Class Points Moppets on the Path to Stardom

Three-year-old Nicole Barbeau sits alone, watching the other children, playing it very cool.

She puts a finger in her mouth. She twists the end of her pink sweat shirt--the one with the laughing bear on the front. She squirms in her seat. Her eyes survey the room. She glances at the floor. Now the ceiling. Now back to the others. Whatever she’s thinking, she’s keeping it to herself.

Meanwhile, 13 other children, ages 4 to 11, have divided into groups in the Fullerton Public Library and, in a class sponsored by Fullerton’s Community Services Department, are acting out TV commercial scripts under the watchful eyes of Marlene Peroutka and Pat Swanson. The women teach three classes a week (the others are in Fountain Valley and La Mirada), looking for that certain something--a look, a personality, a giggle, maybe--that might catch the eye of a casting director or a producer.

If that happens, children as young as preschoolers can be transformed into six-figure moneymakers, earning more from a 30-second commercial than their parents do in a year. On this class night, three teen-age students are absent because they’re at job interviews for commercials. Altogether, about half of the 45 students from the three classes, each of which meets for eight weeks and costs $84, have at least one commercial or theatrical job lined up.

That’s why, over in one corner of the room, Peroutka is saying to Justin White, 11, “Try it again and don’t sound so dull.” Her tone isn’t critical; rather, she seems to be reminding him of something he already knows.

Justin reads the lines again, and Peroutka says, “Justin, what were you doing wrong?”

“Holding the script down here,” he says, referring to below his knees.

“Right,” Peroutka says. “And if you don’t have to look at your lines, where should you be looking?”

“At the other person,” 11-year-old Bobby Waddington says.

“Right,” Peroutka says.

Justin, not the least bit flustered, reads again. When he’s done, Peroutka says, “I liked the way you looked at Tammy when you read that.”

In another corner of the room, 6-year-old Jason Stopnitzky is upset. He just learned that 4-year-old Alex Vignale, a red-haired mop top, will be joining him in a reading. “Is he going to be in it?” Jason complains. “All he does is hit people. He never pays attention.”

Nicole remains above such goings-on. As the hourlong class moves along and the children break into new groups, Nicole strolls over and picks up a book entitled “The Pony.” While the other children rehearse, Nicole loses herself in the picture book. Swanson’s effort to involve her is met with a silent stare.

Apparently, Nicole will read no line before its time.

Not Ready to Talk

“Her parents want to get her into the business, but she won’t talk,” Peroutka said. “But she’s slowly moving up. Last week, she stood the whole time by the door. By the fourth week, she’ll be on the stage.”

Although only in the second week of class, Nicole’s taciturnity is already taking on legendary proportions. “She said ‘no’ to me last week,” Peroutka said, “but Pat has never heard her speak.”

Later that night, when Nicole’s father, Eugene, arrived to pick her up, he was asked about Nicole’s silence. “At home, we can’t shut her up,” he said, good-naturedly. “It’s like Jekyll and Hyde. I tell her she’s gotta talk if she wants to make all those bucks.”

To be sure, Nicole is the exception. The other children in class are in perpetual states of animation. “It’s the ones with the most energy who do the best in this business,” one parent says.

But defining star quality isn’t that simple. “Sometimes a look can be the start of it all,” Peroutka said. “Sometimes an outgoing personality can be the start.”

Swanson points to a boy across the room. A day short of his fifth birthday, his name is Jacob Gelman and he looks like everybody’s kid brother.

“In six weeks, he’s done three commercials. National commercials. He’s going to make a fortune,” Swanson said.

“A successful child would work 12 to 15 jobs a year. For commercials, that’s 12 to 15 days of work. He could bring in probably $200,000 to $300,000 with that many jobs.”

Big Money in Residuals

Although a child is paid only $333.25 for the day’s work needed to film the commercial, the big money comes from residuals--the repeat showings of the commercial. “If it’s running on network national TV during prime time, it’s going to pay pretty close to $100 every time it runs,” Peroutka said. It’s not uncommon for a single commercial to eventually return $50,000 to a child’s piggy bank, she said.

As for Jacob, Swanson said, “the look is not terrific, but the personality is just fantastic. He’s very outgoing, very loving, and whatever you tell him to do, he is willing to follow directions.”

