Jew Eat Yet?

Not Ready for My Closeup

I got an email yesterday from a colleague whose friend is casting a new reality show about feuding families:

We're looking for 2 families that are next door neighbors that do not get along and that are having disputes over fences or land or that just plain don't like each other. They can live anywhere in the United States. Each family must have parents and at least 2 children, 10-25 years old. EACH family will receive $100,000 just for participating on the show. Yes, that's $100,000.

Who in their right mind would go on such a show—can you imagine how crazy they will make the family members look? But $100,000?? Dear God, I’m tempted to rent another child and throw some chicken carcasses onto my neighbors’ front lawn just to get them riled up.

I expect that the whole Reality TV craze will burn out relatively soon but I fear it may sink to new lows before that happens. I remember watching the brilliant Sidney Lumet film “Network” in 1976 and staring in shock at the programming that network executive Diane Christenson (Faye Dunaway ) was introducing to the network affiliates. My favorite was “The Mao Tse Tung Hour” featuring the terrorist antics of the radical Ecumenical Liberation Army. When the network lawyers started panicking about the footage the ELA wanted to air of an actual bank robbery, Dunaway got excited:

“Let the government sue us! We'll take them to the Supreme Court. We'll be front page for months! The New York Times and the Washington Post will be doing two editorials a week about us. We'll have more press than Watergate! All I need is six weeks of federal litigation and ‘The Mao Tse Tung Hour’ can start carrying its own time slot. What's really bugging me now is my daytime programming. I'm thinking of doing a homosexual soap opera called ‘The Dykes’— the heart-rending saga of a woman helplessly in love with her husband's mistress.”

At the time we howled at the outrageous parody but today everything in Paddy Chayefsky’s amazing script, from Howard Beale’s “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” to Sybil the Soothsayer’s Armageddon-like predictions seem like an average day’s programming on Fox or UPN. Faye Dunaway won an Oscar for her exquisite portrayal of the soul-less network executive who would exploit anyone if it meant another ratings point. How ironic then that she is now starring in an execrable Reality TV show that would have given Howard Beale a run for his money. In “The Starlet,” ten tragically misguided women live in the same house and compete against each other for the chance to become “2005's next big thing.” The grand prize is, according to the promos, “ a career-launching role on the WB's hit drama “One Tree Hill.” The only way anyone’s career is going to be launched from this garbage is if they pull a Howard Beale and blow their brains out on the air.

Oh Faye, Faye, Faye, how can you participate in this abomination when you launched your own career in such magnificent films as “Bonne and Clyde,” “The Thomas Crown Affair,” “Little Big Man,” and “Chinatown?” I could only make it through the first episode of “The Starlet” but I got to see all ten women freak out to the point of apoplexy because they had to simulate a lesbian kiss in their “master acting class” that week. They were so horrified you’d think the producers were asking them to make love to a rampaging goat (they never would have gotten callbacks for Faye’s “The Dykes!”). Then, at the end of the episode, Faye joins fellow panelist and acting equal Vivica Fox (?!) to critique the fledgling starlets on their potential to make it in the biz. One contestant has to go, so using her most imperious Joan Crawford voice, Faye looks the loser straight in the eyes and barks the show’s unoriginal catch phrase: “DON’T CALL US…WE’LL CALL YOU!” If Johnnie Cochran hadn’t died yesterday, he might have been hired by Faye Dunaway’s Oscar to sue the actress for irreconcilable differences.

Before I besmirch anyone else who is fool enough to appear on one of these shows, I should tell you that we just got word that Kendall and I are going to be on an episode of the HGTV show “If Walls Could Talk.” A production crew is coming from Denver in two weeks to shoot our 1909 house and interview us about its history and the discoveries we've made during our restoration. The current host of the show is Grant Goodeve, former oldest brother on “Eight Is Enough,” but the producer told me that they are close to hiring a new host. What former TV star could it be? One of the Waltons? Jan Brady? Rodney Allen Rippy?

Even though our show is much more “real” than so-called “reality programming,” it’s certainly not considered part of the Reality TV juggernaut—that is, there is no humiliation involved. Well, except for my on-camera appearance. Oy, does this filming have to occur when I am so out of shape I could be Jabba the Hutt’s stunt double? And I just got one of those nasty under-the-surface pimples that makes my already hook-nosed profile look like one of the anti-Semitic caricatures of German Jews in the Nazi weekly “Der Stürmer.” And what about that stress-produced ridge on my forehead that is so deep you could pan for gold in it? Oh wait, this is not an episode of last year’s “Are You Hot?” it’s just a show about old houses.

Maybe I can hire someone to play the role of Danny Miller. One New Year’s Eve in the late 80s I was at a rock club on Sunset Blvd. sitting at a table next to Frank Zappa’s two oldest children, Moon Unit and Dweezil. I thought they were the coolest, most talented brother and sister in town (despite their awful sitcom called “Normal Life” which had just been cancelled) and their close relationship reminded me of me and my sister. The next day my friend Christina asked who I’d cast in the movie version of my life and I said “Oh, definitely Dweezil Zappa.” For some reason this joke stuck and I always cast Dweezil as myself even though we bear absolutely no resemblance to each other. Once again I call on Dweezil to help me out and let the world see a much cooler version of Danny Miller. Moon Zappa is actually a former classmate of Kendall’s. If only she weren’t Dweezil’s sister she'd be pefect to play my wife on the show. (Kendall’s interest in our TV debut plummeted when she found out the show doesn’t pay anything!)

Despite my stage fright, I do look forward to sharing the story of our house and its original owner, Henry C. Jensen. From the moment I walked into this house two years ago, I’ve been obsessed with the man who lived here from 1909 to 1944 and have compiled a dossier on him thicker than J. Edgar Hoover’s file on the Kennedys. I portrayed Henry Jensen at his gravesite last October at the annual Rosedale Cemetery Living History Tour. Rosedale is the oldest cemetery in Los Angeles and it’s just a few blocks from our house. Henry Jensen was born in September 1859, I was born in September 1959. I’ll save all of our past-life connections for another post because I don’t want to scare you but I’ll tell you that one of his main claims to fame (besides giving John Wayne his first job at the age of 9) was building some of the earliest movie palaces in southern California, starting in 1914.

The crown jewel of Henry’s theatre chain was Jensen’s Raymond Theatre in Old Pasadena which opened on April 5, 1921 and, at a cost of $500,000, was the most expensive, lavish movie theatre built on the west coast up to that time. I spoke at length at the cemetery tour about the grand opening of that theatre which was attended by the top echelon of Hollywood society. They had to turn 5,000 people away it was so crowded and Henry Jensen reigned supreme along with his two sons, Walter and Robert Jensen who managed the theatre for him. The opening night program included a screening of the film “The Love Special” starring Wallace Reid and Agnes Ayres (soon to be seen as Valentino’s girl in “The Sheik”) and Buster Keaton’s “Hard Luck.” A variety of vaudeville acts entertained the tony crowd including the 22-piece Jensen orchestra and an unusual performer named Frederick Ko’vert, who was at the pinnacle of his career as a female impersonator. Ko’vert applied real gold leaf to his skin for his dance performance called “Hanuya, the Spirit of Evil.” He would later become known as the Father of “Male Physique Photography” before shooting himself to death in the late 1940s.

In later years, the Raymond became the Crown Theatre and then had a successful life as Perkins Palace, site of southern California’s highest profile rock concerts of the 1970s and 80s. But the glorious theatre may be destroyed very soon if the current owner gets his way. I’m involved with a fantastic nonprofit group called Friends of the Raymond Theatre, led by Gina Zamparelli (the only other person on the planet obsessed with Henry Jensen). For almost 20 years Gina has successfully blocked the destruction of this irreplaceable treasure. Our group has attended many sessions of the Pasadena City Council which has shockingly approved the developer’s outrageous plans to gut the interior of the building and replace it with condos and chain stores. Various lawsuits have delayed this for quite some time but things are looking terribly grim at the moment. If you’re anywhere near La Cañada-Flintridge this weekend, please come to the HUGE Rummage Sale that is being held to save the theatre. I may even spontaneously start channeling Henry Jensen.

