John Ashley
Birthday:
25 December 1934, Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Birth Name:
John Atchley
Oklahoma-bred John Ashley got his start in the movie business while on a vacation in California. A friend from Oklahoma State University got him onto the set of the John Wayne movie The Conqueror (1956), and Wayne in turn steered him toward a job in television in the William Castle series Men of Annapolis (1957). One day, Ashley was at the offices ...
Show more »
Oklahoma-bred John Ashley got his start in the movie business while on a vacation in California. A friend from Oklahoma State University got him onto the set of the John Wayne movie The Conqueror (1956), and Wayne in turn steered him toward a job in television in the William Castle series Men of Annapolis (1957). One day, Ashley was at the offices of American International Pictures to pick up his girlfriend, who was auditioning for a part in the company's Dragstrip Girl (1957). AIP house writer Lou Rusoff saw Ashley waiting in the hall and decided the young man was the type AIP was looking for to play the Dragstrip Girl (1957) male lead. Ashley acted in a long line of "kids-in-trouble" melodramas, monster movies and in the Beach Party series before carving a lucrative niche for himself as producer-star of a series of Filipino exploitation pictures. He was also producer of several TV series, including The A-Team (1983) and Werewolf (1987). Show less «
This is a terrible thing to admit, but maybe the key to my success with exploitation films is that I always LIKED those movies, and I never ...Show more »
This is a terrible thing to admit, but maybe the key to my success with exploitation films is that I always LIKED those movies, and I never had any real reason to turn them down. I just enjoyed doing them. Show less «
NEXT PAGE
Steve Gordon