A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Alias:
Marilyn Mokihana Kiaaina
Merllyn Mokihana Kiaaina
Mokihana
Birthplace:
Hawaii, USA
Born:
September 25, 1931
Died:
September 15, 1994
Merllyn Mokihana Kiaaina was a Hawaiian chanteuse actress. She sold fish at her mother's Chinatown fish stall, before, in the early '60s, a Hollywood director Mervyn LeRoy signed her to a role in the Frank Sinatra-Spencer Tracy movie, "The Devil at Four O'Clock", that opened doors for her. It was her portrayal of Bloody Mary in the Broadway musical "South Pacific" that became her signature. For years, she was the only Polynesian trouper (she was part Hawaiian) to play that role. Her flair for comedy and her powerful voice, coupled with her size, enabled her to take on Bloody Mary in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical in which she delivered two show-stopping tunes, "Bali Hai" and "Happy Talk". She starred in "South Pacific" productions from Las Vegas to Atlantic City and cities in between, parlaying that fame to the role of Madam Fong in "Flower Drum Song." A career in TV and films followed, including roles on such shows as "Highway to Heaven", "Island Sons", "Aloha Paradise", "Castaways on Gilligan's Island" and "The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.". In Hollywood circles, she was known as a gourmet chef who prepared special meals for the film colony.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.