Why isn’t anyone producing a reality TV show about all the historical landmarks that are biting the dust every day because of greedy developers? By the way, did I mention that the feuding neighbors show is so desperate for contestants they are offering a $3,000 finders’ fee to anyone who suggests someone that they end up using? Maybe I’ll submit Julie Newmar and Jim Belushi since they are already suing each other for a long list of offences. In the meantime, I have GOT to get Dweezil Zappa on the phone…

Shaking the Blues Away

You know those people who have no boundaries or discernment? The strangers who sit down next to you on a bus and five minutes later you know all about their gall bladder operation, their best friend’s messy divorce, and their cousin’s arrest for indecent exposure? I think I’m becoming one of those people. Whenever I’m feeling particularly panicked or anxious, as I was for most of today, I lose any ability I have to keep my problems to myself and I am compelled to blather on to anyone who will listen, from the UPS man to the Starbucks barista. Emailing is no better—today I sent one over-the-top email to my boss along with two neurotic missives to colleagues in which I painted myself as a gross incompetent who is not bringing in nearly enough books for our company. Stop the shame spiral, I want to get off! Then when the blackness starts to lift, I feel like the sobered-up drunk who made a fool out of himself at the Christmas party and wants to slither into a hole.

On the other hand, I wonder if my tendency towards self-flagellation acts as some kind of release valve, allowing me to let off steam that might otherwise build to explosive levels. Maybe all of my mood swings are part of some carefully designed (by Satan?) system of checks and balances that prevents me from completely losing it and ending up in the West Adams Home for the Hopelessly Insane. Total repression one minute, total disclosure the next, it seems like a fair trade. Oh wait, I forgot about the option of actually becoming a healthy human being. Gotta try that one of these days.

And of course, when I’m in the midst of my Self-Hating Anxiety Disorder (SHAD?) I hate myself for hating myself so the miserable feelings snowball into hyper-narcissism. And then, thank God, some tiny shift will occur and the black storm clouds in my head begin to drift apart, allowing me to delineate between the real issues I am grappling with and the irrational belief that everyone has it together except for me, that I am doomed to fail because I’m just not good enough. Yuck.

I haven’t forgotten the vow I made on this very blog after my high school friend Julie died two weeks ago. I said I would remember her incredible spirit the next time I felt like I was losing perspective about what really matters. And I did think of Julie’s healing smile tonight and it did help me get a grip. Thank you, Julie. I had the pleasure of talking to some of her current friends after I wrote that post and finding out how her unusually giving and kind adolescent years matured into an unusually strong and loving adulthood. She is so missed but even in death she is bringing people closer together.

I’m keenly aware that blogging is the ultimate in public disclosure and sometimes (like right now) I cannot believe the things I write about in here. When I’m feeling “good,” I seem to have much clearer boundaries about how personal I’ll go than when I’m feeling emotionally shaky. Is one the Real Me and the other an illusion? I think not.

I noticed that a lot of blogs today were focused on this issue of exposure and discomfort including posts by two members of the (in)famous blogging Gottliebs. In “Blog: Geek Clique or Soapbox Confessional?” Annie Gottlieb wrote:

This makes me think about how I feel guilty and embarrassed in one way when I blog about personal stuff, and in another way when I don't. I started out as an impersonal, outward-looking blogger, but was dared and inspired by my brother True Ancestor and his blogfriends and admirers to risk being more self-revealing—only to embarrass the hell out of the other brother ("part of me thinks that people who reveal so much of themselves to the public should BE committed"). It's a no-win situation, or maybe I just haven't quite struck the balance that feels right to me yet. I tend to lurch from one extreme to the other. One way, I feel faintly exhibitionistic (and like I am exhibiting others, such as my husband, without their consent). The other way I feel masked and faintly phony.

Then her niece Sara chimed in with this rant on her “Raising up Sunshine” blog:

here's the thing: i resent my own blog. hows that! my blog mocks me in the background of my early evenings..."don't you have anything to say? aren't you interesting? what? nothing???? NOTHING?????"
fuck you, blog. fuck you, "Raising up Sunshine"!  what the fuck is that anyway!! then i sit in guilt and longingly look at my computer from across the room. it is a feeling of rejection; some entity's elitism has shut me out in the cold. the entity: my own creation. AYYEEEIII!!!!!

So I guess I am not alone in my blog angst. I recently read someone's opinion that people with blogs should only write when they have something to say. What does that even mean? Something to say? I never do! I always do! And now if I don’t occasionally wince with embarrassment because of what I’ve written in my blog, I somehow feel like I’m not properly committed to it. As I’ve been speculating, part of me NEEDS this venue for disclosure. I need the release or I really will go crazy. Sorry, folks.

So here I sit, attempting to use my blog to crawl out of my depression. And guess what—it’s working! Blog as confessional, blog as therapist, blog as stranger on the bus forced to listen to inappropriate ravings.

As I struggled to find my lost identity this weekend following my trip to Chicago, we were enjoying our obligatory holiday viewing of the MGM classic “Easter Parade” with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. Ann Miller, one of our favorites, co-stars as ruthless career gal Nadine Hale who dumps longtime partner Fred Astaire for a promising solo gig. Miller’s big number is a song that we all (including Leah) know by heart. Irving Berlin’s words mirror my philosophy of denial that has gotten me into heaps of trouble over the years:

Shaking the blues away,
Unhappy news away
If you are blue, it's easy to
Shake off your cares and troubles.
Telling the blues to go,
They may refuse to go
But as a rule, they'll go if you'll
Shake them away.

During the number Ann Miller taps furiously around the Technicolor set like a wild woman, her mouth frozen in an obscene smile. Was this the first musical depiction of bipolar disorder? I was just grateful that they altered the lyrics from the original version sung by Ruth Etting in “The Ziegfeld Follies of 1927”  which included several lines like “Ev'ry darkie believes that trouble won't stay, If you shake it away.” Oy.

But maybe I’m wrong to call this a song about denial. Maybe we can shake our demons away if we just LET THEM OUT, whether it be to the stranger on the bus or through our blogs. So yes, perhaps bloggers who write about their personal lives should be committed—but you should see what we’d be like if we didn’t write about them!

Proving that there's a way
To chase your cares away
If you would lose your weary blues
Shake ‘em away
Shake ‘em away!

I Am Risen

It’s Easter Sunday and I’m back in L.A. I’ve been sitting here in the warm sun (bless you California) trying to figure out why I was unable to write in this blog while I was in Chicago. Oh sure, I was busy and also sick as a dog, but it seemed more than that, as if the me that exists here in Los Angeles, the one who is capable of ruminating about my life, disappears when I return to the actual geography of my past. I love being with my family but find myself in a constant battle to avoid regressing to my Nixon-era emotional states. Whenever I’m in the Midwest my current life recedes into a foggy haze and I feel like I’m floating in some kind of netherworld, not belonging to my past or my present. Who is that unfamiliar woman sitting at our family dinner? Oh yeah, it’s Kendall, my wife! Someone asks how Leah is doing. Leah? Oh, Leah, my ten-year-old daughter back home! Am I the victim of some kind of “Manchurian Candidate” post-hypnotic suggestion, with my adult identity programmed to vanish at the first whiff of a Fluky’s hot dog or a Lou Malnati’s pizza?

