"Ward, I'm worried about the Beaver." - June Cleaver.
Ward and June Cleaver have nothing to worry about. The Beaver - actor Jerry Mathers - is doing just fine these days, by all accounts.But a disturbing number of other adorable, wisecracking TV sitcom kids are causing plenty of concern.
In recent months:
- Adam Rich, who played Nicholas Bradford on "Eight Is Enough" and who underwent treatment for cocaine addiction in 1989, was charged with burglary in a break-in at a Los Angeles-area drug store.
- Danny Bonaduce, the conniving Danny Partridge in "The Partridge Family," is accused of beating and robbing a transvestite prostitute in Phoenix.
- Dana Plato, who played Kimberly Drummond on "Diff'rent Strokes," has pleaded guilty to robbing a Las Vegas video store of $160. Her co-star, Todd Bridges, was previously acquitted of shooting a drug dealer at a crack house.
As comedian Jay Leno put it: "It's about time we got the Mod Squad back together and went after these people."
But behind the jokes lies the tragedy that so often strikes those cute child actors who become household names before they reach third grade and washed up before they're old enough to drive.
Deprived of anything resembling a normal childhood, fawned over by sycophantic adults and forced into the role of family breadwinner by aggressive stage parents, they're ill-prepared for what happens when the spotlight moves onto the next kid, according to those who've been there.
Bonaduce, who was 10 when "The Partridge Family" went on the air, once told an interviewer he knew his life was different when "I'd get home from work and there were 100 kids lined up on my front yard."
But the fame vanished as quickly as it arrived.
"I came to the lot one day for work, and the security guard told me the show was canceled and to go home," Bonaduce said.
The problems of Rich, Bonaduce, Plato and Bridges are nothing new - they strike a large share of Hollywood's children, according to Paul Petersen, one of the original Mouseketeers and later Donna Reed's heartthrob son Jeff Stone on "The Donna Reed Show."
"This has been a bad problem for 80 years," says Petersen, now a 45-year-old writer living in Gardena, Calif. "The patterns are so plain, it's a wonder why others are so slow to acknowledge it.
"It's fun being rich and famous," he says. "Adulation is wonderful, but it's never for you as a person. And when your show goes off the air you're handed a bill for it: a lifetime of recognition and no work."
Petersen, who had his own troubles with drugs and alcohol, has become a crusader for child actors. Seventeen months ago he founded "Minor Consideration," a support group and safety net to try to help Hollywood's troubled kids.
He's rounded up a stable of former child actors, including Jay North ("Dennis the Menace") and Jon Provost ("Lassie"), to talk with young sitcom stars and movie actors who are having trouble coping with sudden fame - or fame's sudden departure.
"We'll help out producers who are having trouble with kid actors acting out their sibling rivalries, or we'll sometimes have `conversations' with particularly aggressive stage parents," Petersen says. "It's not always appreciated, but at least I can sleep at night."
Stuart Fischoff, a Hollywood child psychologist and screenwriter who has treated a number of troubled child actors, says it is morally reprehensible that the networks and studios don't better prepare children and their parents for sudden stardom and life after it ends.
"It's clear exploitation," he says. "They use them up and throw them out."
In California, the 1939 Coogan Law - named after Jackie Coogan, who lost his $10 million fortune to his mother and business manager - protects some of a child actor's wages. But, say Fisch-off and others, far more is needed. Fischoff says television and film executives need to keep psychologists and counselors at the studio to prepare parents for the extraordinary pressures and demands the entire family faces. At the same time, he says, they should almost immediately begin preparing the family for that day when the child actor is no longer in demand.
"Sometimes the parent won't forgive the child for fading as a star," Fischoff says. "If a parent looks at this whole thing as a `D' ride at Disneyland that has to end sometime, that's OK. But if they continue to look at their child as their continuing meal ticket, there can be problems."