As I sat in an empty classroom at Hollywood High reading the LA Times story of the death of John Wayne, I anticipated my own entry into Junior High a few weeks later. I had no idea how different going to school in Hollywood could be. I was tagging along with my sister Laura as she embarked on an accelerated curriculum that had her attending school in the summer. To my 11-year-old mind there was literally no difference between the attendees of Hollywood High and that of any adult walking around free and not in school.
In my mind these guys had it made. Though I stuck close to my sis and avoided other kids/adults on the school grounds, everything and everyone seemed normal.
Junior High Babylon
Months later at my first assembly at LeConte Junior High (alma mater of Betty Grable and Carol Burnett [can you say ‘alma mater’ for Jr. High?]) we were informed that the school was the most ethnically diverse public school in the United States. Cool! I was 12 now and I was going to learn so much about the different countries that I had developed a fascination for from reading “National Geographic World.” I couldn’t wait to dip into the different cultures represented here.
Of the 42 countries represented in the school (awesome!) each and every one had their own gang (not so awesome). It turned out my new school was like a Bizarro World version of the United Nations. Even in 1979 it was becoming recognized that public school kids in the US didn’t know much about geography and history. Well, these kids were bucking that trend! Gang affiliation showed an understanding of not only geography but of geopolitical trends of the past 50 years. There was a North Korean gang and a South Korean gang. The Armenians, though in actuality deprived of nationhood, here were represented by a numerically healthy gang where everybody dressed like Arthur Fonzarelli. The Crips were a new entry, as far as I understood. My Personal Tormentor (or PT) came from that gang. Similar to a personal trainer, he inspired my entry in a Karate school a year or so later.
But the PT story is another story altogether.
My fascination turned to apprehension and then outright fear as I imagined that all 42 gangs were lined up to take a shot at my scrawny ass. I noticed there was not a gang for Midwestern white kids, or any Midwestern kids, for that matter. Luckily for me, I made a friend fast, an unaffiliated kid named Enrique who would help keep my blood pressure at manageable levels for the next three years.
It wasn’t this nice when I was there!
One day during lunch (we all ate outside, like in a prison yard) while Enrique was beating a banana against the edge of a table (he would turn it into kind of a smoothie, then stab it with a straw and suck out the pureed contents), I was approached by 2 members of one of the Mexican gangs. One came up behind me and covered my eyes (like hide-and-go-seek) while the other one smoothly and professionally relieved of my new Velcro Led Zeppelin wallet that I had picked up during a recent family day trip to Tijuana. I was proud of that thing, though it was empty but for my LeConte ID.
I felt a perfect 50/50 combination of horror and pride that I had been mugged in my Junior High School. I was a Survivor. I took a minute to say to Enrique (who had paused in his fruit abuse and was trying to stifle a laugh) “Wow! Did you see that?!” When the cool wore off, the scary started to set in, and I set off; for the school security office.
Located inside a Russian nesting doll of chicken wire and glass, the inner security office was conveniently located for any prospective (now)12-year-old crime victim right in the middle of the school campus. Feeling like I was in a scene from “CHiPs,” I approached Mr. Pittman. He disinterestedly told me he would look around for my discarded wallet (no word though about the perps). Oh that 70’s ennui!
It never turned up.
But something HAD to be done, I didn’t really fit in anywhere, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to join a gang. Maybe I could start one and call it Nerd Power. Most of the gangs in this school had ‘power’ in their name, Russian Power, Armenian Power, Polynesian Power. I had to look elsewhere. I wasn’t much of a risk taker, I wouldn’t even ditch school.
Ditching in Hollywood was a different animal too. Based on your interest or your clique you had 3 options. You could go to Arby’s on Sunset (they always returned for 5th or 6th period); you could hop on a bus towards Santa Monica and go surfing (those kids I feared/looked up to but I thought you had to have money); or you could attend a Walk of Fame Ceremony thrown by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
Walk of Fame ceremonies always seemed to happen during the middle of a school day, and although I once got to see Fleetwood Mac get their star in right front of Frederick’s, I always wanted to have a talk with Johnny Grant about how his scheduling was increasing truancy at LeConte and probably Hollywood High.
If I ever ditched, I’d lean more towards option 3; I was fascinated by entertainers and all of their doings, especially actors. I even fancied myself as an actor one day. There was some inspiration for this idea. I already lived in an apartment building where several retired silent screen actors lived. And one time Enrique’s older brother Martin told me “Dude, you should be an actor!” That was good. Oh yeah, and my mom was a serious stage mother. Back then in LA the Entertainment Saturation Culture that we all now love and appreciate was already in full swing. We’d heard stories of the current archetype for stage mothers, Brooke Shield’s mom. My mom was a serious but friendlier approximate. Plus, my sis Laura led the way with full acting school attendance and some work in “the Industry” itself.
I wouldn’t ditch but maybe there was a clique I could fit into.
And LeConte itself was still churning out actors, one kid named Michael who starred in an episode of Charlie’s Angels with guest star Simon Oakland, and a Vietnamese kid who was picked to be in a movie with Tom Selleck, probably “High Road To China.” We had a special assembly to announce that one.
So it was the acting clique that won out. They were represented by what Enrique, his brothers and I called the “Tree People.” It was a group of kids led by Donovan’s (of, “Mellow Yellow” fame), son, also named Donovan, who all hung out in the middle of the school grounds (a big courtyard really) by a lone tree. They never ditched, were Preppies, and were not in any gang. They instead formed ‘clubs’, the Beatles Club, the Who Club etc. They went into a collective mourning when John Lennon was murdered but later thought it was funny when Reagan was shot.