As my sister packed up her house for her move, the tangible remnants of our shared memories were all around us. While my adult self flickered in and out of consciousness, long dormant sensory images came rushing to the surface. When I saw this forgotten 1960s picture of me and Sue taken at Lincoln Park Zoo, I found myself tumbling into the sepia tones like Alice in Wonderland. I remember every detail about being placed atop this real (but stuffed) bear and I can feel the coarse fur on the exposed parts of my legs. I remember grabbing onto the dead bear’s ears, scared that I was going to fall off, and being comforted by the touch of my sister’s hands on my back. I even recall the zoo photographer disappearing under the black curtain on his old-fashioned cameras as he told us to smile for the birdy. After the photo was taken, I bent over and kissed the bear’s head, feeling sorry for its miserable existence as I watched the next group of unruly children climb aboard.

My tendency whenever I’m in my hometown is to idealize the past. Everything was perfect when we were children and my family members were young and healthy and strong. None of us had a care in the world in those pleasure-filled days, right? Sorting through the countless boxes in her attic, my sister found a stash of old diaries from the late 60s and early 70s. She read me a few of the entries which, even when you take into consideration the overly dramatic nature of a teenaged girl, revealed a family history that did not always line up with my version, the one that was scrubbed clean of all dysfunction. My sister's account of one especially hideous Friday night dinner at my grandparents’ Lake Shore Drive apartment was so full of detail that I was able to break through my “Past Is Perfect” shell and allow the events of that long-ago evening to re-enter the soft tissue of my memory. But then my all-or-nothing psyche kicks into gear—if I acknowledge that those weekly Shabbos dinners were not all bathed in the golden light and sweet-tempered nostalgia of a classic Waltons episode, does that mean that all of those evenings (and by my last count I attended 1,454 of them before I moved away) are tainted and must be reviled instead of cherished? Among my well-stocked palette of neuroses, my all-good/all-bad polarization is the trait I most need to work on. I have different demarcation lines in my all-good/all-bad timelines, the most popular being my parents’ divorce. Perfect fantasy childhood on one side of the line and deeply troubled adolescence on the other. Other defining moments lead to equally inaccurate before-and-after histories: when my grandfather’s successful business went down the tubes, when my sister got cancer, the end of my first marriage, my mother’s diagnosis and death five months later, the sudden progression of my father’s blindness. Why do I have this need to see my life in black or white when I know that it has always existed in infinite shades of gray?

I found this picture of me and my sister eating soup in my grandparents’ breakfast room. Unlike our date with the bear, this image produces few sensory memories. Oh, I can smell my grandmother’s exquisite soup, something I haven’t tasted in decades, but I feel very disconnected from the little boy in the picture. Did I ever have that haircut? Wear those sleeveless t-shirts? I remember the taste and texture of the delicious tomatoes my grandmother would add to this soup and yet here is my mother scooping out the offending red chunks and depositing them in another bowl. Why can't I see myself in this boy? When I look at my sister I see the same person who dropped me off at O’Hare Airport yesterday morning. I instantly recognize the vulnerable look in her eyes, the bemused twist of her mouth, how her hand is resting on her cheek. Perhaps I feel so disassociated from that little boy because of the sad, depressed look in his eyes, a look which does not mesh with the mythology I have of myself during those years. This photo was taken years before my parents’ divorce when I was supposedly in the middle of my idyllic, carefree childhood. Yet this same haunting stare gazes out at me in many of the early photos I’ve recently found. I have no choice but to conclude that my tendency towards angst and depression did not emerge fully formed the day after my parents announced that they were splitting up.

What I do know in my heart of hearts is that throughout my 45 years, there have always been moments of excruciating pain, sadness, and despair as well as moments of intense joy, warmth, and hope—sometimes on the same day, the same hour, the same second. I must learn how to relinquish my irrational either/or view of the world. Why can't I just accept that life is a series of painful losses punctuated by occasional happy moments and discoveries?

On a side note, I must mention the conversation I’ve been listening to at the table next to where I am writing this. Two parents in their 60s are talking to their son who is about 25 or 26 years old. They are clearly Jewish and the son speaks with such heavy Yiddish inflection I wonder if he is a Yeshiva scholar. I hear him telling his parents about an older aunt of his new girlfriend who has a “mark on her arm from Hitler.” “What?” his father asks, “you mean a numbered tattoo from a concentration camp?” “Yeah, it’s a number,” he replies, “but it’s from Hitler. That’s what she told me.” The mother explains that the woman was using a figure of speech and that she most likely received the number on her arm when she arrived at Auschwitz. “Auschwitz? What’s Auschwitz” the young man asks, causing my hands to freeze in mid-keystroke and look up in disbelief. After the father’s patient description of the largest of the Nazi death camps, the son shrugs and says, “Nah, I know for a fact that Hitler tattooed the number on her himself.” OY. What are kids learning in high school and college history classes these days? I’m suddenly proud that Leah can name at least half of the concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Hmm, let’s review: wordy posts in desperate need of editing, stream-of-consciousness ramblings about my emotional makeup, meditations on my childhood fantasies, sudden non-sequitirs about Hitler and Auschwitz. Hooray, I’M BACK!!

Detour to the Second City

I’m in Chicago for an impromptu visit to help my sister pack up her house. Of course “helping” in this case consists of me spending hours looking at old family photos in already packed boxes and Sue and I fighting over whether I can steal them or at least scan them for my blog. We got to visit the fabulous house from 1910 they just bought with woodwork that is so beautiful I couldn’t stop caressing it. And now the task of packing up the endless treasure troves that my sister has amassed over the years. Although it makes for a difficult move, I’m sometimes grateful that my family has issues with OCD hoarding. In addition to countless blogworthy family items, Sue’s home also contains a virtual museum of American pop culture. Her collections need to be catalogued and placed in a special wing of the Smithsonian.

I had a delightful breakfast with my long-lost True Ancestor brother this morning and I’m looking forward to his trip next month to L.A. to promote his great book. I’m more convinced than ever that the Millers and the blogging Gottliebs are connected, if not by DNA then by some ancestral bonds that reach back through old Chicago to the shtetls of Eastern Europe. And I’m still not sure we weren’t switched at birth at Michael Reese hospital in 1959. God knows my sister liked him better than she likes me. Within five minutes of meeting, David offered to help with her move while I was in the next room trying to decide which of my grandmother’s silver trays might accidentally find their way into my carry-on luggage.

Chicago is still freaking cold for the end of March and I immediately got sick as I have been doing on every trip I’ve taken to the Midwest for the past fifteen years. Am I allergic to my family? Or is it psychosomatic like when Rob Petrie’s back went out every time he and Laura were about to take their trip to Lake Sissymanoonoo?

Your Dog Is Dead

Before she was even 10, Margaret O’Brien was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. After a bit part in the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland film “Babes on Broadway,” she catapulted to fame at the age of five when she got the lead in “Journey for Margaret,” playing a traumatized orphan in the London blitz who walks around clutching a toy bomb as if it were her teddy bear. She is eventually adopted by American newspaperman Robert Young and his wife Laraine Day who lost their own unborn baby during an air raid. O’Brien's first big role provided plenty of opportunity to display what she became best known for in Hollywood: her uncanny ability to cry on command. MGM was quick to cast O’Brien in a series of parts where the little tyke could sob at the drop of a hat.

Margaret bawled her way through films such as “Jane Eyre,” “Madame Curie,” and “Our Vines Have Tender Grapes” before playing one of her most popular roles, Judy Garland’s youngest sister Tootie Smith in “Meet Me in St. Louis.” At seven years old, she received star billing above such pros as Mary Astor and Leon Ames and even won an honorary Oscar for the role. The absence of wartime bombs or severe family dysfunction in the story did not prevent Margaret from exhibiting her trademark tears. The film’s major conflict involved Mr. Smith’s decision to accept a lucrative job offer and, horror of horrors, move his family from St. Louis to New York City. Realizing that she can’t take her snow people with her to their new home, O’Brien completely loses it and runs outside in her nightgown in the dead of winter to destroy her creations.

