FROM TV TO FILMS CLIMB THE LADDER AND LEARN HOW BY BLOGGER QUEEN sounds easy enough, right? Sell all you have in middle America, or East Coast, or small town, and get out before sundown, heading out to Hollywood or BUST! The first thing you must do is to have a "can do" attitude which is not easy to achieve as you come down to reality that about thousands or more have the same idea as you may have and hold the same rules in their own minds about how to make it in Hollywood. I, Blogger Queen, have been living in this melting pot of acting, productions, movie making, films, school, extra and game show enthusiast until one day I started to see a pattern. It's not what you know; It's not who you know! It's more like "It's who knows who you know," and acting can be broken down into this little mantra "Acting is 'Pretending you are pretending that you are NOT Pretending!" It's like a double twist. At least that is what David Carradine, actor now deceased, told me one day at my stepfather's penthouse way back in 1983 when my own dreams were fresh and seemed a stone throw's from where I was then. But boy was I wrong people! Listen up to the following golden rules put down by a now seasoned Hollywood whatever it was I was supposed to be! Rules, that's right. The first thing is that you must write your own rules and goals. When I first came out to California I had contacts, pals of my mother's who were more than eager to help me, but I was so "green", had no experience and was hyper and sort of out of control in a childish way. But still, I had the red carpet rolled out, made up an acting resume and started to hang with a guy who seemed at the time to be my ticket to the stars. I could act, I had energy, I had a boyish beauty, the background, the people who could get me from point A to point B, to success quite easily and my family tree read like a who is who in acting and theater. So what happened? What did I do wrong that I can make you do right? First of all you must not fall into the wrong first crowd you meet, which for me was a couple that I didn't know was attached to the guy who was supposed to be my red carpet ride to stardom. This couple was also attached to a "C" movie producer who had a track record at that time of some small time hits. They immediately became jealous of me and we were all three vying for attention, which was given sparingly and doled out like prisoners in a POW camp. We'd wile away the days making up all these shows we were going to submit to a young Tony Griffin, son of famed game show producer, now deceased Merv Griffin, plus a variety show called Synergy to have Ann Margaret as a host to Ben's Movie Mogul Uncle. Many other projects I typed up in my 100 words per minute manner on a crappy typewriter went most probably into the garbage at the Griffin offices back then. So my first mistake was getting with roommates or old childhood friends whom I thought could help me but only in the end bullied and abandoned me at this cool house in one of the canyons of Beverly Hills CA, in a stilt house rented out by one of Elizabeth Taylor's old beaus. In the end, the left me, Ben and Tiffany going to the Uncle's pad in Mt. Olympus, so as the rent at that time became due I could not reach my mother and her new husband, who were visiting with the prime minister in Israel, so by chance I met some musicians on Venice Beach where I was going daily and on weekends to try and sing with my guitar for some small change. I met these musicians as I was leaving the beach at the end of my day, sun burned and thinking I was getting a bit more wiser. They asked me to play the guitar and sing, which I did with vigor. They loved it and wanted to put me in the recording studio, and I became like a muse to them, especially the oldest, a tall, man named Perry Mack. There was also Justin Tyme and a few other musicians getting involved in the new project. The problem was that these musicians were eager to spend their own money and put me in the studio to make a demo of my original songs, but they were black, all of them! Not bad or into rap music or gang banging. Just a bunch of hippy black guys and gals that wanted to help and get excited about some new project, pulled from a bunch of other projects they had on their plate. Through them I met Lawrence Hilton Jacobs (Joe Jackson on TV Michael Jackson movie) and Little Richard (who doesn't know him?), who loved the demo. Even little Gary Coleman when he wanted to start a recording studio, was interested in meeting with our company we had made out of the house in Beverly Hills, that my old roommates abandoned me in. After meeting a few more black "C" type actors and musicians I started to believe we could pull this off... I mean it was 1983 and people's views on blacks were changing drastically, but I must have been totally ahead of my time, because it had an