Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition Read Online Free PDF

couple of small movie scenes. His
name was Donny Carter, and when my Mom called his, we came
away with the name of my first acting coach.
    Her name was Lois Auer, and she taught "scene study" courses
out of her home in Sherman Oaks. She also specialized in film and
television techniques, which made me happy, because in my electronic, baby-boomer's mind TV was the place to be. Stage actors
somehow seemed bush league. (I've since changed my tune.)
    I signed up immediately. Monday night soon became acting
night and the happiest time of my week. There were ten of us in
the class, and we'd learn lines, blocking, stage directions, and
inflection. We'd also perform scenes, and talk about acting. I was in
heaven.
    About six months into my lessons, I got my first big break. Mrs.
Auer told my mom and me about a school documentary that was
being cast in Hollywood. My first audition! At once I was both
thrilled and terrified. The film was called Why Johnny Can Read,
and it was one of those dull "English class" 16mm things that put
you to sleep all through grade school. Still, I was awestruck.
    I auditioned with about thirty other kids-and I got a part! In
fact, not just a part, but the part: I played Johnny. My "classmates"
were each paid twenty-five dollars, but I got fifty. "Fifty bucks!" I
thought. "This is gonna be a great career!"
    Buoyed by my first professional gig, I started stepping up my
study program with Mrs. Auer before too long. Now, in addition to
my beloved Monday-night classes, I began taking a one-hour pn-
vate class each Saturday. Now I could really progress. With Johnny
under my belt, and with all this studying, I thought, "I should have
my first Oscar in no time."
    Well, that didn't happen; but I did get better-good enough, to
try and snag an agent. Mrs. Auer set up a meeting for me with a
woman named Toni Kelman, who owned a pretty good-sized kids'
talent agency. Once again, I was thrilled, because to me this represented a genuine step into the "business" of show business. You
really can't prepare for a meeting like this; you just have to cross
your fingers and hope something clicks.
    Something did click, and the meeting went very well. Toni was
really pleasant, and while my mom waited outside with the receptionist, I fielded about a dozen of her "Let's get to know each
other" questions. Next, Toni and I read a scene from the script of a
Disney movie.
    Twenty minutes later I had signed a one-year deal with her company and was off and running. To this day, I'm not sure
whether she liked my reading or if she just needed a brownhaired, blue-eyed, eleven-year-old guy in her stable of kids. Either
way, however, I was ecstatic.

    Flash forward a coupla months and I'm auditioning for parts on
an average of once a week. Nothing materialized for a while; but at
just about the time I was starting to feel the first real pangs of rejection, it hit: I landed a commercial for Sears, Roebuck. It was a runof-the-mill, "Oh, gee, isn't Sears a wonderful place to shop?" kinda
thing, but it gave me my first real taste of being a kid on a union
set.
    First and foremost, there's the issue of school. I was told to ask
my teachers for all the work I'd miss while away on my two-day
commercial shoot. I was also told to take my regular school books
with me to the set, where, a "production welfare worker" would
assist me with my studies.
    At eleven-years-old, that sounded like a death sentence. I pictured the welfare worker as an enormous, foul-smelling, molecovered, vaguely Nazi-esque old bag, with a name like Bertha, or
Hortense, and was sure she'd turn our one-on-one student-teacher
relationship into a hellish scholastic nightmare.
    Boy, was I wrong! School on the set turned out to be great. The
union's time restrictions provided that I had to accumulate three
hours of schooling per day, broken up into segments that were
each about twenty minutes long. I wasn't allowed to be on camera
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