A Comic in Trouble, an Image Rewritten

Until June 27, when she was arrested by Santa Monica police and charged with lewd acts with a girl under 14 and child endangerment, Paula Poundstone lived two lives, mutually exclusive and in evident harmony.

She was the comedian who could still pull in $15,000 playing small theaters and corporate dates, work that enabled her to earn around $750,000 a year--a conservative estimate, counters her manager.

Poundstone, 41, was also the woman who, as she entered her 30s, trained to become a foster mother, opening her home to disadvantaged and disabled kids. She cared for her first foster child, an infant born to a drug-addicted mother, in 1993, during production on her comedy-variety TV series “The Paula Poundstone Show.” At the time of her arrest, Poundstone’s brood included three adopted children, one of whom has cerebral palsy, and two foster kids, ranging in age from 2 to 12, according to a county children’s services official.

Late last week her personal manager confirmed for The Times that Poundstone was in a Malibu alcohol rehab facility when she was arrested, adding that the comedian had recently “come to a realization that there may be a problem with alcohol, and that she needs to do something about it.”

On Monday, her attorney Steven Cron, through Poundstone’s crisis management public relations firm, Sitrick & Co., released a statement acknowledging that for the first time publicly. “It is my belief that Paula’s drinking problems clearly had a bearing on the allegations that led to her arrest,” Cron said in the statement. “Nonetheless, after having had a chance to study the details of the case against her, I remain convinced that she is not guilty of the lewd conduct charges pending against her.”

The arrest has made her personal life news, her character public fodder. Unlike other entertainers, say her defenders, Poundstone never sought to publicize her role as a parent. She adopted kids before Rosie O’Donnell or Calista Flockhart made them seem like a celebrity accessory, and she took in hard-luck cases without martyring herself as a Westside Mother Teresa. Eleven kids have lived at one time or another in Poundstone’s house, including the three adopted children, according to sources close to Poundstone.

At Santa Monica’s McKinley Elementary, a public school with a large concentration of low-income kids where two of her children are enrolled, Poundstone is not considered a drop-’em-off-and-speed-away mom.

“She’s shy, so you can’t just break into conversation with her on her own,” says Miriam Billington, a McKinley mother and PTA president whose children befriended Poundstone’s at the school. “But once our little kids started talking, and we started talking as moms, that’s the role she’s so comfortable in.”

But in the 12 hours she was chewed up and spit out by the tabloid news cycle on June 27, Poundstone acquired a third identity--a celebrity accused of molesting her kids. There was a sense, as video of Poundstone leaving jail led all of the local newscasts, that a kind of ritual was taking place, one as peculiar to our time as feeding Christians to the lions was in ancient Rome. Poundstone is no Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts, someone built for the light. But on this night she would have to do.

Whatever the outcome of the legal case (an arraignment was held last Tuesday, giving Cron access to the evidence compiled by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office), Poundstone’s career--the same career that funded her generosity toward children--now resides in a public relations foxhole.

We know what happens next: Like Paul Reubens (a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman) or pop star Michael Jackson, Poundstone will head into seclusion. People will forget about her until the next Pavlovian reminder--July 30, when a date for a preliminary hearing will be set. A court order prohibits the principals from discussing details of the case.

“With many crimes, if you say nothing it’s better,” says Stuart Fischoff, a professor of media psychology at Cal State L.A. “But when it comes to issues with child molestation, it’s not. That’s the one area where silence is deadly.”

Nor can Poundstone return to work in the cocooned environment of a movie set or TV family in the way, say, that Robert Downey Jr. did last season on “Ally McBeal.” A closed set not only meant that Downey could keep the media wolves at bay, but also enabled the cuddly version of Downey to stay in production, even as the real, more troubled one was being arrested for parole violations.

