Nai Bonet is a producer, screenwriter, actress, singer, and
belly-dancer. Born Christine Shapazian on January 6, 1939 in Saigon, Vietnam. Bonet began her professional career at age 13, when she headlined as a belly-dancer in a show at the
Flamingo Hotel in
Las Vegas
Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...
.
She began appearing in films in 1964 (frequently portraying a belly-dancer), as well as in television, commercials, variety shows, her photos adorned several album covers and she continued to appear as a night club headliner. In 1966 she released the novelty song ''Jelly Belly'', and she filmed a music video for the song which was featured on
Scopitone
Scopitone is a type of jukebox featuring a 16 mm film component. Scopitone films were a forerunner of music videos. The 1959 Italian Cinebox/Colorama and Color-Sonics were competing, lesser-known technologies of the time one year before the Scopi ...
video
jukeboxes
A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that plays a user-selected song from a self-contained media library. Traditional jukeboxes contain records, compact discs, or digital files, and allow user ...
.
In the 1970s, Bonet decided to focus exclusively on her acting career, "But I wasn't getting anywhere in pictures," she said in 1978.
After conceiving, producing and starring in two film flops (1979's ''
Nocturna'' and 1980's ''Hoodlums''), Bonet gave up her career.
Filmography
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonet, Nai
Vietnamese female dancers
Living people
Vietnamese emigrants to the United States
1939 births