School Daze : The Star Treatment

At nearly any other school, it might have been a prop crisis. WHEN? Students at the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica were staging the musical “Godspell,” the modernized biblical tale in which the Romans are baton-carrying cops, and they needed a police car for the final act. Oh, sure, they could have fashioned something out of papier-ma^che. But thanks to TV producer Steven Bochco, whose son was attending the exclusive private school, they got the real thing instead.

“We went to 20th [Century Fox] and picked up a cop car, with siren and the whole bit,” recalls Davida Wills Hurwin, chair of Crossroads’ dance and drama department. In fact, Bochco--whose credits include “Hill Street Blues,” “Cop Rock” and “NYPD Blue”--”had five cars we could choose from.”

Across America, the high school production is a rite of passage usually marked by makeshift sets and homespun costumes. The difference at some Westside schools is that celebrity parents get into the act. Crossroads’ semi-annual cabaret, directed in past years by actor Harvey Korman, has featured Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Ali McGraw, John Ritter, Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks. One year, Rob Lowe and Jim Belushi donated their time, too--they didn’t have kids at the school, but the editor of a movie they were in, “About Last Night,” did.

Hamilton High School’s Academy of Music, meanwhile, prides itself on its twice-yearly musicals, whose budgets run as high as $50,000 apiece. Whenever possible, Jeff Kaufman, the academy’s administrator, rents the original Broadway sets and costumes, hires professional choreographers and musicians and outfits each onstage adolescent with a wireless microphone.

To help finance such frills, students sell candy, T-shirts and refreshments. And, this being Hollywood, they also sell themselves, acting as paid audiences for the many talk shows and sitcoms that are filmed around the city. For every 35 kids who sit through “The Nanny,” the school makes about $450--and twice that for double-tapings. Kids say that in order to finance their 32-channel sound system and vocal coaches, they are willing to clap appreciatively for even the most vapid topics, such as a recent episode of “Leeza,” the daytime talk show hosted by Leeza Gibbons, that was devoted entirely to hair. Its title: “Girlfriend, Need a Makeover?”

“We don’t enjoy going,” says Yaniv Snir, a 17-year-old senior who’s sung and danced in five Hamilton shows and reports that some of the talk-show topics have included wife abuse and stalkers. “We like the money we get from it, but it’s definitely not fun.”

“Don’t tell Leeza that,” warns Kaufman, who defends the rent-a-kid policy this way: “It gives children the opportunity to see how TV production works. It’s an outstanding educational experience.”

Later, Kaufman is more blunt. “Listen,” he says. “It’s a buck.”