Growing Up on the Set: Interviews with 39 Former Child Actors of Classic Film and Television

Rating:
Summary: Bait and Switch
Review: The name "Growing Up On the Set" implies that you would learn:

· What it's like to go on auditions.
· What it's like to memorize a script.
· What it's like to reherse and reherse and...

I learned none of this. I learned what movies each of the actors was in and what celebrities each one worked with. That's about it. It has nothing to do with what it's like to be a child actor.
-- Jay Roberts

Rating:
Summary: Cinema Kid Stars Look Back
Review: Tom and Jim Goldrup are two brothers who have been seeking out Hollywood character actors (many long forgotten, a few still before the cameras) and getting them to talk about their lives and careers. The Goldrups have self-published three thick volumes, each containing 40 to 50 interviews, since the mid 1980s.

Here, in their fourth volume, they turn their attention to actors whose film careers began in childhood. As in the previous three volumes, the interviewers are unobtrusive, and let the actors speak almost entirely for themselves. Unlike the previous three volumes, which were marred by huge numbers of grammatical and formatting errors, this one seems to have undergone some proofreading. The proofreader seems to poop out about 3/4 of the way along, but the results remain fairly intelligible throughout.

Of the 39 actors interviewed, I'd guess that the names of only a handful would be familiar to any given reader. Some performers made only two or three films, while others continued active for decades. All tend to have very mixed feelings about their film careers. The interviewers have two or three standard questions that they raise at the end of each interview, eliciting responses concerning "funny things that happened during filming," "dangerous stunts you were involved in," and "would you do it over again, knowing what you know now, and would you let your own child or grandchild get involved in the ways you were?"

Each interview is fascinating in its own way, and each also offers a look, through the eyes of a child, at many a world-famous actor whom the child worked with. Considering the stories one hears today about the monster egos of the fairly minimally talented "stars" we have around in 2002, it comes as a refreshing counterbalance to hear how genuinely nice and down-to-earth some of the best known stars of the 1930s and 1940s were. You can't fool kids!

Often fascinating reading, and recommended.