Vincent Minnelli claimed in his autobiography that he got Margaret O’Brien to cry so convincingly by telling her that her beloved dog had died. O’Brien later refuted this, saying that he was confusing her with fellow child star Jackie Cooper. The true story was that Margaret was having some trouble with the snowmen scene. Her mother spoke to Minnelli and then came over and told Margaret that they were going to have to use fake tears in her eyes to get the scene right. “You know,” Mrs. O’Brien added, “June Allyson always cries real tears. She never needs make-up!” O’Brien and 26-year-old Allyson were fierce competitors, known in Hollywood as the “town criers.” That was all Margaret needed to run onto the set and cry so hysterically that it took Judy Garland several minutes to calm her down after the cameras stopped rolling. For a different crying scene, Margaret asked Minnelli, “Do you want the tears to run all the way down my face, or should I stop them halfway?”

Leah hasn’t had to overwork her tear ducts in too many performances although she has often reduced me to tears with her poignant portrayals of characters as diverse as Otto Frank, Aunt Eller, Bill Sikes, and Bebe, the character in “A Chorus Line” whose mother told her she was “different” (“Different is nice, but it sure isn't pretty, pretty is what it’s about. I never met anyone who was different, who couldn’t figure that out.”). Tonight I saw Leah’s final two performances as Aunt Lulu Warnicker in the play “Footloose.” This was Leah’s 14th play with her theatre troupe. It’s great to watch how her acting, singing, and dancing skills have evolved over the past few years. It’s still incredibly moving for me to me to see Leah in center spotlight singing her guts out without a trace of the debilitating shyness I suffered from at her age.

Leah told me this morning that one of her close theatre friends, a gifted young actress and dancer, was not doing any more plays with their group because she wanted to become a professional actress and this was “just for fun.” We talked about how Leah might want to pursue acting when she gets older but for now she was perfectly content to continue “having fun” and performing in these musicals without thinking about more serious training. Phew. As much as I enjoy seeing Leah blossom on stage, I am grateful that she has no desire to enter the dog-eat-dog industry that rejects most child actors, spits others out with yesterday’s trash, and causes the rest of them to get on the waiting list at the Betty Ford Clinic.

I don’t need to go into the well-publicized litany of child actors gone bad. Former child star Robert Blake (who co-starred with Margaret O’Brien in 1943’s “Lost Angel”) may have been acquitted last week of murdering his wife but his is hardly a post-moppet success story. There seems to be a special holding cell at the L.A. County jail for many of the child stars of my youth even beyond the cast of “Diff’rent Strokes.” The statistics are sad. Rusty Hamer, Danny Thomas’s cute kid in “Make Room for Daddy” committed suicide in 1990. Lauren Chapin, who played sweet little Kitten on “Father Knows Best,” became a heroin addict and dabbled in prostitution before getting help. Anissa Jones, adorable doll-hugging Buffy on “Family Affair,” died of a lethal combination of cocaine, angel dust, Quaaludes, and Seconal before her 18th birthday. The coroner said it was one of the most severe cases of drug overdose ever documented in the county.

But you've heard all those horror stories. And it's true that for every suicide, drug overdose, or case of kleptomania, there are also child actors who led happy lives following their brief dose of stardom. Some, like Jodie Foster and Ron Howard, continued extremely successful careers as actors and directors. Others, like the seven Waltons or the six Brady kids, or even the “Facts of Life” girls, didn’t all make the transition to adult fame and fortune, but they seem to be having fulfilling lives with fond memories of their stints as household names.

Many of my own childhood favorites fared well in adulthood, though they didn’t all stay in the biz. Show me a boy in America who wasn’t in love with Angela Cartwright during the 1960s. Whether it was as Brigitta Von Trapp, poor Rusty Hamer’s sister in “Make Room for Daddy,” or teen bombshell Penny Robinson in “Lost in Space,” Angela was every Baby Boomer’s dream girlfriend. She and her sister, the excellent actress Veronica Cartwright, had very successful transitions out of child stardom. Veronica still acts and Angela is a photographer and has her own online boutique called Rubber Boots.

I had a crush on Patty and Cathy Lane, both played by Patty Duke who later revealed that her famous childhood was tortuous and that she only started enjoying her stardom after her bipolar condition was diagnosed. I also had the hots for twins Sharon and Susan in “The Parent Trap,” played by Hayley Mills, who said at the height of her childhood fame: “Acting is just a natural thing in my family. Other boys and girls go into the family business. So do we.”

Oh, the list of child actors I admired is endless. I’m sure many will make appearances in this blog at some point. One child star I must mention, although she may kill me, is Quinn Cummings, who played Marsha Mason’s 10-year-old daughter so perfectly in “The Goodbye Girl” that she was nominated for an Academy Award. Quinn went on to play brainy Annie Cooper in the popular TV series “Family” and even had a stint as the daughter of the first female President played by former child star Patty Duke in the short-lived “Hail to the Chief.” Quinn is a friend of ours and I’m happy to report that she grew up to be even smarter and funnier than the witty parts she played as a kid. Escaping the pitfalls of child stardom, Quinn started her own business after inventing a new type of baby sling called The HipHugger. If you haven’t already read Quinn’s brilliant blog, you should follow this link immediately and catch up.

As for Leah, she is working hard on her fake tears and is studying the complete works of Margaret O’Brien. Last week I went to a poetry reading at Leah’s school and laughed when I heard that Leah had titled her poem “Mr. Neely,” after the iceman character that Margaret O’Brien hangs out with in “Meet Me in St. Louis.” Next on the docket is the 1949 version of “Little Women.’ In the Louisa May Alcott book, Amy is the youngest March girl, but MGM turned poor Beth into the youngest daughter just so they could give the part to Margaret O’Brien and ask her to turn on the faucets. Margaret manages to upstage rival June Allyson as well as Janet Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor at her most breathtaking. But June Allyson gets the last laugh—or cry. After Beth is dead and gone, June sobs her way to the closing credits.

“You’re Going Out There a House, But You’re Coming Back a Star!”

One of the perks of living in our inner city neighborhood near downtown L.A. is that we are constantly being approached by location scouts. Most of the houses in our West Adams neighborhood were built between 1905 and 1915 and they are frequently used in movies, TV series, and commercials. It’s way cheaper than building a set and as long as there aren’t palm trees in the shot our street can double for any east coast city. It is definitely a neighborhood in transition. In the early part of the last century, West Adams was THE place to live and stars like Rudolph Valentino, Theda Bara, and Fatty Arbuckle built magnificent mansions along Adams Boulevard. On our street, several blocks to the north, the homes were much more modest but still gorgeous with inlaid hardwood floors, stained glass windows, wainscoting, built-ins to die for, and fantastic light fixtures designed to showcase that newfangled invention that was sweeping all the finer homes in Los Angeles—electricity.

Kendall and I first discovered the neighborhood on an L.A. Conservancy tour several years ago. I had been living in Los Angeles for many years and had never even heard of West Adams. We were awestruck by the beauty and Old World elegance of these homes, even though it was clear the neighborhood had seen MUCH better times. Back in the day, West Adams did not hold onto its elite status for long. As the boundaries of Los Angeles continued to inch west towards Hancock Park and Beverly Hills, so did the movie and society folks, who, like today, were always looking for the latest “in” address. The stock market crash of 1929 dealt one of the more lethal blows to our neighborhood. As fortunes disappeared, many of the single-family homes were torn down or turned into boarding houses or in-home health care facilities for the elderly.

The construction of the Santa Monica Freeway in the early 1960s provided a final death knell for West Adams. With the neighborhood basically cut in two, its fortunes fell to new lows. Many of the most beautiful mansions were torn down and replaced by poorly constructed apartment buildings. Gangs began running rampant in the area and many of the remaining homes fell into disrepair, becoming crack houses or shelters for squatters and the homeless.

In the meantime prices for new homes in other parts of Los Angeles began skyrocketing to obscene levels. In the aftermath of the 1992 riots, in which many more West Adams treasures were lost, preservation groups in Los Angeles began paying more attention to the area. The city of Los Angeles enacted legislation protecting many of these old streets from further destruction, and a hardy bunch of preservationists moved in and began the job of restoring these grand homes to their past glory.

