CANDI MILO is likely the voice of your childhood, or your kid's childhood. Voice acting into her 38th year she just received a third nomination for an acting award from ASIFA-Hollywood at this year's Annie Award, for her talents lent to "Hex Appeal" as Witch Hazel. With over 6 series or films in production, and over 5000 half/hours of animation voicing, MILO is a busy and in-demand actor.
You may know her best from the long-running Tide commercial currently on air, but you may remember her from as the spokesperson for Mervyn's Department stores, where an ad-lib ("Open! Open! Open!") secured contracts annually for close to a decade with the franchise. MILO has acted in almost 100. commercials.
CANDI started her career singing in theme parks; Marriott's Great America at 16 and then Disney World the next summer, including a show the summer following that, created especially for her on the Tomorrowland Stage called "The Country Jubilee".
From there it was Princess Cruises as their youngest-ever guest entertainer. MILO sang for two years, on and off, with the iconic Love Boat crew. Then it was on the a Broadway tour with the fabulous cast of "DREAMGIRLS".
Recording albums produced by Jimmie Walker and Wayne Henderson (of The Crusaders) and off-Broadway workshop productions of "To Sir With Love", starring Stephanie Mills and Dorian Harewood, And "Elegies: for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens".
MILO has several movie and television credits including a scene with Alan Arkin in Bad Medicine where he complemented MILO on being one of the only actors to make him break character while on camera.
A full life show business was not promised to the young girl who spent her formative years living with mentally challenged and emotionally disturbed adults in her parents' halfway house. One of the first of its kind in San Jose, CA beginning in 1969 when Ronald Reagan deinstitutionalized tends of thousands, in not hundreds of thousands of struggling mental patients.
Her father, Tony Milo, a bigger than life ex-nightclub performer wanted to give something back to society and decided this was the best way to care for those that society had forgotten. And he ran that joint like a nightclub.
And so came Surviving The Odd (New Haven Publishers, Ltd. 2022), MILO's memoir of those days and the challenges it presented with relationships and adolescence. Fast and funny. Horrifying and hilarious. It tells the tale from the perspective of a bright, curious, loud and funny kid. It's written for the screen. In case you think this cannot possibly be true, and trust me, you'll be there, there are photos.
“A nuanced, affecting memoir that sheds light on the effects of deinstitutionalization...crisply told, with punchy lines and plenty of humor and vivid descriptions.”
– Kirkus Reviews
BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
SURVIVING THE ODD
BY Candi Milo • POSTED ON Oct. 4, 2022
Milo recounts growing up in her family’s halfway house in 1970s San Jose.
In her debut memoir, the actor describes her unusual upbringing. Her life was upended when her father, Tony Milo, who was a child actor and then singer and comic (Milo describes him as “the ultimate vaudevillian chameleon”), decided to open Milo Arms Board and Care Home, a frat house converted to a residence for those forced out of state-run psychiatric hospitals on the orders of Richard Nixon and then Gov. Ronald Reagan. Serving folks who often didn’t have money or real-world skills, the Milo Arms was created to rehabilitate its residents or at least stave off their homelessness; Milo’s parents even held camping trips and ran a newsletter “for residents, by residents.” The memoir is crisply told, with punchy lines and plenty of humor and vivid descriptions: “Laughter floated downstairs. Toilets flushed. Water ran. Thump, drag. Dennis was coming downstairs.” For all its charming rhythms, the house and its residents embarrassed young Milo, who longed for relationships with other kids her age. In one episode, when her schoolmates wouldn’t attend her birthday party, she received gifts from the residents, who attended instead. Challenging as it was, life at the Milo Arms, along with her parents’ deep sense of compassion, shaped Milo’s perspective and sense of humanity. Milo ably weaves in chapters that study the social effects of deinstitutionalization (the closing of state-run psychiatric hospitals), which led to the homelessness of 200,000-plus ill people, with those that address the ways she adapted to her unusual living situation and housemates. Black-and-white photos are included.
A nuanced, affecting memoir that sheds light on the effects of deinstitutionalization.
Publisher: New Haven Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2022
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