JULY 10TH, 1935

A heroine was born. Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi Satana was born on this day, in Hokkaido, Japan to a silent movie actor and a circus performer. She would go on to become a legendary burlesque dancer, exploitation super-star and an inspiration to tough chicks and BAMFs everywhere.

FYeah Tura Satana on Tumblr
Pintrest board devoted to Tura Satana from Madeline Smith
A delightful later in life interview with Sandra Bernhard on Reel Wild Cinema 

TIA CARRERE

In an acting career that spans from Cover-Up (1985) to Curb Your Enthusiasm (2007), Tia Carrere's been a zombie victim, an action villain, a lounge singer in Little Tokyo, a space marine, a Sorceress Queen of Acheron, and several dozen other things. One of those things is a multiple Grammy award-winning singer, with wins in 2009 and 2011 and nominations in 2008 and 2010. Working in her musical talents to her acting career, Carrere has also contributed vocal performances to at least six soundtracks to films in which she starred, and did all of her own vocal performances in Wayne's World (1992). Still well remembered as Wayne Campbell's foxy-lady love, it remains for many her signature role. In addition to being a "babia majora" Carrere has an under-recognized sense of comic timing and expression both of which are visible in her reoccurring appearances in Curb Your Enthusiasm, and her hilarious turn as Piper Bauman, Kelly Bundy's rival from modeling school in an early episode of Married with Children (1990).

Standing at 5'8" and stunning, Carrere worked as an actual model for some time during the early part of her acting career after moving from her native Hawaii to LA,California. Her first film role was Zombie Nightmare (1986), a low-budget independent horror film that featured Adam West and later appeared in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1994). She would appear in a few more films such as Aloha Summer (1988) and Fine Gold (1989) over the course of the decade and continued to work regularly in television. Her career really took off in the early '90s, and saw her racking up multiple screen credits nearly every year for the next ten years. Earlier on in the decade saw Carrere mixed up with the action-men; she played supporting roles in 80's-style genre pictures like Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991) and Harley Davidson and the Marlborough Man (1991), thrillers such as Treacherous (1992) and Rising Sun (1993) and big summer blockbusters like True Lies (1994).

Carrere's filmography has bounced all over the genre-map since the mid-90s, but additional highlights for cult fans include Kull the Conqueror (1997), a sort of sequel to the Conan films of the 1980s (originally planned to be called Conan the Conqueror, the script was re-written for "Kull" when Arnold Schwarzenegger declined to reprise his former role) that features Carrere as a vermilion-tressed witch-queen, and Relic Hunter (1999-2002) a Canadian fantasy-adventure series in which Carrere stars as a globe-trotting archaeologist. Her career shows no signs of waning or slowing down, and she's done everything from reality contest television [Dancing with the Stars, The Celebrity Apprentice] to television dramas [CSI: Miami (2009)] to video game and animation voice overs [Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated (2010), Saints Row (2006)].

Interestingly, while Carrere did not do her own topless shots in Showdown in Little Tokyo (a body double was used), she did appear nude in Playboy's January 2003 issue. It would have been easy for Tia Carrere to rest on her laurels as a total babe and focus her career strictly on playing "the hot chick", but made efforts early on to diversify beyond playing a gorgeous face and notoriously turned down a role on Baywatch (1989-1999) to audition for Wayne's World. In addition to her professional activity in the film and music businesses, Carrere is also an animal lover and charity supporter, and is an active member of Planned Parenthood. Though the press is currently pretty quiet about what projects the future holds for Tia, she's got lots of cunning and talent to protect her, whether she's working on a film, a television series, a record, or production company.



-Footage from Halloween 2009 of Tia Carrere performing Ballroom Blitz Live at the Chiller Theater in New Jersey
-Tia in Kelly Bounces Back , from Married With Children-Article on and interview with Tia Carrere by James Brady
-A great write-up of one of Tia's early films Showdown in Little Tokyo, via The Val Verde