The film crews soon followed and began setting up shop in many of the neighborhood’s oversized gems. The Fisher & Sons Funeral Home from “Six Feet Under” is just a few blocks away from our house and parts of “Ray” were shot on our block. We lucked out when we first moved in two years ago and immediately landed an episode of the show “Monk” starring Tony Shalhoub. In our episode, called “Mr. Monk and the Three Pies,” the superb actor John Turturro debuted as Shalhoub’s older brother Ambrose Monk. Our next-door-neighbor’s house was cast as the Monk family home which Turturro’s character, an agoraphobic packrat, has not left in 32 years. Our house was the home of the killer in that week’s episode, played by actor Holt McCallany (the real-life son of chanteuse Julie Wilson). The “Monk” crew couldn’t have been nicer but we were a little scared for our newly restored wood floors when we saw them lugging a huge barbell set into our living room (our burly murderer was a weightlifter). They were only filming on our first floor so I stayed put in my office upstairs trying to read manuscripts and talk to authors on the phone as the cast gathered below. In the first scene, Holt had to slam our huge front door, which is framed by the original 1909 panels of leaded glass. I silently prayed that the glass would survive as I listened to violent take after take. Next thing I knew Holt was brandishing a gun in our hallway and then setting our neighbor’s house on fire. And they really did set it on fire, replacing the windows and building a fireproof booth in the upstairs bedroom. Since Monk supposedly grew up in Pennsylvania, trucks from the Philadelphia Fire Department suddenly blared down our southern California street.

Kendall, Leah, and I soon discovered the most exciting part of film shoots: Craft Services! For four days we got to join the cast and crew for fantastic catered breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. Being our first shoot, we didn’t realize how they were spoiling us with the endless supply of gourmet items and different food stations set up on our front lawn. Leah’s favorite was the all-day “goody truck” parked in front of the house which contained every kind of candy, snack, ice cream, and beverage you could imagine. And can’t we always have a cappuccino cart just outside our front door? When the AFI student films started being shot on our street in later months we were appalled by the paltry crafts services. We had become prime-time divas, the kind who demanded room temperature Evian in their dressing room and platters of freshly cut exotic vegetables.

Our “Monk” experience also didn’t prepare us for the series of rejections our house would soon endure. Every week another location scout would come to the door to snap digital pictures of our different rooms. We were up for a prestigious feature film, a Japanese soft drink commercial, a public service ad for drug abuse, a new TV series about a paranormal detective squad, an independent horror film. Every time they left we thought we had the gig, but time and again something would change and the job would go elsewhere. Wasn’t it enough that I had a daughter in theatre—now I also had to worry about our house’s career too?

Soon after the “Monk” crew pulled up stakes, the MTV reality show “Sorority House” moved in next door for several months. I had fantasies of Leah making her TV debut on the show as the sweet sorority sisters took turns babysitting and watching her perform scenes from her latest Rodgers & Hammerstein production. Instead I ended up making Leah swear to me that she would never to join a sorority. The party-loving, music-blaring, fraternity-chasing girls had a tendency to park in our driveway no matter how much we begged them not to. Kendall ruined at least one important shot when she burst in through their front door screaming “That is NOT okay!” while all cameras turned in her direction. I’m sure that moment was included in the show’s blooper reel at the wrap party!

Yesterday they shot a pilot for a remake of the old Darren McGavin “Nightstalker” series on our block. This one stars Stuart Townsend (aka Mr. Charlize Theron) and while the main action of the episode took place in our neighbor’s house, we happily rented our driveway to crafts services. In one scene a grandfather murders his grandchildren by hanging them in the attic. Have you ever tried to edit a manuscript about critical literacy in early childhood education while child actors are screaming for their lives just outside your window? I thought they’d use mannequins or dummies but they actually rigged nooses for these kids and had them hanging there motionless for six minutes at a time. Leah didn’t seem traumatized by it, though. She was too busy surveying the candy selection on the catering truck.

During the shoot a director stopped by and asked if he could see our bedroom. He said he wanted to use it next Monday for a feature film. We gave our okay and wondered which movie stars would soon be in our bed. But alas, we just got a call that they’re using a different house in Monrovia. Damn, rejected again. I can’t help but feel bad for our house. Do you think I’m taking this all too personally?

I had a dream
A dream about you, house
It’s gonna come true, house
They think that we’re through, but house,
You’ll be swell!
You’ll be great!
Gonna have the whole world on a plate!
Startin’ here, startin’ now,
Honey, everything’s coming up roses!

My Loving Parents: Pat and Roald

Last weekend Leah and I saw the preview for Tim Burton’s new version of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” starring Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. We both shrieked in horror when we saw what Johnny Depp looked like in the film with his Prince Valiant haircut and a set of ultra-white prosthetic teeth that look like Chiclets. But I’m still looking forward to seeing the film—I think Burton was smart to go back to the original Roald Dahl book to craft his characters and distance himself as much as possible from the beloved 1971 movie and from Gene Wilder’s iconic performance as Willy Wonka.

No matter what I start writing about in this blog I seem to continually veer back to the early 1970s—ironic since this is a time period I spent decades trying to forget. 1971 was the year my parents went through their very ugly divorce, and also the year when I parachuted myself into a fantasyland of films, books, and TV shows—anything that would give my numbed-out self a safe way to experience the emotions I’d hidden away for the duration. In addition to “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” 1971 was the year that “Fiddler on the Roof” came out as well as other movies I loved such as “Bananas,” “The Last Picture Show,” “Harold and Maude,” and “Nicholas and Alexandra.”

On television, I was transfixed by “The Homecoming,” the original movie about the Walton family of Virginia that spawned the TV series. All of the Walton kids were present in the movie, but Miss Michael Learned had not yet donned Olivia Walton’s apron. The part of the mother was played by Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, the real-life wife of author Roald Dahl.

At the time my two favorite books were Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “James and the Giant Peach.” At first glance they seemed to be fun, colorful children’s stories, but the books were actually dark, macabre studies of human fallibility. While protagonists Charlie and James exhibited an innocence and goodness that belied their bleak, poverty-stricken lives, they were surrounded by a coterie of unsavory, mean-spirited, and even sadistic characters. I don’t think any so-called children’s author in history understood the dark side of childhood as well as Roald Dahl. I had never thought of writing to a famous person before, but that spring, holed up alone in my room with my books and portable TV, I longed to communicate with the creator of these sinister tales.

The few words that Roald Dahl wrote back to me on a postcard from Norway are implanted in my brain and I can recite them without taking a breath: “My dear Danny—Your splendid letter has followed me here. Thank you so much for writing. With love from Roald Dahl.” I used to study the Rand McNally globe in my bedroom and imagine the journey my splendid letter took as it traveled from Dahl’s estate in Buckinghamshire, England all the way to his vacation resort in Spitsbergen, Norway. And there, at his side, possibly reading my letter over her dear husband’s shoulder and wiping tears from her eyes at the poignancy of my words, was the original Olivia Walton, Patricia Neal.

Dahl and Neal perfectly filled the role of replacement parents. I gobbled up the story of Patricia Neal’s debilitating strokes—she suffered three aneurysms on February 17, 1965. Newspapers around the world blared the headline: “Film Actress Patricia Neal Dies from Stroke at 39.” The year before Neal had won a Best Actress Oscar for her magnificent performance as Alma, the earthy housekeeper in “Hud.” No one expected her to survive the strokes or the three-week coma that followed. When she finally emerged, the pregnant actress was paralyzed on her right side and unable to speak or understand conversations. It was her husband Roald Dahl who was largely credited for bringing his wife back to life through sheer stubbornness and love. Patricia Neal was obviously as stubborn as her husband, and defied all of the doctors’ prognoses. “We Tennessee hillbillies don’t conk out that easy,” she later said. What an incredible love story, I thought. Why were the Dahls able to triumph through adversity while my family collapsed like a house of cards under the weight of my mother’s affair and other pent-up hostilities.