One time the Beatles Club was doing a school play and Donovan approached me (say what?!) during lunch. I really did think he was heading over to someone else standing near me, but I was by myself.
“Hey, I’m Donovan. The Beatles Club is doing a play and I was thinking you look just like Brian Epstein. Would you do it? You would appear at the beginning, you wouldn’t really have to do much. It won’t be difficult at all.”
During a break in his spiel I stammered out an “Oh, I don’t know…” I was really scared, scared of fucking up, scared of talking in front of a bunch of people, and scared of being really great and them asking me to do more stuff. Stuff means Work. (Uh, oh, I had just thought of it as work, maybe because Donovan told me it wouldn’t be difficult). That opened up the option in my mind that it might BE difficult and I made up my mind then and there. Sensing he was losing me, he upped the ante.
“You’ll meet girls, it’ll be cool, c’mon.”
This guy must have really thought I was the come-back-to-life embodiment of Brian Epstein. But the latest salvo had the opposite effect, the girls thing ramped up my fear exponentially and I was much more firm in my refusal.
Then he produced his Super Weapon.
“But you’ll be popular, I don’t understand.” I said no again and he walked away, really staggered, in a kind of I’ve-been-hit-on-my-head bewilderment. I don’t think we ever spoke again; his use for me was done (the play ended up going off without a hitch as they found a Japanese kid to play Brian Epstein).
This episode did not bode well for my burgeoning Hollywood Career.
Trees; no people.
So that I wouldn’t go through the rest of time at LeConte lamenting my status as “a contenda, I coulda been somebody” I got into Mr. Crumb’s Drama Class, and later tried to befriend the Charlie’s Angels kid Michael in Cooking Class (LA County School required class). I was already nervous and it was only made worse with the news that he was going to be starring in a brand new sitcom (which only lasted 8 episodes, but still!). I sucked it up and approached him. Curiously, he would not talk to me about acting but gave me copious cooking advice, helping me not burn the lame little pizzas we had to bake in tiny ovens.
In Drama class, as the semester wore on (Donovan sat in the front, me in the back), the war between Fear and Intriguing Interest was in a stalemate. After all, I preferred to spend my time reading Mad Magazine by my apartment’s pool and dreaming of being a famous actor; maybe even a New John Wayne, not standing in front of this clique acting like I was a tree.
Mr. Crumb was all into The Method.
But a curious thing happened, I got into it, Intriguing Interest kinda won out and by the end I had turned out some serious, thought provoking work. I could tell this because Mr. Crumb, at the conclusion of whatever I did up there (like ‘being’ President Carter) would yell out a curt “OK, great, next!”
Before I knew it, I was in a Pepsi commercial, an ice cream commercial (that only showed in the southern states) and then came a big one. I got to play a video game in the background of a scene in a Season 1 episode of the new CBS show “Simon & Simon.” In all of these things I did not speak or even turn my face right to the camera (though I glanced back when Gerald McRaney exited the video arcade), but I was having a blast. This wasn’t work at all! I could continue to take it easy by the pool.
I got a pretty good grade in Drama, I hated my voice though and liked to keep it quiet. Maybe I was inspired by the Silent Film actors in my building.
One day I attended a Cattle Call at Paramount. The Cattle Call was that thing where they got a big group of people together (usually kids), then paraded them in front of some assistant director or producer for a quick yay or nay. There were a lot of kids that day; it was for the show “Trapper John M.D.,” starring Pernell Roberts, of Bonanza fame.
I was a yay, and I was so excited! They took me into a little room and told me a little of what this would entail. I was going to be in an episode that had to do with the Special Olympics. Regardless of their motivations for choosing me to be in a Special Olympics episode I was pumped.
“So, you will have a couple of lines of dialog with Mr. Roberts, it won’t be much, IT WON’T BE DIFFICULT AT ALL.” Uh-oh.
Ok, but it was like 3 weeks away, I decided to worry about it later. But as the time approached I became a little more afraid, by 3 days before we had to be on the set I was at a new level of anxiety, a frontier I was now breaching hourly. I suddenly realized why I couldn’t do it after all. For school had suddenly become VERY important to me.
“Mom, the school on set is not very good, they let you just do what you want, I’ll fall behind.”
This was true, in fact, a fellow video game player from the Simon & Simon ep advised me to tell the teacher I was much less advanced a student and that they would take it from there. By law we had to do an hour or 2 of school on any set.
But my mom could see through this and the morning of the shoot I found myself trying to pick out what I was going to wear. I dillied, I dragged my feet, I dallied, to such an extent that when we finally drove up to Paramount, the guard would not let us in, even with a tour group.
Yes! No!! I felt equal measures of joy and bitter disappointment, after all it would have been kind of fun. My Mom was really upset with me. I couldn’t bring myself to explain to her that it turned out Acting really was work after all and I wanted nothing to do with it.
I went back to the pool, I continued on with Junior High, not worrying so much about fitting in, I had some friends and had done some cool things. Enrique made fun of me for aborting my Career As An Actor but I was ok with it. I finished Junior High strong, still having never ditched or joined a gang but I felt like I had a little niche carved out for myself.
Later on that year when we all gathered around to watch the first run episode of “Simon & Simon” that I was in, my mom gave me a look that I suspected meant, “You are a disappointment to me, my son.” I later realized the in new year of 1982; when they started airing the Pepsi commercial I was in day and night and I gathered hundreds more such looks from my mom, that she really meant “you loveable screw-up!” Because there was always a little smile.
