“Hello? Anybody out there?” - Part Two

We were talking about Parents:

“Just seeing a kid in show business,” said Lonnie Burr, an original 1955 Mouseketeer, “tells you all you need to know about the parents.”

Roddy McDowall wouldn’t talk about his experience as a child star, even to his life-long friend and fellow kid star, Dickie Moore. “I just can’t talk about it, Dick” he’s quoted as saying, “because every time I do, I know it was wrong. Wrong.”

30 years ago, confused about the cumulative effect of the interviews I was conducting with the original Mouseketeers for my Dell Book (1977) called “Walt, Mickey & Me,” I pleaded with the most insightful former kid star I knew, Jackie Cooper, to help me understand the underlying “messages” I was getting after 30 face-to-face interviews.

“Here’s how I tackle the subject,” he told me over an early morning breakfast across the street from the old Republic Studios where both of us had worked as children. “First, tell me the composition of the child star’s family; is it an intact, two parent home, or a single Mom, and are there any siblings? Second, tell me the nature of this child’s Fame; are they famous as a sexpot, like Sue Lyon in “Lolita,” or a borderline psychotic like Patty McCormack playing in “The Bad Seed,” or are they like you playing the All-American boy on “Donna Reed?” The nature of one’s Fame pretty much determines how civilians treat you when you get out in the real world. Third, and most important of all, tell me how old this child star was then their career came to an end. Certain ages are more vulnerable when the work disappears.”

“From those three things,” Jackie Cooper went on, “I will make predictions…and my predictions have been frighteningly accurate.”

Everybody get that? Remember who’s talking…and to whom. Jackie Cooper as a child crafted indelible images. He served in the Navy during WW II. He graduated Notre Dame. He starred in several series. He was the CEO of a major studio. He was and is a quality Director. He’s “been there.”

I especially want all of you potential Stage Parents who will be reading this to ask yourself, “Think you know more than Jackie Cooper?” Do you think you’re more sensitive, smarter, or experienced? When you make a habit of discounting the words and sentiments of all those thousands who have gone before you, my friend, you are doomed to repeat the mistakes of History.

Fame is what happens to the child. Whatever the size of the army that surrounds a child star (too often an army of one unemployed parent) it is the person on the bulls-eye who has to shoulder the consequences. Yes, parents have their pride and their laments, and siblings may come in for their share of life’s blows, but at the end of the day it is that real-life child wrapped up in show business taffy that must deal with the Jupitarian gravity of success come too early.

Lindsay Lohan, recently reunited with her now-sober father, is dealing with her demons as best she can while her mother, Dena, just started filming her own new reality show whose premise is to show Dena Lohan turning her other two children into stars. This is cultural sickness. Where was Britney’s mother when the decision was made ten years ago to turn this former Mouseketeer into a Pop Tart? Did anyone seriously believe that young Britney decided to dress herself up in a cliché porn costume and, at all of sixteen, “shake her booty?” I mean, Puh-leeze. A Catholic schoolgirl’s costume? Is Britney’s mother really writing a book?

When a career starts to take off there is an undeniable pressure to push and push again. “Strike while the iron is hot,” is the catch phrase. It takes a diamond-tough character…or years of witnessing bitter experience…to resist the pressures that come from Agents, anxious for their 10%, or Managers eager to pocket their 15%, especially when the manager is a Parent. There is a fifty-year history of young females, for example, suddenly shedding their clothes so they appear more “grown up.” Sherry Jackson, the gorgeous daughter in The Danny Thomas Show, took this route in 1957. In fact, it’s more than pushing the child into so-called adult behaviors (as if there is anything adult about baring all); it’s pushing a youngster into an endless work cycle for which they are not emotionally equipped…because they are a child. Consider this:

On October 18th young Miley Cyrus, capitalizing on her “Hannah Montana” fame, started a 54-city music tour that will stretch for three months. She is fourteen. A series and hit records just aren’t enough, you see. Her Daddy, Billy Ray Cyrus, should know better. The road is a hellish place. Oh, the limos and private jets are nice, and the applause is grand…until about the tenth or twentieth time you do it or hear it. Long attention spans are not the province of teenagers. In a carefully choreographed stage show (and you can bet this Disney girl will have a first class scripted show) the routines quickly lose their charm, and the joy of performing wears thin. The danger is that the young performer starts to blame the audience for their sense of boredom, especially if in city after city the cheering, the routines and the audience response begin to lose their luster. That’s how it is on the road.

Ask yourself what “good” came of Britney Spears success on the road.

The problem with “success” as it is applied to children, is that it masks the potentially damaging consequences of the entire endeavor. De-emphasizing education, teaching children to “please” at all costs, and diminishing the parental obligations to nurture and support their offspring will, without fail, produce future dislocations.

Oh, I know, there are those of you who even as you read this are saying, “Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” Success, when used as an excuse, carries with it the unpleasant connotation that the outside observer could have, would have, “handled it” oh, so much better.

Most stage parents never get a chance to show how smart they are.

Here’s the problem; nearly all of the downside risks associated with childhood success are also attached to the quest for childhood success that ends in frustration. You see, the lives of famous children are not confined to their little corner of the world. The impact of celebrity spreads out and affects other families and other children as well. That’s what we’ll explore in Part Three of this recapitulation of A Minor Consideration’s advocacy.

To be continued……..