Shortly after getting the postcard from Roald Dahl, I went to see the just-opened movie “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” I reveled in the dismal depictions of childhood dysfunction. Whether it was the gluttony of Augustus Gloop, the spoiled excess of Veruca Salt, the nasty gum-chewing habits of Violet Beauregard, or the brain-killing media obsession of Mike Teavee, it was obvious that these vices were the by-products of their toxic families. As the Oompa Loompas sang:

Oompa Loompa doompadee doo
I've got another puzzle for you
Oompa Loompa doompadah dee
If you are wise you will listen to me

Who do you blame when your kid is a brat
Pampered and spoiled like a Siamese cat?
Blaming the kids is a lie and a shame
You know exactly who's to blame:
THE MOTHER AND THE FATHER!

This 1970s view of parental responsibility suited me just fine. I started planning my summers with my new family in England and Norway. Surely Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal would welcome me into their large clan with open arms. “With love from Roald Dahl,” he wrote, not “Sincerely, Mr. Dahl.” Did Patricia Neal turn down “The Waltons” TV series so she’d have more time for us, her real children?

The next children’s book that Roald Dahl published was called “Danny the Champion of the World.” What was I to think? The author was obviously so inspired by my splendid letter and my pluck and determination that it inspired this new story. I searched in vain for any mention of me in the book’s dedication or the interviews he gave about his new work. But nothing could convince me that I wasn’t his Danny. Let’s see…how much allowance money did I need to get a one-way ticket to Gipsy House, the sprawling Dahl estate I would soon be calling home?

But like the characters in his books, I eventually realized that life does not provide any trouble-free Golden Tickets. It turned out that Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal had enough pain and misery in their lives to make my family drama look pretty rosey. The pain began even before their marriage. I read about Patricia Neal’s tumultuous five-year affair with Gary Cooper. At one point, Neal received a telegram that read, “I HAVE HAD JUST ABOUT ENOUGH OF YOU. YOU HAD BETTER STOP NOW OR YOU WILL BE SORRY. MRS. GARY COOPER.” Neal ultimately ended the affair and sent Cooper back to his wife. Shortly thereafter, at a party in New York, she met an up-and-coming English author.

Patricia Neal and Roald Dahl were married on July 2, 1953, one month to the day before my Chicago parents walked down the aisle. But the Dahls’ married life was hardly the carefree one I fantasized about. The Dahls had five children but their infant son, Theo, was struck by a taxi, and needed years of physical therapy following a debilitating head injury. Their eldest daughter Olivia contracted a bad case of the measles and died at the age of 7. And in the end, Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal went through their own well publicized divorce that was even more hideous than what my parents put each other through. Neal told all in her autobiography, “As I Am,” and following Dahl’s death in 1990 many people concurred that he could be a ruthless, egotistical bully. Patricia Neal was recently interviewed by Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies. Despite all the pain she suffered in her marriage and the awful things she wrote about her former husband, she admitted that he was the love of her life and that she still loves him today. Go figure. My own family recovered from my parents’ divorce to such an extent that my father was one of the main speakers at my mother’s funeral. Like a good Roald Dahl story, life is so much more complex than lesser authors would have us believe.

As Willy Wonka sang to me from that screen in 1971:

If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Wanna change the world?
There's nothing to it.

Class Notable

There was a horrendous tradition at my Chicago high school called the Senior Class Notables. Everyone in the12th grade would fill out ballots for 25 different categories. The names of the winners would be posted on a giant bulletin board and then the people posed together in a picture for the yearbook. The contest would have been bad enough if it had been limited to things like Best Laugh and Most Talented, but it also included horribly mean categories like Class Freak, Class Cuckoo, Class Snob, and Most Conceited. Can you imagine how humiliating it was for the Class Freaks (code for least popular) to have to pose next to the Best Looking and Most Popular winners? What were the adults in that school thinking? Above is the photo of the 1976 Von Steuben High School Class Notables. I managed to stay off the radar screen for this contest, thank God. I’m surprised by how many of my former classmates I remember. Standing on top of the table on the right is Alan Specter, Best Personality. Alan once played Annie Sullivan to my Helen Keller in an all-boy production of “The Miracle Worker” that we performed for the whole class. To the left of Alan is Ann Schayer, Class Snob (I wonder if that title was borne out in adulthood), and to his right, Carol Anderson, Friendliest (not to me). On the far left of the photo is Lisa Anderson, Smartest, standing next to multiple award winner Shawn Anderson (no relation) who was voted Best Looking, Best Build, Best Eyes, and Most Conceited (no wonder after getting all those awards!). The African-American girl in the top row with her fists in the air is Karla Scott, Most Soulful. Ouch, can you believe we had a category specifically for our few black classmates? I’m surprised we didn’t have Best Jew while we were at it (well, we did have Class Yenta, Best Nose, and Class Mouth, God help us). Below Karla is her male Most Soulful counterpart, Mark Peeples, and below him Jack Silver, Class Flirt. Jack now lives in L.A. and is the big shot Program Director of KLSX, our Howard Stern talk radio station. What amazes me most about Jack (besides his facial hair which I was years away from having) is that in the career section of the yearbook Jack said he wanted to be a radio personality. It’s incredible to me that he already knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. On the bottom row all the way to the left is the girl our class voted Most Likely to Succeed, Julie Rotter.

I got out my old yearbook tonight because I just found out that Julie Rotter died this weekend. I’m still having a hard time comprehending this incredibly sad news, and I can’t stop looking at pictures of her. There are many to choose from in our yearbook because Julie was one of those students who was involved in the widest possible range of activities. She can be found in photos of the National Honor Society, the staff of the school newspaper, tennis team, drama club, mixed chorus, girls glee, cross country, teachers’ aides, the list is endless. I, on the other hand, participated in no extracurricular activities at all, and while I did get excellent grades, I had such a loathsome contempt for high school by then that I took every Wednesday off during my senior year just to prove that I could. On my yearbook page I am surrounded by people who saw themselves as future psychiatrists, lawyers, lab technicians, and millionaires. What did I say I wanted to be in the future? “Dismembered.” Good God, I had completely forgotten that painfully unfunny joke, which must have resulted from my disgust for all questionnaires placed in front of me that year. My friend Helena did me one better and stated her goal was to be “sexually reassigned.” Weren’t there any adults supervising the content of the yearbook?

I did appear in this one photo with Julie Rotter. It’s the French Honor Society, a group you were automatically a member of if you got As in French for two years. That’s me in the top row, second from the right. I’m sitting in between Donna Anton and Rosanna Marquez. Rosanna went to Harvard Law School, became a Regional Director for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under Bill Clinton, and later served in Mayor Daley’s cabinet. That’s Julie all the way on the left. I can barely remember anything of my high school years but for some reason I vividly remember sitting down on those steps to take this picture and Julie hoisting herself up on that banister.

I know it’s tempting to start putting people who have died on a pedestal but that’s not what I’m doing when I say that Julie Rotter was the embodiment of kindness in an environment that could be quite cruel. She had the kind of stubbornly cheerful nature that should have made my surly high school self groan but she was so unabashedly sincere that I always loved being around her. It was impossible for me to be in her presence without smiling, no matter how hard I tried to stay faithful to my role as Disgruntled High School Student. In a culture ruled by clearly designated cliques, racial and class tensions, and the manipulative backstabbing that adolescents are so good at, I don’t think Julie Rotter ever said an unkind word about anyone in that school.

When I opened the cover of my 1976 yearbook tonight and saw what Julie had written to me I winced with sadness and regret. I’ve long forgotten the inside joke about “getting thrown up on” but I do remember how much I enjoyed Julie’s wicked sense of humor, the perfect complement to her natural sweetness. What other teenager in the mid-1970s could use the word “grand” and get away with it? So why didn’t we get to know each other better that summer? Why didn’t I keep in touch?

