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GO BAD  COREY HAIM ...hit the skids, now dead at 38 |
Haim's youthful death latest child star tragedy
of TheColumnists.com
Another Child Star
Death: The Los Angeles Times got it right with the headline,
Why Corey Haim’s Death Matters (sort of).
I know I’ve been affected by this news and I still can’t
understand why. I’d never interviewed Haim, although I saw
him at several Toronto show biz events over the years. And in
recent years he truly looked the worse for wear.
I keep thinking of watching bits of last year’s gruesome
reality series "The Two Coreys," which laid out Haim’s
personal problems in excruciating detail.
He was a drug addict and he simply couldn’t stop. All the
while he was fantasizing about making that big comeback to be
on top of the entertainment world again.
His appearance was frightening: bloated features, hands trembling.
We watched in horror at one shoot as he simply could not do the
simplest scene and instead staggered back to his trailer to do
more drugs.
I heard about Haim’s demise just days after watching the
Academy Awards salute to the late John Hughes, who made so many
feature films in the 1980s featuring young "brat pack"
actors like Corey Haim. Seeing that made me aware again of the
forward march of time as the 2010 editions of Molly Ringwald,
Matthew Broderick, Macaulay Culkin, Judd Nelson and several others
sauntered forth. It showed me how merciless the business is to
former kid and teen stars.
I thought back to one of the very first L.A. sets I’d been
on. It was July 1972 and I was sitting in the Burbank Studios
with Earl Hamner Jr.. creator of the new series "The Waltons."
He took me on set as I watched all those kids running amok. Everybody
was having such fun until the director bawled for them to get
in line and complete their simple positioning for the cameras.
 ADAM RICH, above, had been in trouble with the law. LANI O'GRADY, right, became addicted to prescription drugs and died at 46. |
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Now it’s 38 years later and from that large cast of juveniles only Richard Thomas still seems really active professionally. The Walton kids are all deep into middle age by now. One of the girls did an inevitable Playboy spread. Others seem to have completely vanished.
On another L.A. trip I went to an ABC party at the Beverly Hilton hotel. It was in the summer of 1993. The publicists made me sit at a table with all the cast from "Eight Is Enough." I hadn’t seen most of them since the show folded in 1981. The littlest one (Adam Rich) had experienced troubles with the law.
Willie Aames, who had played Tommy Bradford, left early that night to join his rock band for a gig. The girls told stories about being typecast forever, although they were only in their thirties.
I sat next to Lani O’Grady, sister of Don Grady of "My Three Sons" fame. She played older sister Mary Bradford. O’Grady told me a horror story of medical dependency including addiction to Valium and Vicodin as she began having panic attacks. She died alone in her Valencia trailer in 2001, aged 46.
I also remember an early 1980s CBS press trip to Phoenix where I shared lunch with Jerry "Beaver" Mathers and Tony "Wally" Dow o "Leave It To Beaver" fame. Also at the table was their TV mom. June Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley).
Mathers wasn’t one to tell sad tales, but he did remember how bad he felt when he was told at the studio gate that "Leave It To Beaver" had been cancelled and he was now barred from the lot. He said that was, “Tough to take.” He spent his youth doing 234 episodes for that show (1958-63), but had stopped getting paid for reruns after the first five airings. A sequel series, "Still the Beaver," began in 1983 on the Disney Channel, following a reunion movie on CBS, then moved to cable superstation TBS as "The New Leave It To Beaver," finally ending in 1989.
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"Leave It To Beaver" had weight problems as an adult and duffers from diabetes. |
At lunch that day Billingsley frankly told Mathers to stop eating any more bread rolls, an indication he was really porking it on. So it’s no surprise to report that these days he suffers from diabetes and has had to lose 55 pounds.
If Mathers felt that being a kid actor was on the whole a positive experience, co-star Dow was less effusive. He said typecasting had cost him an acting career although he later directed episodes of such TV hits as "Coach" and "Babylon 5." Dow, in the 1990s, revealed he'd been diagnosed with clinical depression.
I had several long interviews with Jane Wyatt, co-star of "Father Knows Best" (1954-60) and she said she believed child stardom was, “Evil and bad for the children I’ve worked with.”
