Kidd Video

A random update to this entry I wrote way back in May of 2008.

May 2008... things were so different back then. The tone of this blog was... different... back then. If I knew then what I know now — you know what I mean...? I digress...

The entry was about this girl who played the Shiela-E-esque drummer in this Saturday morning live-action/animated show called KIDD VIDEO in the mid-80s. "Gabriele Bennett." I had such a crush on her. She seemed to disappear from the entertainment industry shortly after her Saturday morning peak.

An update, according to this Kidd Video fansite:

Gabriele is now a teacher, dance instructor, entertainer, and the mother of three sons. For a time she lived in Virginia Beach, VA, and appeared in community theatre productions there. In 2011 she relocated to Germany.

I found a more fleshed out bio:

Gabriela Rozzi-Nelson, aka Gabrielle Bennett, Gabby Nelson, born June 16, 1962 in Los Angeles, CA, is a Native American-Hispanic model, singer, dancer and actress. Gabriela began her career as a dancer in the 1976 musical film Grease, and as beauty queen and model in the late seventies and early eighties, winning titles to include Miss International Beauty and Miss Hollywood in 1981, where she performed in a televised screen test with actor Edward Albert, Jr. She traveled extensively as a USO performer with Bob Hope from 1980-1984, and appeared in a number of music videos, including Micheal Bolton's Soul Provider, and for Miami Sound Machine and The New Christy Minstrels.

During this time, she toured with two celebrity softball teams of models and actresses, The Hollywood Covergirls, and later, the Hollywood Starlets, making appearances for charitable causes before major and minor league baseball games. Gabriele is best remembered as 'Carla', the female drummer, of the NBC Saturday morning hit tv series, Kidd Video who sang and played on the actual soundtracks for the show and in the music videos from 1984 through 1987.

Gabriele went on to make television and film appearances, including Saved By the Bell, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mambo Kings, and numerous commercials. She recorded the soundtracks for the international versions of the Disney films, providing the voices for Pocahontas, Jasmine, Mulan and Ariel. In 1994 Gabriele decided to settle into motherhood full time, and in 1998, she met and married her husband - a Naval Special Warfare sailor. Gabriele’s career as a military wife began and they moved from the West Coast, to Puerto Rico, to Virginia Beach, Virginia, and to Germany where she currently resides. She continued to work in regional theater in Virginia, and with the New English American Theater, Kelley Theatre Center, and Stuttgart Theatre Center in Germany.

Gabriela is currently working on an original project for the Latin performing arts community, a script, entitled, La Costurera/The Seamstress, and working towards a Kidd Video reunion in the near future.

Here's a far more recent video of her performing with former Kidd Video co-star Robbie Rist:



Kinda sweet, actually.

If you really need more, here she is performing a scene from David Lindsay-Abaire's play "Rabbit Hole". Her age is a little more... *apparent* in that video. I don't necessarily recommend clicking on this second video link. Seems like someone's personal scene-study video. Sometimes it's best to just let certain things go quietly.