Poundstone, by contrast, is a comic, and the distance between the realities of her private life and her public image is much shorter. Long a worker bee among headlining comics, Poundstone has as her bread and butter big paydays out of town--corporate dates, college appearances. Already, says her manager Bonnie Burns, some venues have called to postpone concert dates, though others have expressed support. Poundstone herself has pulled out of concerts scheduled for July 21 at the Canyon Theater in Agoura Hills, July 27 at the Sun Theater in Anaheim and July 28 at the Sunset Station Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

But Burns says Poundstone’s career is far from ruined. “She’s . . . only been unbelievably honest in her act. I’m convinced that when she gets through this she’s going to have terrific material. . . . I’m hoping she’s going to be back out there in August.”

Others without direct ties to Poundstone aren’t as optimistic. “If she goes out in August I think she could sell tickets--if she’s outrageous,” says a prominent manager of comics, speaking on condition of anonymity. Noting that Poundstone would have to address her legal case, the manager adds: “Anything she says can and will be used against her. And she doesn’t have the public on her side.”

Poundstone’s role as a foster parent was not an arrangement she could have entered lightly. Officials say there are far more needy kids than qualified, willing foster parents, but even then, the screening process consists of more than an interview. Prospective foster parents, under state law, must undergo 12 hours of training and eight hours of annual training after they become parents, in addition to having regular home visits, says Blanca Barna, spokesperson for the state Department of Social Services. Foster parents must also be certified to perform CPR.

“We’re dealing with kids that, in many cases, have very severe emotional problems,” Barna says. “We’re dealing with kids that have scars embedded in them that [require] special people to hang in there with them.” While declining to comment specifically on the Poundstone case, Barna notes that some kids will act out because they don’t trust adults, and preemptively sever the relationship. The kids think, “I’m going to act out, because you’re going to get rid of me anyway,” Barna says.

In Poundstone, however, social services officials had someone who appeared to be an ideal candidate--not only dedicated but someone with the financial means to provide a better life for her kids.

Officials at the Westside Children’s Center, a private agency that has assigned foster children to Poundstone’s home since 1993, declined comment, as did an official at the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services, saying an attorney had instructed staff not to discuss the case. The children’s service agency has taken the five children from Poundstone’s home and put them in foster homes, Anita Bock, the department’s head, previously told The Times.

Jo Anne Astrow, a talent manager who has known Poundstone for 20 years, describes the Santa Monica household as lovingly chaotic, with two nannies and a longtime personal assistant, among others, keeping things functional.

“But she’s the mom,” Astrow says of Poundstone.

In the information vacuum surrounding the case, friends and acquaintances mostly pour out heartfelt stories of Poundstone’s tireless altruism toward needy children. But in the accumulation it is difficult to get a sense of the person underneath. One friend, declining to be named or to elaborate, says: “Of all my friends in the world, she’s the most wounded person I’ve ever met.”

Like a lot of comics, Poundstone crafted a more assured persona onstage--wry, self-mocking and even a little confessional. Typical is the way she discusses her parents, from whom she’s been estranged since her teens.

“They were horrible,” she said, during a concert last year at the Getty Center. “They were just horrible. . . . My mother was the angriest person I’ve ever known in my entire life. One time I knocked a Flintstones glass off the kitchen table. She said, ‘Well, damn it, we can’t have nice things.’ ”

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There was a time when Poundstone didn’t even have to go that far. She talked about Pop Tarts and her cats, and she found material plying the folks in the front row. She referred to her victims as “ma’am” and “sir.” In the early 1980s, she was working the Other Cafe in San Francisco with Robin Williams, who brought Poundstone to his management, Morra, Brezner, Steinberg & Tenenbaum, founded by Charles Joffe and Jack Rollins, deans of the business. Poundstone came to L.A. to raise her profile. She stayed a few times with Morra, but declined a spare bedroom or couch. “She liked sleeping on the floor,” Morra remembers.

To this day, Morra is at a loss to explain why Poundstone never broke through--why, into her 40s, she was forced to take jobs that hardly flattered her intellect (i.e. guest panelist on the syndicated game show “To Tell the Truth,” a stint that ended this year after one season). “Maybe she just didn’t have that universal appeal that Roseanne did,” Morra says. “But there was a time for a couple of years where I don’t think anyone male or female was as good as her.”

