How Can Aspiring Models Avoid the Dark Side of the Fame Game?

Drugstores like Schwab’s, where legend has it that Lana Turner was discovered, disappeared years ago. But the basics haven’t changed when it comes to scouting talent. If you’re young with a pretty face and figure, Southern California is still filled with producers, directors, photographers, agents and managers who will spot you at a club, a carwash, a tennis court or a market and offer to make you a star.

The trouble is, it’s getting more and more dangerous to believe them.

Linda Sobek was a case in point.

It has not been determined if Charles Rathbun really intended to photograph the model and former Raiderette for a car layout, as he has stated to police. Or if he had something more evil in mind when he phoned her at home and asked her to pose for him with a brand-new Lexus. Rathbun has been charged with her murder.

But it is a sure bet, say those who know about these things, that every day in Southern California hundreds of attractive wannabe models take chances on meetings with strangers who are not half as credible as Rathbun. He, at least, had a career and a reputation as a capable car photographer. Sobek would have had reason to believe whatever he may have told her.

“Hollywood is a dangerous place, and modeling a dangerous profession for those who aren’t extremely self-protective,” says Nicole Bordeaux, a former model and head of Bordeaux Management, which represents such supermodels as Kate Moss.

“The most dangerous part of our business is the freelancing,” Bordeaux says. “Models with no agency behind them--or who have one but don’t tell the agency when they take jobs because they want to avoid paying the agency’s 20% commission--may be setting themselves up for disaster.”

Many beginning models who have not signed with an agency are so eager to break into the business--or to make ends meet--that they temporarily forget the most basic safety precautions.

It’s the agency’s job to check out each assignment, to make sure that the photographer is reputable and not just making up the assignment; in other words, that the parent company really has requested that the photographer do the job.

Bordeaux says her models come in “on an almost daily basis” with business cards they’ve been handed by photographers who have solicited them on the street.

“These guys claim they’re on a big job for which they would like to employ the model. I make a few calls, do some research, and usually find that the man, the job or both are total phonies.”

If you cannot find a modeling agency to represent you, the experts counsel, then you should not pursue modeling as a career.

“And if a guy tells you he’ll do test shots for free, or for a small fee, just remember you really don’t need them,” Bordeaux says. “Any aspiring model can visit reputable agencies with only family snapshots in hand. If the agency feels she has potential, they’ll solidify arrangements for proper test shots.”

It all sounds so simple. But it’s not.

Women who want to be models, who have been told by friends and family that they have the right stuff, are loath to take no for an answer, the experts agree.

And they’re the ones most likely to get hurt.

*

Chantal Cloutier, a former fashion model and now head of the Cloutier Agency for makeup artists and hair and wardrobe stylists, says models should not look for work in classified ads like those that run in weekly throwaway papers.

“You have no idea if the person is dangerous or if the job he tells you about is as he describes it. You could get there and find it’s a setup, or porn work or nude modeling.”

She remembers an incident when she and a girlfriend were 14 and hanging out at a club.

“This guy told us he wanted us to model, gave us his studio address, and it sounded legit. We were shocked when we got there and he asked us to do something we would never, ever do at any age.

“Things like that still happen all the time, and I mean all the time in this city.”

Cloutier says there’s nothing wrong with “being discovered” by someone you happen to meet. But a legitimate photographer who has your best interests at heart will always contact a good agency on your behalf and arrange for you to get good representation instead of taking you somewhere for a photo session.

Heinz Holba, owner of L.A. Models for the past 16 years, says his booking system is computerized. When a job is called in, his bookers look up the credentials of the photographer and the parent company while the person is on the phone.

“We can check people out instantly. If he is not familiar to us, we find out who is he working for and check those credentials. There are a lot of unknown, good new photographers out there. You can’t just stick with the ones you know.”

Holba says not all agencies do the intensive checking they should.

And even if they did, it wouldn’t help the young women who are not affiliated with agencies and who wind up financially, emotionally or sexually abused by the unsavory Hollywood types who prey on their hopes and dreams.

*

Representatives of top modeling agencies in town say Sobek made a few critical errors that are made every day by thousands of women like her:

* She apparently didn’t tell anyone where she was going, or with whom.

* She agreed to meet a photographer and get into his car to drive somewhere. Models should drive to the work locations in their own vehicle, the experts say. And they should not get out of the car if the photographer (or anyone else) is there waiting for them alone.

“I have never heard of a photo shoot where the photographer did not at least have one assistant,” Cloutier says.

* Sobek apparently had her home phone number printed on her business card.

That is an absolute no-no, says Wendy Walsh, who modeled for 10 years before becoming a news anchor at Channel 13. Walsh says Sobek’s card bore her home phone plus the 800 number of a modeling agency that apparently has gone out of business. Neither Walsh nor The Times could trace it.

“Women should never give out their home phone or address for business purposes such as modeling,” she says. Get a pager number and use only that if you want to avoid stalkers, crank calls and worse.

“The most dangerous time for a model is when she is just entering the business--often at the tender age of 14 or 15 years old. The beginner feels she has to build a portfolio somehow. She meets photographers who may or may not be sincere. And how can she tell the difference?

Walsh, who will host her own national talk show starting January, agrees that it’s crucial to have the backing of a reputable agency--and warns that models need to check out the reputation of agencies as carefully as they check out everything else.

But she warns that even the reputable ones can fall down on the job they are paid to do. “I really believe some agencies are so eager to get work for their models that . . . they don’t check the references or the legitimacy of the job.”