I didn’t see Julie again until our 20th high school reunion in 1996. The reunion was awful but it was great connecting with her and discovering that she had also moved to southern California where she lived with her husband and children. The following year I went to her home about an hour south of Los Angeles for a gathering of all the Von Steuben alumni now living on the West Coast. My former classmate, now Julie Shumski, had barely aged in 20 years. My last memory of her from that evening was watching her in the kitchen surrounded by her four adoring children. Julie was standing over the sink, radiating the same 1000-kilowatt smile that always used to make me forget how much I was supposed to be hating my school life.

I had every intention of getting together with Julie again but I never did. I lost her address and wanted to look her up but I never got around to it and the years started slipping away like one of those montages in a Busby Berkeley film where the pages of the calendar fly off the screen. About a year ago I heard that Julie was ill and I renewed my efforts to track her down. No luck. Then why, after I found out she died this weekend, was I able to try a little harder and find her address and phone number in a couple of hours? I keep thinking of her husband and those four beautiful children and what it must have been like to know you’re going to be leaving your loved ones at such a young age. What do you say to them? How can you possibly prepare them or yourself for that? I still grieve the loss of my mother every day and I was 39 when she died.

Julie is the seventh person from my high school class to have died. That seems like a hell of lot since we’re only in our mid-40s. Starting now, I am going to think about all of the people in my life that I’ve wanted to touch base with and I’m going to make that a priority instead of something I always put off because I’m so busy. I’m going to carry with me Julie Rotter’s brilliant smile and the feelings of warmth and genuine caring I experienced every time we communicated. And I’m going to examine those neuroses I live in much of the time that cause me to constantly berate myself for all the things I think I am lacking. When I feel those negative thoughts taking over I’m going to remember that image of Julie happily ensconced in her kitchen surrounded by people who loved her so much. For once that stupid high school contest got it right: Julie Rotter—Most Likely to Succeed.

May 2005 Update:

The response to this post about Julie Rotter Shumski has been amazing and a testament to how loved she was by everyone who ever came in contact with her. I've been in touch with the people at Morasha Jewish Day School, the wonderful progressive school that Julie and her family believed in so strongly and where Julie served as president for several years. The school has set up a Julie Rotter Shumski Memorial Scholarship Fund. I urge you to contact this school at 949-459-6330 x19 or [email protected] and contribute to this fund as one way to honor Julie's memory.

We’re Gonna Teach You to Fly High!

I began my career as a television writer in the spring of 1972. Nixon had just returned from his historic trip to Red China, the Apollo astronauts were still landing on the moon, and the first issue of Ms. Magazine was on the stands. On television, the debut season of “All in the Family” was breaking new ground and America was just beginning its love affair with Mary Richards. And there I was in the middle of it.

Okay, I wasn’t exactly writing for Norman Lear. In fact, I was only 12 years old and still in elementary school, but my writing did appear on a popular TV show that year. “Zoom” premiered on PBS in January 1972, just a few months after “The Waltons” began its run. It was a ground-breaking program for its day. Instead of precocious child actors, the show featured a group of non-professional children from the Boston area. Where “The Mickey Mouse Club” was all glitz and glamour, presenting a well scrubbed version of childhood fun, “Zoom” was written by kids and for kids (with help from an adult staff, of course). To avoid turning the working class Zoom kids into the next Brady Bunch, the children had to sign contracts saying they would not appear in any commercials or other professional gigs for five years. I recently discovered my prized cache of Zoom cards featuring the seven original cast members who I came to view as close friends.

We’re gonna zoom zoom zoom-a-zoom
Come on and zoom-a-zoom-a-zoom-a-zoom
Come on give it a try
We’re gonna show you why
We’re gonna teach you to fly high
Come on and zoom! Come on and zoom zoom!

Can you even count the number of early 70s drug references present in that frenetic theme song? It’s worse than “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Puff the Magic Dragon.” I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that the young producers of the show had just emigrated from Haight-Ashbury and were still working the psychedelic drugs out of their systems. The quick-cut pacing, bizarre Ubbi Dubbi language used by cast members, and freaky production numbers had the definite feel of a flower-powered acid trip! Every week the kids would sit on the floor and have a ZoomRap about important and controversial topics. It was obvious the opinionated kids were not being fed a network-approved script. During one heated discussion about racism, one cast member blurted out, “I just think the whites should stay with the whites and the blacks should stay with the blacks!” The rest of the cast lashed into the poor kid. Now that’s reality TV! Can you imagine such a conversation making it to the air today?

The show was integrated, 1972-style. Two token blacks in a sea of white kids. This looked just like the new court-ordered integration in my grammar school. On "Zoom" we had Nancy and Kenny and in my class we had Patricia and Mark, who were bussed in from an undisclosed location. Now remember kids, Black is Beautiful, but do try to blend in, won’t you? It might be better if you don’t talk about your neighborhood that much since we won’t be visiting, and please don’t use any of that black lingo—you want to get ahead here in our privileged world, don’t you? But oh my God, let’s talk about how COOL we are now that we have black friends! Oh, and don’t even look for any Latino or Asian kids on “Zoom” or at school, we’re not quite ready for that. Oh well, at least the nod to integration on “Zoom” was better than “The Mickey Mouse Club”—can you even imagine a black kid on that show? But then again, there were no black people living in the United States in the 1950s, right? Not on TV, anyway.

The main premise of “Zoom” was that kids from around the country would send in original sketches, songs, stories, crafts, recipes, and discussion topics, which the cast would read or perform, giving the real kids full credit. The show received tens of thousands of entries every week and the Zoom cast constantly begged for more with their hypnotic chant:

Write Zoom, Z-Double-Oh-M!
Box Three-Five-Oh
Boston, Mass
Ohhhhh-Two-One-Three-Foooooooour!

My sister’s friend Debby Becker sent in an activity where you draw a picture with crayon and then cover the whole thing with a wash of watery black paint producing something that looked like a black-light rock concert poster. When I heard Joe and Tracy read Debby’s name on the air I couldn’t believe my ears. Someone I know is FAMOUS, I thought. I had to have a piece of that. And I could do way better than such a tired old art project. The next day I ran home from school and began writing and illustrating a 12-page book called “Tommy the TV.” I only wish I saved a copy of this story because I could spend several therapy sessions reviewing the psychosocial implications of this tale which involved a talking television taking control of a boy’s life until the boy finally blows the set up and rebuilds it so that it only plays good shows and becomes the boy’s best friend. Oy. My story was read on the show by Jon and my dear black friend Nancy and they even animated some of my drawings. If I won a Pulitzer Prize I’m not sure it could ever match the thrill of hearing my words read on national television 33 years ago. I was a mini-celebrity the next day in school since everyone in my class had seen the episode. My fame lasted until art class when a girl named Michelle snapped “Aren’t you a little OLD to be on “Zoom?” at which point the other kids started laughing and singing the Zoom theme song in a sneering voice. They’re just jealous, I thought, sinking deeper into the shame that would forever accompany any sense of accomplishment I’d have in my life.

Before I leave the LSD-laced world of “Zoom,” I must mention another reason I watched the show. NINA! Gorgeous, alluring, demure, sensitive, sweet thirteen-year-old Nina. Oh my God, I had such a crush on this cast member that I was prepared to drop my girlfriend Erin Walton like a hot potato. Nina was my generation’s Annette—I think every American boy born between 1957 and 1964 lusted after this beautiful creature. Nina and Tommy were the older kids on the show and I became livid whenever Nina made googley eyes at him during some of the musical numbers or when they were talking Ubbi Dubbi. Stubop ubit, Nubinuba! Tubommuby duboesubn’t lubove yubou lubike ubI dubo! On one show Nina strummed her guitar and sang a heartbreaking song she wrote herself. Her lyrics brought tears to my eyes—so what if they were wildly inappropriate for a thirteen-year-old:

It began in March and it ended in May
I can tell you the hour I can tell you the day
I can tell you how long it’s been since he went away
So Lord please bring him back to me…today!