Then, too, Poundstone’s image was problematic for network suits. Wearing signature tie-and-vest ensembles, she projected an asexuality that became something of a running joke among her friends and in her act. It wasn’t a matter of being gay or straight--she simply wasn’t interested. “I don’t have sex because I don’t like it,” she once joked. “I’d have to marry a Mormon so someone could cover my shift.”

It seems creepy to cite such jokes now, given Poundstone’s predicament. But it’s also worth noting that Poundstone’s lack of sexual context has dogged her career. Female comics deal with a double standard: They have to define their sexuality onstage or risk perishing in a male-dominated business. Some comedians create confrontational identities (Roseanne’s domestic bitch goddess, for instance), while others, like the now openly gay Ellen DeGeneres, come out of hiding when the coast seems clear.

To her credit, Poundstone invented a character onstage that bypassed the issue. She wasn’t brash, but she wasn’t fragile, either. Mostly, she was deeply in control as she told you about every uncontrollable thought.

“Her act is very contextual--it needs her,” says comedian Cathy Ladman. “That’s what I always say my ultimate goal is. I want my act to need me.”

For all of its shortcomings, “The Paula Poundstone Show,” her Saturday night ABC comedy-variety series that was canceled after two episodes, did reveal an interesting point of view. Childlike on the one hand, politically enlightened on the other. A year before her variety show, Poundstone provided coverage of the political conventions for “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” and now she had a roomier showcase for her political comedy. In Paula’s playhouse, Sam Donaldson read Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” and economists debated tax-and-spend while twirling on a teacup ride at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Hers were liberal politics with a twist--she was just a kid, really.

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Comics are bred to be quick on their feet, but few have confronted the audience Poundstone did when she emerged from a Santa Monica jailhouse to the dawn of her newfound fame. With the cameras demanding a response, Poundstone, wearing a baseball cap and looking very much like someone who’d been detained for several hours, forced a half-smile and uttered one nervous sentence about the case: “I have faith that the truth is the right thing.”

Last Tuesday, at her arraignment in Santa Monica Superior Court, Poundstone’s team was able to marshal its forces and gain some measure of control over the spin. Poundstone herself arrived in a lime-green suit, with makeup, and walked into the warm embrace of emotional backup. The TV crews were there, sampling from a variety of Poundstone defenders--a Spanish-speaking housekeeper who spoke through an interpreter, a number of McKinley moms, some kids wearing T-shirts commemorating the party Poundstone threw when her adoption of 3-year-old Thomas became official.

But there were only a few comics, including Ladman and Jim Brogan, and this seemed symbolic: Her support group, in the main, is not composed of comedians. It is instead populated by people from her counterlife--the one in which a talented performer changes the equation of things and seeks fulfillment less from paying customers and more in the circus of her own home. In being a foster parent to kids from the less-wanted side of the socioeconomic spectrum.

“If you wanna play psychologist, you can say she identifies with children who weren’t loved,” says Astrow, who attended the arraignment.

Inside the courtroom, Poundstone pleaded not guilty to three felony charges of lewd acts with a girl under 14 and one felony count of child endangerment involving two other girls and two boys. Court Commissioner Roberta H. Kyman ordered Poundstone to stay away from two minors in her care and to be under supervision when in the presence of the three others. Nor can she communicate with any minor when not in the presence of an independent observer or guardian.

During her show at the Getty, Poundstone discussed her motivation to adopt troubled kids--not to mention nine cats. “This is what it is--I was raised in the ‘70s,” she said. “I wasted half my life lying on the couch in the afternoon after school, and those commercials would come on where maybe it was like a cereal. And inside you could not just eat the cereal but you could also get like, say, a whistle. And the announcer would say, ‘It comes in cool green and hot yellow and groovy lemon.’ And then at the end the voice would go, ‘Collect them all.’ Somehow that voice has stuck in my head. Collect them all.”

Among those close to her, Poundstone has been horribly miscast in a gossip story that is easy to spin as: “Celebrity Foster Mom Pleads Not Guilty, Returns to Rehab.” Poundstone may have faith that “the truth is the right thing,” but the story now has a different kind of momentum, its own truth.