Re: My Best Day

“In a life filled with several “special days” in so many different facets of my life, I suppose that choosing that ‘One Special Day’ really depends on your audience. What is it they can understand? Which of several tales shall I tell? There are all the standard “special days” like the birth days of my children, marriage to my current wife, that significant day when I realized I was okay with never having another drink…and there are the professional moments when my work actually paid off (though seldom with hard dollars).

Then, too, there are moments that, for a person who has been in the public eye for more than forty years, are almost expected…such as being recognized for the first time by a stranger, the feeling of hitting #1 on the record charts, or a live performance that brought an audience to its feet…but so much of that seems to be bragging, and is seldom seen for what it is…a moment in time in a performer’s life and nothing more.

So I choose to tell you about doing the impossible. That is something everyone understands.

As “A Minor Consideration” grew in size and influence we former kid stars were consistently told that we would “never change the fundamental working relationship between professional kids and their parents,” or change the ownership of the money from the parents to the person who actually does the work; i.e., the kid.

When you grow up in Show Business you quickly learn the old adage coined by an ancient Grip who actually worked with D.W. Griffith, George Hagar, with whom I had the honor to work with for eight years on Stage One at Columbia Pictures while we filmed “The Donna Reed Show.”

“The difficult we do at once, but the impossible takes a little longer.”

Children “belong” to their parents. They are chattel…like a cow or a car. Here is the Law we set out to change:

That’s the Law all over the civilized world. In aboriginal societies, however, a child is accorded an independent status, but that’s another story for another time.

A dream that began when “Walt, Mickey & Me” (my 10th published book, Dell, 1977) was still in its draft stage back in 1976 became a reality on an October afternoon, twenty-three years after the idea exploded into my mind.

A New Coogan Law to protect the earnings of ALL kids in Entertainment, at least in California, was signed into Law on the 10th of October 1999. From now on, kids will own the money they earn in this Business, and each will have a mandatory Coogan savings account in honor of Jackie Coogan whose parents legally claimed all of the four million dollars he earned in the 1920’s and left their own flesh-and-blood penniless at Twenty-One. Senate Bill 1162 was introduced in February of 1999. Here is its legislative history:

APPROVED BY GOVERNOR OCTOBER 10, 1999
PASSED THE SENATE AUGUST 26, 1999
PASSED THE ASSEMBLY AUGUST 23, 1999
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY AUGUST 18, 1999
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY JULY 8, 1999
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY JUNE 29, 1999
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY JUNE 9, 1999
AMENDED IN SENATE APRIL 21, 1999
AMENDED IN SENATE APRIL 12, 1999

INTRODUCED BY Senator Burton
(Coauthors: Senators Costa, Solis, and Speier)
(Coauthors: Assembly Members Havice, Kuehl, Washington, and Wildman)

So I choose October 10th 1999 as one of my “Best Days.”

Paul Petersen
President & Founder, AMC