Did some bastard dump my precious Nina? Or did she have an eighteen-year-old boyfriend who was just shipped off to Vietnam? At the end of that first season, several of the cast members left the show, including Tommy and Nina, to make way for a constantly evolving and younger cast. I’d love to know what happened to that original group, especially since their contracts forbade them to capitalize on their fame until it was too late. All would now be in their mid-40s. Did some of them become drug addicts? (This was the 1970s after all.) Are they now accountants or lawyers or producers for public television? I doubt any of them made a dime off the show. I once met a guy who went to high school with Joe in Boston and he said that the other kids used to taunt him with the nickname “Zoom-fag!”

I heard that there’s a new version of “Zoom” on PBS now and I’m sure the show is fully integrated with Guatemalan and Palestinian and Hmong Zoom kids. But no matter how PC the cast gets, I bet the 2005 ZoomRaps aren’t nearly as honest as the 1972 ones.

Come on and zoom
Come on and zoom zoom!

Mayor Who?

Sometimes it really hits me how different Los Angeles is from my hometown of Chicago. Did this week’s mayoral primary even register in the chatter at the local Starbucks? I paid a little attention to the race but I didn’t have a single conversation about it with Kendall or anyone I know, not even my usually opinionated friends. This could never happen in Chicago, at least not in the Chicago I grew up in where mayoral politics was a mass obsession on par with the thin/thick crust pizza debate and who was a better team, the Cubs or the White Sox (these allegiances often reflected strict north side/south side party lines). I don’t want to paint a picture that L.A. is drowning in apathy and I know there are activists here who live and breathe city politics, but I feel safe in saying that the political zeitgeist of this community doesn’t hold a candle to Chicago’s where the average six-year-old could probably name his precinct captain and alderman.

Not that Chicago’s version of democracy was always about choice. As far as I knew, Mayor Daley had a hold on the mayor’s office that made the Pope look like a transient. He was first elected mayor in 1955, four years before I was born, and stayed in office through six terms until his death on December 20, 1976 when I was a freshman in college. I remember the exact moment I found out he had died. I was on the Ravenswood El heading home after an endless day of Christmas job drudgery at my grandfather’s State Street clothing store. I was riding one of those rush hour trains where your nose is in someone’s armpit and your back is digging into the metal handle on someone’s Carson Pirie Scott shopping bag. I was thinking about how I would never, ever go into the family business when out of the corner of my eye I suddenly spotted the gigantic headline on someone’s copy of the Sun-Times: MAYOR DALEY DEAD. It took at least a minute for those words to register in my brain, and even then I couldn’t believe it. By the time I got off the train, everyone was buzzing about it. Some people were crying, some just looked dazed, and even people who loathed the mayor (and there were many) seemed terribly shaken up. The “end of an era” cliché was never more true than on that bitter cold day.

Mayor Daley had long been a polarizing figure in Chicago although he was largely supported by the city’s liberal Jews. I remember my parents saying how he “gave Kennedy the election” in 1960 but as far as they were concerned, that was a good use of his unbridled power. During the social unrest of the late 1960s, greater divisions started emerging in the living rooms of Chicago. The mixed feelings about Mayor Daley came to a head during the 1968 Democratic Convention. The whole country had reached the boiling point that summer—both Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had been murdered and the deaths in Vietnam were mounting as fast as support for the war was disappearing. As the convention to nominate Hubert Humphrey got underway, war protesters from all over the nation began swarming into the city. Mayor Daley would have none of it. Instead of reasoning with the anti-war protesters (whose numbers included William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jean Genet, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin) and allowing them a voice at the convention, Daley dispatched over 12,000 armed police officers and called in the Illinois National Guard and federal troops. Hundreds of people were injured in a series of bloody clashes, all recorded and played in living color on the nightly news. On the Wednesday of the convention, which we later learned was the most violent day, my father piled us into the family car and we headed for the center of action, Grant Park and South Michigan Avenue. I’m not sure what my parents were thinking—what was next, a road trip to Three Mile Island? I remember my father pointing out the floor of the Conrad Hilton Hotel that was Humphrey’s headquarters. Earlier that day fumes from the tear gas used by the police and the stink bombs thrown by the protesters had drifted into the hotel causing a brief evacuation. The normally pristine Grant Park looked like a tornado had passed through and as we got onto the outer drive my parents began one of the worst arguments I had ever heard up to that point. My father was supporting Mayor Daley’s actions and saying that he did what had to be done in the situation—that some of these protesters were a true menace. My mother screamed that Daley was a fascist pig and she couldn’t believe my father was defending the Gestapo-like violence. In retrospect, I think the moment when my mother angrily turned her head towards the passenger-side window marked the first step on the road to their divorce three years later.

My grandfather also sided with Mayor Daley. The following year he received this letter from the mayor, thanking him for his positive words about the police force “when so often we only receive adverse comments.” I wish I could find the picture I’ve seen of my grandfather with Mayor Daley—two patriarchal figures who had so much in common. They even looked alike, despite the fact that my grandfather was an orthodox Jew and you couldn’t get more Irish than Richard Daley. St. Patrick’s Day in Daley’s Chicago was a huge holiday. Do they still dye the Chicago River emerald green every year? Even after Daley died in 1976 we thought there would always be an Irish Catholic on the Chicago throne. How could there not be? It’s not like you’d ever see a Jewish or Protestant Pope!

Michael Bilandic was appointed mayor after Daley’s death and was elected in his own right the following year. He was defeated in the next election because of a four-letter word: SNOW. It was a brutal winter in 1979 and the city’s poor snow removal practices were exploited by Bilandic’s challenger Jane Byrne, who until the blizzard didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected. But Byrne won and became the first female mayor of Chicago and the first person to ever defeat the once invincible Democratic machine which had supported Bilandic. One of Byrne’s more memorable stunts was her 1980 move into Cabrini-Green, one of the most dangerous low-income housing projects in the country (and the location for the sitcom “Good Times”). She did call attention to the miserable conditions there but after three weeks she moved back into her luxury condo a few blocks away. Harold Washington became the first African-American mayor of Chicago in 1983, and showed signs that he might enjoy the longevity of Mayor Daley but he died in office at the beginning of his second term in 1987. Two years later, the Daley dynasty was reborn with election of Richard J. Daley’s son, Richard M. Daley. Following in his father's footsteps, Daley is currently on his fifth term in office. People who are graduating high school this year have never known another mayor.

Why is interest in the mayor so different in this city? Our mayors here seem more like figureheads. Of course we’ve had our share of colorful characters. Damien Marchessault was mayor of Los Angeles during the Civil War but his term was cut short when he committed suicide in the Council Room of Los Angeles City Hall. Where is CNN when you need them? Charles E. Sebastian became mayor in 1915 but was forced to resign when he was accused of beating a disabled man to death. He was also having an affair and letters to his mistress were published in the newspaper in which he called his wife the “Old Haybag.” Mayor George Cryer led the city for most of the 1920s. Problem was he also led an organized crime syndicate that ran gambling and prostitution rackets throughout southern California. Oy. I remember when L.A. mayors had real star power. Mayor Sam Yorty was a frequent guest on the Johnny Carson Show. Tom Bradley also had charisma, as did Richard Riordan even though I despised his politics. Riordan seemed to be losing it last year in a televised event at our main public library. A little girl asked him if he knew what her name meant in English and he inexplicably replied, “It means stupid, dirty girl,” and laughed. He later said the incident was a failed attempt at humor. I’ll say!

So why is the current race between Mayor James Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa such a snooze? I wonder if the May 17 runoff election will get as pathetic a turnout as this week’s primary. We’ve seen what happened with Schwarzenegger. I bet if George Clooney ran for Mayor of Los Angeles, he’d make Mayor Daley look like a has-been.