Portrait of the artist as a former child star

Part 4 - The endless rerun

by Ellen Barry

Former child stars cannot say enough about the burden of their old roles. Susan Olsen calls Cindy Brady "a tattoo that won't wash off." Roddy McDowall describes his early roles as "a demon walking beside you."

No one warns you that you will be saddled with your character for the rest of your life, says Petersen: "It's with you forever."

But between their loud complaints about being typecast, they also seem to cling to their old characters like limpets, retreating back for fun and profit. Especially now, when their very obscurity is salable, they regularly embrace their own kitsch value, resurfacing on prime time as themselves. Item: Gary Coleman appearing as himself on Mad TV. Item: Maureen McCormick (Marcia on The Brady Bunch) guest-starring on The Single Guy. Item: Ron Palillo (Arnold Horshack on Welcome Back, Kotter) guest-starring on Ellen.

And Adam Rich was a willing accomplice in the spoof on his own cultural significance, explaining to his distraught public that "if you can't laugh at yourself, you've missed the biggest goddamn joke of your life." In the wake of the story, Might editor Dave Eggers wrote, Rich was giving four or five interviews a day.

There is, in short, something bizarre about former stars' relationships with their sitcom selves -- an ambivalence about leaving those characters behind. In this, they are perfect zeitgeist babies. This is, after all, the decade of the tiny backpack, the baby barrette, and the lunchbox-as-accessory -- Baby Jane territory. And they are particularly vulnerable.

"A lot of times, the things that made them cute when they were little don't end up being cute on adults. They're really cute when they're little," Joal Ryan says, "and maybe they don't know exactly what it was that made them good when they were kids, and maybe they start trying to figure it out, and maybe they start to imitate themselves."

Part 5 - The O-T-H-E-R

Ellen Barry can be reached at ebarry[a]phx.com.