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Tommy Chong is a comedian, actor, writer, director, musician and cannabis rights activist. He is best known as a member of one of the most successful comedy teams of all time, together with Cheech Marin.
Background
Ethnicity:
His father was a Chinese-Canadian, while his mother was of Scotch-Irish descent.
Tommy Chong was born on May 24, 1938, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to Stanley Chong, a truck driver, and Lorna Jean (Gilchrist) Chong, a waitress.
Education
Chong became interested in playing guitar as an adolescent, and quit high school to enter what he called “Rock’n’Roll University”.
Career
The bands Chong played music with at the beginning of his career were not highly successful, and he turned to managing his family’s topless bar in Vancouver, the Shanghai Junk. It was while performing comic routines in the club in 1969 as an opening act for rock groups, that Chong first met Marin. The well-educated Marin at first resisted Chong’s vision of the role of Cheech, but as Chong remembered in Who’s Who in Comedy, “I kind of talked him into it. ... I was really proud to have instigated Cheech to do that character.” The act was successful despite the duo’s lack of previous training, and the pair were set up for more than a decade of club and film appearances. During this period, recalled Chong for People magazine, the pair were inseparable friends, closer than brothers or spouses.
Cheech and Chong’s first movie Up in Smoke opened in 1978 and was a box office hit; by September 1979 it had grossed over one hundred million dollars on an initial investment of two million dollars. Though some reviewers could not connect with the ragged, hippie-style humor of the film, audiences did, and from the retrospective viewpoint of 1990, American Film's Frank Thomas looked back on it as “endlessly silly and simple-minded.” The film was banned in Colombia, South Africa and some other countries, a fact which did not notably detract from its profitability.
Cheech and Chong’s next movie, released in 1980, was titled Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie. It made thirty million dollars in its first seven weeks. Reviewing it, New York’s David Denby used the occasion to praise the previous movie Up in Smoke, whose “funniest moments,” he claimed, “centered on the two men’s patient, unrelenting efforts to get high.” Denby felt that Cheech and Chong's Next Movie was less genial in spirit, containing an undertone of disrespect for its own audience; he also felt that Chong’s hand at the directorial helm was less steady than Up in Smoke director Lou Adler’s had been.
The duo followed these two films with other movies in the same vein, but popular as well as critical success declined over the years as the hippie style was supplanted by other things. Entertainment Weekly’s Frank Lovece, in a 1994 article that surveyed the great film comedy teams, called Things Are Tough All Over (1982) “intermittently amusing,” and gave it a grade of C in contrast to a B+ for Up in Smoke and a B- for both Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie and Nice Dreams (1981). Still Smokin’ (1983), in which Cheech and Chong play affluent, dope-smoking slackers in Amsterdam, received an F from that critic. Assessing the duo’s movies overall, Lovece called them “adorably dopey.”
On the whole, the pair remained indifferent at their failure to garner serious respect from critics. Cheech and Chong broke up in 1985, owing to disagreements about the future direction of their act. Although Chong and Cheech still express nostalgic fondness for the old days and for each other’s company, they’ve not always been comfortable in personal meetings, according to a People report. Chong’s 1990 Far Out Man was not enough of a commercial success to restore his solo career but he has made subsequent appearances in film and on television.
Chong was going to voice the character of Shenzi, the hyena in the Disney film The Lion King. Chong also voiced the character Yax in the 2016 Disney film Zootopia.
In September 2005, Chong premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. He appeared as a Judge in an episode of Franklin & Bash in 2011. On September 4, 2014, Chong became one of the celebrities who participated in the 19th season of Dancing with the Stars, paired with professional dancer Peta Murgatroyd. He became the oldest contestant to advance to the semifinals the show Dancing with the Stars.
On April 4, 2015, Chong was a participant of the annual "Hash Bash" event which focuses on cannabis legalization, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He performed the role of a guest speaker there, taking pictures with fans and signing autographs.
Chong performed as himself in an episode of the Trailer Park Boys spinoff Out of the Park: USA in November 2017.
In mid-2008, Cheech and Chong reunited and started a tour Light Up America and Canada and The Felimony Tour, which referred to major expenses of each. In October 2008, they appeared on The Howard Stern Show , the Opie and Anthony Show, and the Ron and Fez Show on SIRIUS/XM Satellite Radio. In addition, Cheech and Chong appeared together on the internet-based, pro-marijuana show, Getting Doug With High.
(An aging hippie sets out on a trip across America to find...)
1990
Interests
Sport & Clubs
physical fitness, salsa dancing
Connections
Chong was married to Maxine Sneed from 1960 till their divorce in 1970. Five years later he married Shelby Fiddis. Chong has children from the first marriage - Rae Dawn and Robbi, as well as children from the second marriage - Precious, Paris and Gilbran. He also has an adopted child - Marcus.
Father:
Stanley Chong
Mother:
Lorna Jean (Gilchrist) Chong
child:
Precious Chong
child:
Paris Chong
child:
Gilbran Chong
1-st wife:
Maxine Sneed
2-nd wife:
Shelby Fiddis
Daughter:
Rae Dawn Chong
Daughter:
Robbi Chong
adopted son:
Marcus Chong
References
Who's Who in Comedy
Comedians, Comics and Clowns from Vaudeville to Today's Stand-Ups; Chronicles the lives, careers, and comic styles of over four hundred of the world's most celebrated funny people