opposite effect and in the end, without getting into the horrid details of having 6 black people from South Central living in my rented house next door the the costume designer from great movies, and Bette Midler down the street, and after having a one night stand with the guy across the corner on the same block, I'd had it when the police arrested 4 of the black people for some small infraction in the middle of the night when they went for a walk down Beverly Crest Drive. A drunk black man, a pal of a pal of one of my roommates was found passed out in front of Rock Hudson's house (years before AIDS came out about Hudson)... By that moment my mother and her friends, which included Gilligan Island's Ginger (Movie Star) Tina Louise, Cameron Mitchell (Actor), a novelist millionairess Judy Liederman and even famed first black Catwoman Eartha Kitt were calling and begging me not to hurt my mother, and even my mother wrote me a letter begging me to get away from these people. I did finally get away, but it was with one of them, a black guitarist named Justin Tyme, a marvelous musician who resembled Sly or the Family Stone or Bootsie Collins, the bass player, he really was interesting and spoke like an Englishman. We shed the house and black roommates and ran from there to Justin's mother and father's small 3 bedroom home in South Central L.A. and l on 74th Street and Main Streets, for a time, lived in the back, in a small cottage I fixed up. That's when I started joining all extra agencies and non union companies to get work in films and tv. That was the most positive thing I could have done then, because I started to get small roles as a featured extra due to my extra skills of contorting my body into a ball, or being Janis Joplin the Sixties singer. I even had a small affair with one of the cute extras of the AFI film "Focus" made by Eric Red, who wrote The Hitcher, but unfortunately ran into his own bad luck due to drug use, he ran his jeep into a plate glass window of a restaurant and injured himself and others, and then tried to take the glass and cut his own throat. I did two films for him, and had a small make out affair with a cute extra name Steve Trimble, but it crumbled when my mother came to The Beverly Hills Hotel with her then 3rd hubby Sol Steinberg, who was about 35 years old than my mother at that time. I ended up calling another pal from the Polo Lounge named Steve Major who was known at that time as the "Extra King" and he was white! That evening we got stoned in the men's room and walked around the hotel. An ambulance pulled up and Mark wanted to check it out, but not me, I wanted to go the opposite way so we did it my way and walked to the pool and sat there stoned and drunk as Sven the manager served us shots of great Tequila with the worm at the bottom. We shared the worm and at that moment time seemed to stop until we heard more fire engines. We walked back to the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel and said our good nights. I sat in the lobby for about 2 hours trying to dry out and feel normal before I went to where my mom and old man stepfather slept in a huge suite costing them $3,000 dollars a night. As I made my way up finally to the elevators, I saw my mom and her man but she was walking ahead of him with her arms closed and a mean look on her beautiful face. She almost didn't see me, but it would seem they had a big fight at the restaurant when his now grown kids didn't show up and didn't particularly like my mother and saw her as a gold digger. When I first came to L.A. I found out he had an un-used condo in Santa Monica where I even conducted a cool interview with David Carradine and his mother and then wife Gail Jensen, all dead now. What did I do wrong when rich stepfather and mother came to L.A.? I should not have let my friend lay his scripts and synopsis' on his screwy show ideas all over the condo, because Sol was no dummy, he knew what I was trying to do, and what my friend was implying and Sol was very upset. That didn't lead to the downfall of my mother's and his marriage, my mother ruined that by her own self destruct mechanism. But I didn't help. And how could I know, that is why I wanted to warn anyone who tries this. Next time, if I ever had a second chance up to the point that I've written, I would have sent a telegram to my mom in Israel to wire me money (which at that time she could have done easily, being married to a rich man), but I didn't. I tried to take it into my own hands, and those hands made the wrong decision to work for my stepfather for a paltry $150 dollars a week! I should not have let the black musicians get too close except for in the studio, and when my first set of roommates left I should have contacted my mom's pals I mentioned, who at that time, before the damage was done, reps ruined, including my own, could have