Mario Machado, a broadcast news reporter, who also played the part of a reporter in Scarface, Robocop, Rocky III, and Brian’s song, died on Saturday at a convalescent facility in West Hills, Los Angeles.
Machado was an eight-time Emmy award winner, and in 1970, became the first Chinese-American on-air TV news reporter and anchor in LA, an possibly in the U.S.
He was so good at his job that the movie industry couldn’t get enough of using him as a reporter. He appeared in all three Robocop films as anchor Casey Wong. Here’s a compilation of Robocop news reports:
Machado was seventy-eight years old. According to a statement from his daughter, he died from complications of pneumonia, and had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
He was born in Shanghai in 1935, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1956. He became a U.S. citizen in 1965.
He got is start in the reporting business at local Los Angeles news stations like KCBS and KNXT. He also hosted medical investigation show Medix.
In addition to his Emmy awards, he won the Howard Blakeslee Award, San Francisco’s Interceptor Award, and was even named honorary mayor of Granada Hills for eight years. He was also named LA Commissioner of Cultural Affairs. In 1983, Mayor Benjamin Norton proclaimed December 4, Mario Machado Day.