Unlike many other shows, the three kids on "Father Knows Best" received three hours of schooling from tutorial teachers every working day–and that included working Saturdays until 1956.
Wyatt told me her oldest TV daughter, Elinor Donahue, had led a happy life in later years with a 30-year marriage to respected TV producer Harry Ackerman, withi whom she had four sons. In 1992, after Ackerman’s death, she married building contractor Louis Genevrino.
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Top left to right: Elinor Donahue, Robert Young, Jane Wyatt. Bottom left: Lauren Chapin. Bottom right: Billy Gray. |
About TV son Billy Gray, Wyatt said ,“He needed three more inches of height and could have been a big star but his compactness ruined his later acting chances.”
Gray also had drug problems with the law and became a motorcycle driver.
About troubled Lauren Chapin, who had for a time turned to prostitution,Wyatt said: “Very sad. I gave her a shower when she first married. She was estranged from her family.” Chapin later turned her life around to work as an evangelist.
Troubled kids? Perhaps some were troubled before they came into the business. The success stories of cute kids and teens who turned into fine actors includes Patty Duke, Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp.
When I started covering TV in 1970 I did see examples of kids working well into the evening. I asked about it and was assured they’d be getting the next day off. But later, when they became adults, some of these kids said their parents had accepted additional money under the table so the kids could keep on working.
Back in 2001, I made a concerted effort to find as many of these people who had been child actors way back when. I had a list of the ones I interviewed and kept at it for over a year.
Some of the tales deeply disturbed me. One girl from Montreal said after she turned 18 and was no longer up for lucrative kid roles her mother forced her to become a prostitute. Another spoke of years of depression after landing on the scrap heap. She said it took years to get over this feeling of entitlement.
Most had left the business, but one girl had become a director, another worked in casting. Trudy Young who co-starred in 1971’s "Face Off" (a hockey movie) turned to selling real estate in the city of Oshawa. A guy from "Swiss Family Robinson" was an insurance agent. A teen heart throb was spotted as a driver in one of the film studios’ transportation pools.
On the other hand, Andrew Bednarski, who co-starred in the syndicated hit "Katt and Dog," was working on his PhD in archeology at Cambridge University. His parents were both high school teachers and he was self schooled on set. A parent was always present and made sure Andrew left the series every day at 5:30 p.m.
On the Toronto set of the TV flick "Hamburger High," I saw teen actress Allison Pill at work. She said her ambition was to follow her father to Cambridge University but because of her acting she lacked sufficiently high marks. She kept on acting and these days stars in an acclaimed revival of "The Miracle Worker" on Broadway.
It was on the set of "Anne of Green Gables" (1985) in Toronto that I met the precocious teen star Megan Follows; at 17 she could still pass as a 14-year-old. With both parents actors, she’d already been in the business for seven years. And today? At 42, she’s still at it. You may have seen her guest starring in a 2009 episode of "Brothers and Sisters" or a 2006 "Crossing Jordan" episode.
After Megan Follows came Sarah Polley, who took on a similar role in the weekly series "Road To Avonlea" (1990-94). She still acts. She was in 1994’s "Dawn of the Dead" and you’ll see her starring in the bold new sci fi thriller "Splice" this summer. She also directs movies and has some great success. Her 2006 feature "Away From Her" with Julie Christie received several Oscar nominations.
And I was on the set of the various series about "DeGrassi High School," which is still going strong. That campus drama shoots all summer and in the fall the actors study at least four hours a day with tutors. It helps that the show's creator, Linda Schuyler, used to be a grade school teacher herself.
I remain truly sorry about Corey Haim’s fate. He needed strong parents to step in and keep him on the straight and narrow. He needed better producers than the ones who gave him drugs. And he needed industry friends to help him out of his stupor, offering small parts that could serve as stepping stones to recovery.
Most kid stars don’t wind up in such dire straits. It’s a tabloid headline every time one of them falters.
I still think the biggest problem is us–the moviegoing and TV-watching public. We seem to have a constant fascination with young kids having to face adult problems before their time. When we tire of them on screen, we demand newer faces to take their place, which means we're casting many of them aside just as they reach their adult years. For that reason, we may be helping destroy their young lives.
©2010 by Jim Bawden. This column first posted March 15, 2010.
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