While Peroutka tells parents that one callback for every 20 interviews is a good record, Jacob was called back after his first--an interview with the Oscar Mayer wiener people. The first callback reduced the original number of 400 applicants to 17. Five survived that cut. From those five, Jacob was one of two chosen to film a commercial.

This week he found out the big news: He got the job.

The company had put out the word that children shouldn’t show up unless they could memorize the Oscar Mayer jingle.

The jingle begins, “My bologna has a first name: it’s O-s-c-a-r. My bologna has a second name: it’s M-a-y-e-r.”

It ends with the line, “I love to eat it every day and if you ask me why, I’ll say, ‘cuz Oscar Mayer has a way with b-o-l-o-g-n-a.”

Sings Jingle in His Sleep

“We sat up until 11 one night teaching him the song,” said Jacob’s father, Mitch Gelman, of Buena Park, a computer operator and part-time security guard. “Our main problem was having him spell bologna. That was our main concern. But he picked it up in two hours. We told him to think about it while he was asleep.”

Needless to say, the Gelmans became quite familiar with the song. “I’ve had bad dreams about it,” Mitch Gelman said. As for Jacob, who was two months shy of his fifth birthday when he went to the interview, the Gelmans said they once went into his room and he was singing the jingle in his sleep.

The Gelmans have vowed not to let Jacob’s success go to his head. They said they’re putting most of his earnings into a trust fund. In the last three months, Jacob has pulled in $1,000.

The only concession the Gelmans make is that they don’t discipline Jacob on filming day. “We’ve got to keep him smiling and happy,” Mitch Gelman said. “Pat always carries LifeSavers and bubble gum for him. We tell him if he does good, he can buy his own toy store.”

On one of Jacob’s filmings, Mitch Gelman learned a lesson.

“I have a tendency to push,” he said. “I went on one shoot, and I blew it. I was sitting there, saying he can do better. Then he started complaining, saying he was tired, he was hungry, he was thirsty, ‘I don’t want to do it.’ I got into disciplining him . . . and the director didn’t get the look he wanted.”

Now, Mitch stays home when Jacob goes to work.

In addition to teaching budding actors, Peroutka and Swanson are business managers. They have 29 clients, ranging in age from 2 to 16. Peroutka’s two children have been in more than 130 commercials; one of Swanson’s four children has been in more than 75.

The women believe that they can turn any willing child into a salable commercial property. But given the huge numbers of children who show up for casting calls, they never guarantee parents that their children will get a job.

“All parents think their child is it , that they should be in the business,” Swanson said. “They see that there are 200 kids on the same interview, but they think their kid is going to get it, and they can’t understand why they don’t.”

Problem Parents Screened Out

Swanson and Peroutka say they try to weed out “problem” parents before taking their children as clients.

“You’ll always have parents who are going to push,” Peroutka says. “You will have some parents who will live off their kids. Whatever the kids make goes into the mother and father’s pockets. There’s nothing you can do about it. But there are others who are looking for their child to have a better future, maybe go on to college.”

While the state’s so-called Jackie Coogan Law is supposed to protect money-earning children from unscrupulous parents, its provisions are rarely invoked. As a result, Peroutka said, it’s virtually impossible to monitor what happens to a child’s income.

Lest parents think their child may be a cinch meal ticket, Peroutka says she warns them of the perils. Parents are expected to drive their children to interviews, almost always into Los Angeles--sometimes on very short notice. Jacob Gelman, for example, has been to 27 interviews.

Peroutka said her son’s first job came from an original interview that attracted 9,000 children. While that figure is unusually high, finding several hundred competitors isn’t.

Frustration Taken Out

All too often, Peroutka said, children bear the brunt of their parents’ frustration when an interview doesn’t lead to a job. “Parents come home and say, ‘What were you doing? How come you’re messing up?’ when it might not have even been the child,” Peroutka said.

Instead, she said, a producer might have been looking for a specific “look” that the child didn’t match.

And if that doesn’t discourage parents, Swanson added this sobering reflection for parents who bank on their kids’ talent:

“Unfortunately, in this business, a 3- or 4-year-old could maybe make a half-million dollars, but then at 7, he’s done. Maybe he won’t make another penny after that. That’s why we try to warn a parent, if you’re going to put something away, you better start putting it away right away.”