helped me. But I was so green and had never had to deal with things. I got through it. Even got meetings with casting people like Marvin Paige of General Hospital and even a guy over at the old Crown International Film Company that is not around. I also, even further down the road had a few meetings (thanks to my sewing machine ad, that's another story) with the big agent everyone thanked at the 2009 Academy Awards ceremony ... Thank you to my agent RICK KURTZMAN! But I blew that one by acting to nervous and being too convoluted and wanting to do this and that and this and that, and in the end, he said, GOOD LUCK! Next time, remember to come out to L.A. and not live with childhood pals, try and find your own room or rental. There's lots out there. I was bamboozled, but fell into the rich person's syndrome where I thought childhood pal would help me, he was my ticket to NOWHERE! He abandoned me in the night leaving me with the horrible roommates he was with for a few years before me, a white couple from Chicago and a scary attitude, Ben and Tiffany, where ever they are, they better not call me! They are both there, so is the childhood friend who became a semi famous reality star until he slapped and pushed his Playboy Bunny wife a few times in Germany when she slowed him down. But I then got smarter after meeting Mark Major, the one with me when they carted my mom off to UCLA Nut Ward! Yes, it was her they were attending too and what all the hoopla of the sirens at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I told Mark the next day and he freaked out. Then he started introducing me to casting people and got me a few extra jobs I see to this day on HBO and Cinemax! Wild to see me walk across the screen on movies such as "The Night Of The Comet" "North" and "Robin Hood, Men in Tights!" But then I started meeting casting folks on the set and they loved my energy. At one time I was on the set of "Exit To Eden," an old film starring Dan Aykroid and Rosie O'Donnell where they play spies. As the dancers come on the island you see me for about 15 to 20 seconds screaming "Take it off baby," although it is me screaming, it's not my voice. Gary Marshall picked me out of a crowd of hundreds and loved my energy. I get calls whenever it runs, but also on the set of Robin Men in Tights was great because of my energy too. Mel Brooks loved me and invited me to hang with his entourage even stand by him during interviews, but I think he liked my boobs, so he did a scene of me under the stairs and made a big deal of it. I didn't end up on the editing room floor. He was good to me. Then I met an old songwriter who wrote Unforgettable and dropped acting and traveled all over the world. Came back called Rick Kurtzman, who had absolutely NO INTEREST in me by that time. So I gave it up and got another job, a real good job, but not in entertainment. I even took acting classes and that is a MUST if you want to make contacts. If my acting teacher had taken a liking to me, I would have continued, but she was wrong for me, and I just kept coming back and being ignored and cued out! But she meant well. But she had her favorites. So think of it as being the pupil in school, the good kid that brings the teacher apples and presents. You have to replug yourself time and time again as I have. You have to drop certain people from your life eventually or you miss the boat, and I missed it so many times that my skin was getting as curly as my natural curly hair on my head. So many mistakes I would never make now! I had a chance with many opportunities. I took some, I threw many away. First you must make a goal list! Once you have a plan, than follow it. I had it in my mind. I thought I had made it when I didn't. I noticed as I progressed trying to get into entertainment, that I was making enemies, isolating myself with each new casting audition of anything after Robin Hood was way done. I screwed up again when I had a chance to work at a bit trade paper called The Hollywood Reporter for a six month assignment, so I dropped out of a series with Hal Holbrook and Dyan Canon about Perry Mason modern. I even had an "under five" line. But I blew it. Then because of my big mouth and ego I started to ruin myself at The Hollywood Reporter, and everything else. My mouth got me in trouble. Even on the lowest thing on the totempole GAME SHOW AUDIENCE, I messed up by talking, talking, and bragging of my blogging. So there is so much more, and if you have any questions, feel free to leave them on my message machine and I will answer them: 206-222-0786 ... I hope this helps. It helped me see more mistakes. But for now, you get the drift by now. I drifted and was so young. I have no one to blame but me. I have accepted my fate. Thank God my husband, a director, married me after all that!

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