Model’s Career Is Standing Still, But Maybe Not for Long
A child screeched, “She’s alive!” But Mari Quigley remained frozen, a tribute to the concentration she has developed working as a storefront mannequin model.
Drawn by the scream, a crowd formed for a look to figure out which of the three mannequins behind the window was breathing. Quigley winked at one of the spectators, and the crowd was abuzz.
“Oh, we get a lot of that,” said Quigley, trying to shake the jitters she gets just before going on, much like a stage performer. “I always get that feeling until I strike my pose. Then I make myself concentrate and everything’s all right.”
Posing as a mannequin is fun, Quigley said, but now she wants more from modeling than spontaneous outbursts from children and adults. “The timing is just perfect for me to get my career going,” said the 35-year-old Tustin resident, who hopes to parlay her age and mature appearance into a successful modeling experience.
“This (mannequin modeling) is a great beginning,” she said, “but now I want a full modeling career, and that means giving up everything else to make modeling a full-time commitment.” That everything else is her work as a licensed skin therapist, as well as part-time work as a secretary, nurse’s aide, cashier and waitress.
“I don’t want to wake up someday when I’m 60 years old and regret I didn’t at least give a modeling career an honest try,” she said while adjusting the peignoir she would model in the window of the Intimate Collection at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. “I’ve taken good care of my body and skin, and I think I have the talent to get into television commercials and newspaper advertising.”
She is taking classes in singing and workshops on training for television commercials, feeling that advertising is now catering to the more mature women, the people most able to afford the high price of today’s fashions. “This is where I know I can excel. I know I have the talent, and that comes with experience.”
Quigley, who attended high school in Minnesota and was voted Most Talented Senior, said that when she goes back for her class reunion in 1989, “I want to show them they were right.”
Ever hear of a human seat filler? Meet Victorya Michaels, 22, of Garden Grove.
What she does is sit in a seat when it’s emptied by an entertainer ready to perform or receive an honor at the Grammy, American Music, Golden Globe, Emmy, People’s Choice and Academy of Country Music awards shows.
“When the cameras turned back on after a commercial or a performance and aimed at the audience,” she said, “the producers didn’t want to show any empty seats. So when a celebrity left his seat, I filled it,” sometimes having to race from one front row seat to another during the awards shows. Although she has been a seat filler for a couple of years, her major role was as a paid talent liaison, meaning she kept track and escorted invited celebrities to the awards show the day of the performance.
“That was not bad, hanging out with some of my favorite celebrities all day long,” said Michaels, her professional name. (She was Victoria Sterud at Pacifica High School and Cal State Long Beach.) “I didn’t get paid for seat filling, but I did get invited to the post-awards parties.”
Some of the celebrities she escorted were singer Juice Newton, Actor Keenan Wynn and Paul Stanley of the heavy metal band Kiss.
“It was fun taking the place of a celebrity,” said Michaels, currently a free-lance publicist, “even if was only for a few minutes.
You’ve got to believe this. Dennis Leslie, who manages the Port Theater in Corona del Mar where Best Picture Oscar nominee “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is playing, got bit by a spider in his Tustin home,
Despite becoming ill, Leslie showed he was a real trouper by returning to work and playfully suggesting to his staff that they mention the spider-biting coincidence to patrons.
One employee deadpanned back, “You’re lucky we weren’t showing ‘The Elephant Man.’ ”
Mary Kolakowski of Anaheim figured she might as well sign up for a free Chamber of Commerce drawing while shopping at the Anaheim Plaza, and, sure enough, she received a call a couple of days later telling her she had won.
Her prize was 30 state lottery tickets. She rubbed off five $2 payoffs for a total of $10.
But talk about good fortune. Lawrence Shingle, 26, of Anaheim won new cars twice in Disneyland’s daily car giveaway. He told the Disneyland folks that he was hoping to win some commemorative pins, another prize they offer.
He sold one car and kept the other.
Acknowledgments--Wayne Snell, 56, a counselor at Santa Ana High School, was named to the Chapman College Athletic Hall of Fame for his basketball skill as a 6-foot guard there in 1952. “It’s nice to know they remembered me,” he said.
