Local Legends presents

Happy Hallucinations

Honeys...

It's 1963 and a beautiful Moon Maiden is bidding you to have "Happy hallucinations, honeys" on a Saturday afternoon Sci-fi fest. It may have been the height of the cold war, but someone was heating up the TV Screens on the home front. That someone was Lisa Clark aka "Moona Lisa". Who knows how many young boys, never considering a career in aerospace, might have been tempted to join the ranks just to get closer to this Luna Lovely?

When KOGO Channel 10 asked Lisa Clark if she wanted to host a Sci-fi movie show she jumped at the chance. Not thinking twice she thought "My God, that's my kind of show!"

Lisa was not unfamiliar with show biz. She'd worked Hollywood and NYC, doing both films and television, sometimes with her twin sister Laura Elliot. (Lisa and Laura also did a stint as the Doublemint Twins!) In Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Saboteur" Lisa and Laura are Siamese twins with an even bigger problem than being conjoined~! Lisa also appeared on the first live TV show of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. By 1958 she came out to San Diego along with her announcer-husband Jeff to work at Channel 10 where the two did an afternoon show together called "News and Previews" along with a Sunday talk show and various commercials--all this before she flew to the moon--gig, that is.

Lisa Clark sparkled with her own special brand of sexy wit and style that predated Elvira and post-dated Vampira. (Not overly fond of Elvira -- "She cheapened the act." Says Ms. Clark)

The mystical moon maiden quickly became a cult heroine, out-stripping the movie as the main attraction. This was live television and Lisa wrote all her own material throughout the entire show, even the break seg-ways. "When I finally got the words all going," says Lisa of her script writing, "it was like travel through space."

"Well, I was about to throw an extra-terrestrial tantrum, but now that you're back...I'll save it...For the next time you threaten with going to Venus...instead of the Moon.

Extra-terrestrial traitors, we do not abide...

But enough of this moon mash, mish mash...join me now in a stupendous salutation as we greet and meet that superlative of all beasts, the superior and very substantial GIANT BEHEMOTH."

And so would quip the tall shapely moon maiden from her heavenly haunt.

In good company: Moona Lisa with Robert Bloch and Forrie J. Ackerman

 Lisa has said that her hostess name came from John F. Kennedy's 1961 speech about going to the moon by the end of the decade. The idea had interested Lisa and she drew on this when needing a name for Science Fiction Theater (no connection to the 1950's Ziv TV series of the same name).

"The moon", Lisa says, "has always fascinated me. I've always looked up to it." While some hosts reside in a haunted house, Moona Lisa resides on the moon. When the American astronauts landed on her planet for real, she was there to greet them (via chroma key) as they departed from the lunar module.

Lisa maintained a certain continuity on her show between films and commercial breaks by blending the two. Before a commercial for Certs breath mints, she would read from a book of poems on vampires and a bat would swoop in and kiss her. With her new fangs showing she would ask into the camera; "If he kissed you once, will he kiss you again?" Cut to commercial.

During the course of her San Diego show, the heavenly hostess had many different moon sets built. She also had a flying carpet that would hover over the moon or take her out to her psychedelic stars.

Lisa Clark hosted the fright fest on Channel 10 until June of 1971, setting the record for hosts in San Diego.

The following year in January of 1972 , she was recruited by KHJ Channel 9 in Los Angeles, where she was the host of "Fright Night," a show with the same format. Los Angeles station KHJ channel 9 asked Lisa to host movies on Fright Night to replace Seymour (Larry Vincent) who was leaving the station for KTLA channel 5. On Seymour's last show for the station he did a promo with Moona Lisa tying his last KHJ show with her first one. Moona Lisa's Fright Night lasted a year and a half.

During her stint as a L.A. hostess she had a run in with the law. Borrowing a prop head from The Old Globe Theater to use on her show, she had put it in the trunk of her car. On her way up to tape the show, she was pulled over by the police and asked to open her car trunk. The officer turned white on seeing the head in the trunk but calmed down once her realized who Lisa Clark was. (Proving that two heads may not be better than one unless one of them happens to belong to Lisa Clark.)

Two years later, she was hired to place her new lunar pad at KMOX Channel 4 in St. Louis. The program was called "Moona's Midnight Madness" and ran for one year.

"I would fly out once a week," she recalled. "It was difficult."

After leaving KMOX, she returned to Los Angeles to co-host a Halloween show at Knott's Berry Farm with Seymour. Larry Vincent had come out of the hospital to do the show (he was fighting cancer at the time) and she said that they had a wonderful time doing the show at Knott's but the effects of his cancer were very evident.

But in St. Louis, as in Los Angeles and San Diego, her local show won high ratings.

In all, Moona Lisa mesmerized viewers for eight years in three cities.

"It was a wonderful experience," Clark said, "and in some ways I would enjoy still doing it."

She has a son, two grandchildren and along with her husband, enjoys travel and tennis and of course meeting those adoring fans wherever she goes. She is constantly recognized and is happy to share the memories.

"I gave my best to it," says the Moon Miss, "I feel I had class."

She added that she still has her Moona Lisa wig and dress.

"I'm ready to go any time they call me back."

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