Danny Kamin(1947-2024)

He was born in the back of a Chevy station wagon being driven by this late father one starry night in September blazing across a desolate West Texas highway trying to find any town with a hospital for his mother to give birth to Danny. Unable to, his dad took command just as he'd done for four consecutive years of war in the Pacific Theater in World War II, and Danny was delivered while his mother held a flashlight on herself for his dad to see . Since then he has been in the spotlight for much of his life. When he was five years old he knew he wanted to be an actor in movies. On Saturday mornings beginning at the age of seven his mother put him on a Continental Trailways Bus (being driven by "Red") from the small South Central Texas town where is lived bound for Houston to study with a later known national authority in children's theater, the late Jeannine Wagner. She taught at the original and famous Alley Theater. His life until graduating from college revolved around theater. When he was ten, having seen James Cagney in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), he knew his goal was to become a character actor in movies. With the idea and support of his fifth-grade teacher, at the age of ten he was offered the opportunity to study theater in the summers at Southwest Texas University in San Marcos, Texas. He was the youngest student ever admitted to the university's summer theater program. He attended every summer for six years. At 16 he accepted the opportunity to direct at the university. He selected "Hello Out There" by William Sayoran. Graduate students at the university and high school drama teachers attending summer theater courses at the university from across Texas were the other directors. He remained very active in speech and theater in high school, winning numerous local, regional and state competitions in public speaking, debate and theater as an actor. When a junior in high school he was scouted by the theater department at the University of Texas and offered a full scholarship there in drama. Instead, he entered Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, to work with famed theater director Paul Baker. However he graduated from Emerson College in Boston. Danny did not act in his first film or television project until he had graduated from law school, became a felony prosecutor in the district attorney's office in Corpus Christi, Texas, and later an Assistant US Attorney and was already in private practice in Houston, Texas. As an Assistant U.S. Attorney he pioneered the federal criminal prosecutions of film piracy (criminal copyright infringement) in the United States Fifth Circuit, worked with the U.S. Congress to raise the criminal penalty for copyright infringement from a misdemeanor to a felony, is responsible for originating and initiating the anti-piracy warning appearing at the beginning of all commercial videotapes and DVDs and trying the largest film piracy case then to date to a jury verdict where the defendant received federal prison time ; United States of America vs. Ralph Smith. Those achievements earned him the John Marshall Award from the U.S. Department of Justice. A story on the film piracy case was a "60 Minutes" segment titled "Who Stole Superman" A short biography of Danny's career as a lawyer, including his service as an immigration judge in Atlanta, Georgia, is published in the 1985/1986 edition of "Who's Who in American Law".

What motivated Danny back into theater and later to pursue a second career in film and television as an actor was the realization, after his dad died at age 61, that life can be truly short, and he should try to achieve his unrealized life-long ambition. He returned to the stage. His theater work resulted in an offer of a co-star role in his first television movie The Return of Desperado (1988) starring Robert Foxworth and Billy Dee Williams, on NBC. Danny still makes his home in Houston, Texas and works all over North America, including Canada. He also maintains international visibility as an award-winning and published stills photographer. He was once awarded the Kodak International Photography Award for his work in black and white, and was once named Texas Photographer of the Year by Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX. He has numerous book and magazine credits. In 2009 he created "Operation Grateful" , a photo project in which he shoots family photographic portraits for free and sends them to those family members serving as military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2007 Danny founded the non-profit organization Carolyn's Hope, in memory of his late mother. The mission of that not-for-profit organization is to educate the public and law enforcement on identifying, exposing and combating domestic elder abuse, neglect, and the financial exploitation of vulnerable elderly people. His most recent theatrical stage work was in 2008 in a play directed by Richard Benjamin at the Falcon Theater in Burbank, California where he co-starred with Ed Asner, Paula Prentiss, and Laine Kazan in "A Step Out of Time". He is in private practice in Houston, Texas as a criminal defense lawyer representing juvenile clients charged with criminal offenses.