|
|
Untitled
|
|
|
| |
 ZZ: As a child, you appeared on many Jack Benny shows.
HS: It was always called The Jack Benny Program. He was very persnickety about that. Yeah, that's how I broke into show business, on Mr.Benny's radio program. And then I'd work half a dozen to a dozen times a year on his broadcast. Then when he moved to television, pretty quickly I moved with him. So about the first eight years of my life in show business was as a child actor working fairly regularly on the Benny shows, and irregularly on other things.
ZZ: How was it that you became a child actor?
HS: It's a goofy story. I had a piano teacher starting at about the age of 4. We tried to make each other's lives miserable, I with more dedication than she. Her daughter had been a child actor. So my piano teacher decided to become a children's agent, and she asked my parents, "Would you mind if I tried to get Harry some work?"
They knew I was, at the time, ga-ga over radio and TV, and they said, "Sure." We didn't hear from her for eight months. It became kind of a family joke. And one day she called and said, "I've got an audition for him on The Jack Benny Program." I forget which parent took me up to the Taft Building on Hollywood and Vine-- still standing. One of the producers, Jack Benny's brother-in-law, Hilliard Marks, auditioned me. And as I did throughout my childhood career, I aced it by virtue of the fact that I could do a wonderful first-time reading.
ZZ: Were you a recurring character in the show, or did you play different roles?
HS: Different characters. But Jack had a kind of Cub Scout type group that he shepherded, called "The Beverly Hills Beavers." These were more innocent days. And so one of my more recurring roles would be "Stevie the Beaver."
ZZ: And speaking of Beavers, I read that you also originated the role of Eddie Haskell in the pilot for Leave It To Beaver. Do you feel your life would have been better had you continued in the role, or do you feel you dodged a bullet?
HS: Life-wise, I feel I dodged a bullet. I didn't want to end up being a cop or getting shot in Vietnam, or whatever happened to that guy. The rumors are rife.
No, I have no regrets about that. As a matter of fact, it sort of set the template for my adult career, because I fairly rigorously avoided being cast in series as a grown-up, too. More consciously, I think, but to the same effect.
Next page | "I write with the satirist's instinct for the jugular"
|
|
|
|
|
On video: Hear how making his piano teacher miserable turned Harry into a child actor.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Harry Shearer
;)
