At 88, Canoga Park Woman Finds 15 Minutes of Fame on TV

Maybe movie star wanna-bes should never give up trying. Fame and fortune may be elusive, but it seems it’s never too late.

Take the case of Connie Feldmann of Canoga Park, who was recently chosen to appear in her first commercial. She was plucked out of a lineup at the Fallbrook Retirement Center when people casting for a Little Caesar’s Pizza TV spot fell in love with her look.

“They came here and asked all the residents to line up,” says Feldmann, who recently celebrated her 88th birthday.

She says that after a lot of screen testing, they finally settled on her for the part.

“I have never been considered pretty or had a good self-image, but they told me that I have perfect skin tones and the right look,” says Feldmann, who was born in the state of Washington and grew up in Seattle before moving to Los Angeles with her husband 30 years ago.

Feldmann was graduated from the University of Washington in 1927 with a degree in business, but never held a job. “I had family to take care of. There was my son, and my husband who was in the Navy and then worked at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for 30 years.”

Dreams of stardom, she says, never danced in her head.

So what, exactly, did she do in her debut performance, and why was her character on a plane for a pizza commercial?

Feldmann says she isn’t sure.

“I walk up to the front of a plane and put lipstick on and then walk back down the aisle and ask the man playing my husband if my lipstick is straight,” she says.

She doesn’t know what that vignette has to do with Little Caesar’s Pizza, even though she says she has seen the commercial that is now running on TV.

“Actually,” she says, “the commercial doesn’t make much sense to me. I don’t know what I did has to do with pizza at all.”

Asked if she isn’t afraid of offending the Little Caesar people, she said, “Well, I don’t think I’m going to be asked to be their spokesman. I don’t even eat pizza.”

But she does like the business of making commercials.

“I got to have a makeup person and I got to ride in a limo,” she says of her time of glory.

The more lasting benefit will be the $400 she gets each time the commercial airs. The money will help pay for a private room at the retirement home.

Couple Provides a Taste of Hawaii in Wicker Baskets

When the going gets rough, some Valleyites go shopping. Or in Mark and Renne Chun’s case, they go shopping for a home-based business that will give other Valleyites something to go shopping for.

The former insurance company executive and his wife, a graphic designer, have pooled their savings and talents to come up with a good-tasting, memory-evoking kind of business.

Baskets of Hawaii, with international corporate offices at the Chuns’ Chatsworth home, is about one month old.

The Chuns have been on the mainland for almost 11 years, after growing up on Oahu. He holds an MBA from Cal State Los Angeles, and she was graduated with a degree in design from the University of Hawaii.

When they talked about what kind of business they would like to go into, they considered their Hawaiian heritage and the current marketplace, which has been called flatter than the winter surf around Waikiki.

“Everyone in the Valley seems to have been to the islands and have fond memories of it, so we wanted to do something that addressed that affection,” says Renne Chun.

What the Chuns have come up with is five baskets that range in price from about $50 to more than $100. Each has a different purpose and price, including the Big Snack, Big Kahuna, Nui Nui Hawaiian Breakfast, Sushi Chef and Wok Chef creations.

Each basket is full of things shipped from Hawaii, like the Big Kahuna basket that includes a coffee mug, chocolate macadamia nuts, Maui brand raw sugar, Kini Po-Po Hawaiian teas in assorted flavors (like coconut rum creme), Kauai Kookies, chocolate-covered coffee beans, Hawaiian Plantations jam and jelly, Lavosh Hawaiian crackers and chocolate-dipped fortune cookies.

Actually, the coffee mug doesn’t taste that good.

The sushi chef basket has a reusable microwave rice cooker that can be used for serving. Renne Chun says the starter kit includes everything needed to become your own sushi chef.

Except for the raw fish. It doesn’t travel well.

The Chuns have put the baskets on display at Regal Bakery in Canoga Park and are advertising on the nationwide Prodigy computer network system. They also have a warehouse and showroom in San Gabriel.

There’s no poi in any of the baskets.

It won’t be missed.

You Are Not Alone With the Collywobbles

The Burbank chapter of the California Alliance for the Mentally Ill wants to make sure that no one with emotional problems feels like the Lone Ranger.

It says that Abraham Lincoln, Virginia Woolf, Eugene O’Neill, Beethoven, John Keats, Tennessee Williams, Van Gogh, Isaac Newton, Ernest Hemingway, Michelangelo, Winston Churchill, Vivien Leigh and Charles Dickens all suffered from schizophrenia, manic depression or some other equally debilitating disease.

In an ad being circulated in industry periodicals throughout the Los Angeles area, the association points out that more than 17 million Americans suffer from some form of serious mental illness.

The ad continues by saying that one in four families will have a member afflicted by schizophrenia or manic depression, and that mentally ill people occupy more hospital beds than people suffering from heart or lung disease and cancer combined.

Information about the alliance, which is an information and support group, is available by calling (818) 567-0163.

Overheard

“I think I’m grounded because my mom said I had to stop telling people from church that my name is Pee Wee Herman, so I asked her if I could say it’s Joey Buttafuoco and she flipped.”

--Boy in Granada Hills to his mother’s guests.