Danny Mora: Hollywood Gatekeeper, Guru, & Game Changer

“Think of me,” Danny says, “as a cross between guru and babysitter.”

Danny Mora: Oh, yeah! McFarland USA, that’s the Disney movie where Kevin Costner happens to appear in a few scenes with me (laughs). A story based on a real life high school coach in the San Joaquin Valley in California. I portray, Sammy, an old corker who owns the only general market in town. McFarland is 27 miles north of Bakersfield [CA], where 6,000 Mexican-American farmworkers reside, English is a second language and there is only one stoplight. We spent several weeks filming where I grew on up. It dawned on me one day, while sitting in my cast chair, I looked up and saw a road sign ‘Elmo Highway’, I realized that like the young actors in the film, I had worked these same fields as a child. At that moment, my life had come full circle.

AM: You worked those fields?


DM: Yeah, but not for very long. According to my mom, when I was around four or five years old, I had a meltdown in the middle of grape season. I cried my eyes out and wailed that I didn’t want to do work like this anymore. And, then I got cliché and I promised her I was going to grow up and be rich and famous. It seemed like childhood hysteria but this seed of thought, this dream or goal never left me. And it was solidified when by happenstance, my mom and I ended up in England when I was almost seven.

DM: North American Aviation in Fresno [CA] offered my father a job. One day this company got a major contract and hired a couple of thousand farmworkers and trained them to be aircraft mechanics. My dad was already a skilled auto mechanic so he was one of the first to be hired, and then he won a company safety-first drawing contest and this caught the attention of the administration who then invited him to be one of twenty men from the U.S.A. to work in England.

DM: Nope. My father didn’t mention anything until two weeks prior to his leaving. And he was going without us. So, my mom shifted into full gear, took on several jobs and within weeks, raised enough money to pay for our travel. It was an unforgettable journey. When we finally arrived at the small village of Walsingham, my mom boldly knocked on my dad’s door.

DM: My dad was pulling up his pants and introduced us to the ‘maid.’ So my mom said, ‘I don’t know if you remember him, but this is your son, and we need to talk.’ We lived in England for a year and it changed my life. I learned to master chess, picked up a great English accent, and I basically learned to be belligerent. By the time we got back to the states, I was a citizen of the world.

DM: When I was 10 or 11, my mom enrolled me to participate in a park and recreation children’s theater event. They were casting for a play and somehow, I got the lead role. As a kid, I learned that all I had to do is talk and they’d give me applause! I was hooked!

DM: That was it! It got me through junior high, high school and all through college. But what I didn’t realize at that time was that each step of the way, God, if you will, picked out a mentor and that mentor stood in front of me and said ‘No, no, no, try it this way!’  The guy who cast me in that first play, Nick Lickwar, became a legendary figure in the history of the Santa Clara County Theater Guild. Then in community college, I had an acting teacher named John Owens. Despite the fact that John told me I was the best actor in class, he still gave me a failing grade. When I questioned the grade, he said, ‘yeah you’re a great actor but you’re a horrible student.’  Another life lesson.

DM: Thank God for my mother, who kept me out of harm’s way and always nurtured my passion for the performance arts. So, fresh out of college, and stuck in Fresno, I bought a one-way ticket on a Greyhound Bus to Hollywood.

DM: Arriving in Hollywood one of the first signs I see is for the Don Martin School of Broadcasting. I was one of those kids who was always winning the radio call-in contest, so I thought ‘Hey, I can do that. I love to talk, and you get paid for it!’ So, I enrolled in the school and I earned my second-class endorsed broadcast license. At that time, AFTRA, the TV-Radio union, was developing a minority program. And they took a big risk and actually hired one African American and one Mexican.

DM: Yep! And, Larry Carroll was the black guy. He was at KISS-FM and would go on to become an iconic figure at ABC News. I was at KPOL-FM, and would go on to become known as ‘The Mexican’ at the station. In our new paying radio gigs, we encountered so much discrimination, but hey, it got us into the union at a very young age.

