Show Biz Disease

Child actor advocate Paul Petersen has seen parents pay as much as $2,000 to “management consultants” offering services to prepare children for entering the world of show business.

Save your money, advises the former child actor, who will conduct a seminar, “Your Child in Show Business: Charting the Safest Course,” on Saturday through Extended Education at Cal State Fullerton.

“Getting started in the entertainment business should cost no more than $250, period,” Petersen said. That’s enough to pay for professional head shots and the mailing costs associated with finding an agent, he said.

“But here’s the problem,” Petersen said. “We now have a new force at work on the fringes of the entertainment business called managers or management consultants,” and these high-fee consultants do not possess any secrets.

“They become what we call portfolio mills. They’re selling a package that includes head shots, possible interview training, charm school--any manner of things which are, in the main, perfectly useless.”

Managers, Petersen said, “are not registered with the state. They are not franchised by the theatrical unions, and yet at a minimum they charge 15% of any potential gross income. And here is the kicker: They are by law not allowed to solicit for employment or to negotiate for contracts. That’s the theatrical agent’s job.

“Now the net result if you sign with a manager at the beginning of your child’s career is you’ve given away 15% for nothing.”

That’s not to say managers can’t be an asset later on, Petersen said. “When a career is well underway and you have a crush of possibilities, a manager can really earn his keep. But for rookies--people just beginning--it is absolutely unnecessary.”

Petersen, 55, who played Jeff on “The Donna Reed Show” (1958-66), is the founder and president of A Minor Consideration, a nonprofit support foundation created a decade ago to aid former child stars who were experiencing sometimes headline-generating emotional and financial difficulties.

But while Petersen’s original goal was to intervene and provide rescue services for troubled former child actors, he quickly learned that “intervention is very time-consuming; prevention is much more cost-effective.”

“There is no reason for people to make mistakes that the previous 80 years of kid actors and their parents have made.”

As an educator on child-actor issues, Petersen has spoken nearly 50 times this year on such topics as the Child Labor Coalition and the International Department of Labor. His organization, whose core membership numbers 600 former child stars and about 1,200 associate members, has lobbied for--and helped draft--six state laws aimed at protecting the welfare of child actors.

Virtually every story of abuse and exploitation of children in the entertainment business is the result of naivete and inexperience, said Petersen, who fully supports children working in the arts. “Just like fine arts programs throughout the educational system, it’s an enriching experience for the child when done safely and with some knowledge.”

But a child’s entry into show business is fraught with potential dangers and “an unreasonable threshold of expectations--that if your child gets one national commercial, for example, he will make $80,000. That’s absurd.” More realistic, Petersen said, is that the child might make $4,000 from a single commercial. And even more realistic “is that 99% of all the children that enter the entertainment business never work.”

Among the areas Petersen will cover in his seminar are:

* How, as a parent wishing to support your child’s show-business ambition, do you objectively weigh and measure your child’s skill? And how do you go about safely entering the world of show business?

* What factors in a child’s life will be put at risk by that kind of focus? Among the danger signs: slipping grades, alienation from longtime friends, obsessive attention to body image, falling in with odd and unusual people.

* What does a child working in show business really mean for a family? If both parents are working, who’s going to take the kid to the job or the audition? And remember, Petersen said, at auditions “it is the child--and the child of very tender years--who walks into that inner office alone. Mommy doesn’t walk in with that child.”

New Protection Law

Petersen also will discuss the legal stature of children in the workplace. A California law, which Petersen’s organization helped to pass last year requires up to 20% of a child performer’s earnings to be put in trust until the performer reaches age 18.

Petersen said his seminar also will include a discussion of the importance of child actors having “an exit strategy, even when they begin the process of entering the entertainment business.” Becoming a successful child actor is no guarantee that acting jobs will continue into adulthood. Parents, Petersen emphasized, should always be primarily focused on their child’s education and character development.

Petersen founded A Minor Consideration in early 1990 in the wake of the suicides of Rusty Hamer (“The Danny Thomas Show”) and Trent Lehman (“Nanny and the Professor”) and the drug overdose of Tim Hovey, whose credits included the Charlton Heston movie “The Private War of Major Benson.”

“What people don’t understand is there are long-term, life-threatening consequences to early fame,” he said. “And speaking personally, I knew each of these young men. I knew where they lived, I knew they were in trouble, but I failed to show up at their door. And I promised my wife the day after Rusty’s suicide that that would never happen again.”

Hamer, Lehman and Hovey weren’t the only former kid stars who were in serious emotional or financial trouble at the time, said Petersen, reeling off a list of famous names:

“Todd Bridges from ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ was in jail on attempted murder charges; Dana Plato [‘Diff’rent Strokes’] was naked in Playboy; Drew Barrymore’s autobiography detailing drug and alcohol addiction at age 10, 11, and 12 was set to hit the stands; Danny Bonaduce from ‘The Partridge Family’ had been fired from another radio job for drug use; Gary Coleman was about to sue his parents and management team; and, finally, Jay North, who played Dennis the Menace, was on a course to commit [violence].”

At the time, Petersen was in the middle of writing his 17th book--an examination of child stars and the consequences of early fame. But he put his manuscript in a drawer. “I realized I was no longer content writing all these stories. I had to do something.”

Using the title of his planned book, he formed A Minor Consideration.

Personal Problems

At the time, Petersen had personal problems, which he attributes, in part to “the result of diminishing fame and a loss of focus.”

“My alcoholism and drug use have been well chronicled, not to mention a couple of marriages,” he said. “Getting sober [in 1991] is what made me survive.”

The Glendale-born son of parents who worked at Lockheed, Petersen began performing at age 7 and was well regarded as a singer and dancer when he became one of the original Mouseketeers on “The Mickey Mouse Club” at age 9 in 1955. At 12, he landed his long-running role on “The Donna Reed Show.”

But Petersen said his work with A Minor Consideration is not the result of any personal horrors he experienced during his years as a child actor.

“There is nothing wrong with being rich and famous,” he said. “The work is fun. I had some of the greatest people around me. Nobody beat me up. Nobody stole my money. I had a wonderful experience. What bothers me today is why doesn’t everybody have a good experience?”

TO ENROLL

“Your Child in Show Business: Charting the Safest Course,” University Hall, Room 252, Cal State Fullerton, 800 N. State College Blvd., $95. To enroll by phone, call (714) 278-2611.