Pride of the Lions President Shines for his Daughters

Don Dungey wakes up early every Tuesday morning and drives to Coco's at the corner of Madison Avenue and Sunrise Boulevard, where he presides as president of the Fair Oaks-San Juan Lions Breakfast Club. He's a good club president, and he enjoys the position. On every other day of the week, Dungey drives to downtown Sacramento, where he works as a manager for the General Services Department of SMUD. But unlike most folks who have to fight the traffic to reach a downtown job, Don is usually smiling, because he has a lot of pride-pride that is focused upon his daughters.

Both of his daughters are in show business. His youngest daughter, Merrin, is the co-star of the Fox Network's new situation comedy, Party Girl, which airs Monday nights here in the Central Valley.

" When she was in high school, we never imagined that Merrin would have a major role on a prime-time television show," Dungey says with a laugh. "It really wasn't anything any of us was thinking about. But then she won the Best Actress award and we realized how truly competitive that was, then we began to understand how really talented she is."

Merrin Dungey was the youngest college student to receive UCLA's prestigious Annual Acting Award. She was a sophomore, majoring in theater, when she won the honor.

"It was a big deal," Don beams. "At UCLA they have four years of undergrad school and they have three years of grad school in theater, so she beat out all of the Juniors, Seniors and even the grad students as the best actress."

The best part of the awards ceremony for Dungey and his daughter was that Denzel Washington, who starred in the television show St. Elsewhere, and recently in the hit thriller Pelican Brief, attended the ceremony as a guest and presented Merrin Dungey with the Best Actress Award.

Merrin Dungey has performed in numerous stage productions in Los Angeles, and even guest starred on Martin and on Living Single, both on the Fox Network.

Not long after she graduated from college, Merrin Dungey signed with an agent and eventually auditioned for the part of Wanda in Party Girl.

The party girl, named Mary is played by Christine Taylor, best known for her portrayal of Marcia Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie and A Very Brady Sequel. Mary is the toast of the New York nighttime party scene, working in a library by day. Swoosie Kurtz, best known for her six seasons on Sisters, plays the head librarian, who is also the party girl's boss-and also her godmother. Wanda, played by Merrin Dungey, is the librarian's assistant, and she can't believe that a girl like Mary would be allowed to step foot into a library, let alone work there.

"It's a really funny show," Don Dungey says, "but it's some of the hardest work I've ever seen done." He and his wife, Judy, were in the audience when the cast and crew taped the first episode of Party Girl. "They report in the day of the shooting at about noon, but the filming doesn't actually start until seven in the evening. They run through their lines, they do some spots and things to get the camera locations and things set up, and then they start filming before a live audience at seven o'clock at night. My wife and I left at one thirty in the morning, and my daughter, with the rest of the cast members, left at four in the morning, and they were due back for another shooting twelve hours from the time that they left. That was on Tuesday, so she had to be back Wednesday at four in the afternoon to pick up the scripts for the next week's show."

It gets even tougher, according to Dungey. "Even with that schedule, the actors have to know their lines. Every movement has to be memorized. There are no tele-prompters, there are no cue cards, you have to know your lines cold. It's just very demanding, very taxing. But if it's what you love, and obviously people in this business love it. It's what they live for."

At least half of Dungey's family does live for the screen. His oldest daughter, Channing, is also associated with Hollywood.

Channing Dungey is a Production Executive with Warner Brothers and is part of the creative group that assembles production packages for the studio.

"Her specific duties are determining what's suitable material for Warner Brothers. She reviews screenplays, makes recommendations, and puts together deals to get a specific director to direct a particular movie, and a specific actor or groups of actors to do the movie. It's a big responsibility. One deal that she worked was for five million dollars, and it was her job to make sure that the deal was going to give Warner Brothers the kind of product that they would want to deliver."

Before going to work for Warner Brothers, Channing Dungey worked for Fox, reviewing scripts and making recommendations about the commercial potential of particular projects. After Fox, she went to work for Steven Segal, one of the biggest box office draws in action-adventure movies.

"She was his story editor," Don says with great pride. "If Steven said `I don't want to say that,' or `I don't like the way that part of the script is written,' my daughter would make the changes to the dialogue or the scene, and would submit those to the writers who would make the script fit Steven's purposes."

Channing Dungey played a big part in getting the movie Twister to the screen.

"It's all about luck," Don says seriously. "What the kids understand is that you find luck at the intersection of preparation and opportunity. Opportunity is always at the intersection. It's only when you bring the preparation to the intersection that people say you got lucky."

Whatever helped Merrin and Channing Dungey to the top, one thing is clear. Don is one proud poppa, and you can see it in his face. He always seems to be smiling.