DM: After my radio stint, I ended up in an acting workshop with one of the all-time great acting gurus, Peggy Feury. I was in class with the sons and daughters of just about every famous actor living in Los Angeles. Me, the migrant kid from the San Joaquin Valley is now rubbing elbows with the who’s who. Peggy was yet another mentor who put me onto my next big Hollywood gig--

DM: Yep! Before you know it, I’m running the ‘Monday Evening Open Mike,’ we called it ‘Potluck Night.’ As the MC, I’d introduce comics on stage for the first time. Shortly after, I teamed up with Robert Aguayo, the only other Chicano comic at the store, and started a workshop for newcomers. It was like babysitting new comics and changing their comedy diapers. Believe it or not, George Lopez attended the workshop when he was 17. He is one of only a few who still remember where they started.

DM: I was the store’s official ‘gatekeeper.’ It was my job to showcase the new talent and if I thought they had potential, I brought them to the attention of Mitzi. 

DM: Yeah, I had the blessing of working for her at the center of the comedy universe. All I had to say is, ‘Mitzi, you gotta see this new comic, and she’d be there.’

DM: Well, there’s the rug salesman from Montreal, who wore a diaper on stage and became hugely successful… does the name Howie Mandelring a bell? Or how about a Russian kid named Yaakov Smirnoff?  Or a Viet Nam vet named Blake Clark?

DM: My fondest memory is the night I met Robin Williamsfor the first time. Robin had driven down from San Francisco with a car full of comics: Gilchrist, who became a well-known commercial actor, Michael Pritchard, who became an iconic figure in the Bay Area known as much for his community service as his comedy, and a Filipino comic named Buzz Belmondo. 

DM: I have to be honest, Robin didn’t tear the roof off the room. He was just another comic looking for stage time. But he had one piece of material that I thought was brilliant. It was called Gestalt Football, where Robin portrays the quarterback. He calls the play and one of the lineman complains, ‘How come I have to block on every play?’ And Robin as quarterback says, ‘Cause we’re here now, man.’ I thought it was bright and recommended he come down with his mates the following week. Robin confessed he couldn’t come back because it wasn’t his car, and wink-wink, because he had no money. I gave him my phone number and one day out of the blue, he calls, ‘Mr. Mora, remember me, it’s Robin. Robin Williams? Well, we’re coming down.’ Eventually, Mitzi made him a regular at the store on Monday nights and one night George Slaughter saw him, cast him on Laugh In, then he got Mork and Mindy and the rest as they say is history.

DM: Amazing. I was like the last guy to audition for the role of Salvador, one of Chico’s sidekicks. I actually read with Jack Albertson and when we were done, he said, ‘Call your agent, you got a job!’

DM: Well, first of all, I’m not dead yet. I’m still active as an actor. As a matter of fact, next month, I’ll be filming the first episode of the second season of Lethal Weapon and if they don’t kill me off, who knows. I’ve been fortunate to continue working as long as I have and I know how blessed I am to have so many mentors, so at one point in my life, I realized I was born to be of service and decided it was time to pay it all back. Since then, my focus has been to assist other artists in achieving their goals.

DM: After the Comedy Store, I started the Peergroup Workshop to focus on coaching actors, comics and writers on an individual basis. We had a Sitcom Bootcamp for years because as a founding member of the Latino Writers Committee of the WGA, I was disappointed in the lack of diversity at the guild.

DM: I have a soft spot for minority writers working on their craft. Some of the students I’ve been fortunate to work with include: Josefina Lopez, Luisa Leschin, Sylvia Cardenas, and Jessica Lopez, all accomplished working writers. And, those are just the women. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention these guys—Robert Gosnell, Marc Wilmore, Robert Schimmel, Mark Ganzel, and Lalo Alcaraz—Google them.

DM: Blessed and highly favored.