was much cooler than a name that sounded like somebody who should be working at J.P.L and playing tennis three days a week.


What is the story behind the name Rod Dana?


I was in my Hollywood agent’s office one day, when actor Dana Andrews came in. We were with the same agency. We all got to chatting and some- how the subject of names came up and my agent said, “You know, we’ve discovered there is another Robert Forrest with SAG, so we should be thinking about a new moniker for you.” Well, one thing led to another and he borrowed Dana’s first name for my last name, and I became Rod Dana. Later on in my career, following a meeting with an astrologer, it was suggested that an extra “D” in Rodd would be beneficial. Little did I know that I would soon be known jokingly as “The Guy with the 3-D Name”!


How did you become involved with American International Pictures?


I had friends who worked with Roger Corman, and I was always hanging around—watching, learn- ing, questioning and wondering about the amaz- ing commercial artistry of this man and his “factory.” Though he seemed to turn out winner after winner, I couldn’t help but see most of what he was doing as pure unadulterated crap (laughs)! I do, however, remain a bit in awe of all he did and how the world has accepted his magic. Looking back on the period, I am reminded that the more time I spent with the AIP bunch, the more cynical I grew concerning the level to which the money- making arm of the industry had collapsed, but today, so many of these films I thought of as junk- ers are treated as “classics” or “cult-epics.”


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