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Show Family Weekly August 1 n, m9 Become Stars, Too? success than their famous parents but most in life is thai of being a celebrity's son or daughter Michael, even wrote whole books about their mis- ery Michael's being entitled, "I Couldn't Smote the Grass on My Father's Lawn," Michael wrote, "To be the son of a great man can be a disadvantage. It is like living next to a huge monument; one spends one's life circling around it, either to remain in the shade or to avoid its shadows." By his own lights, however, Michael felt he was a success. "As a pop singer," he said, "I seemed to be making out. Little chicks clawed at me in the street, like the one who said, 'Please sign this here for me. My parents hate your guts! That's why I want your autograph.' " Even Sydney Chaplin, the only one of the Chap-lin- s besides Geraldine to achieve some stardom he played the male lead in Broadway's "Be'Ja Are said, "I'm no Ringing" and "Funny Girl'i-h-as genius, and I don't have Dad's capacity for work." As for Charles Chaplin, Jr., who died last year, he wrote, "For the longest time Syd and I didn't I have wanted only to be see our father at all I was sorry my father worthy of my name could not see me in this role." Of all stars' daughters, Candice Bergen feels perhaps the farthest from her parents. "It's hopeless now between my parents and me," she says. On the other hand, Mia Farrow, whose fame has is an soared far above that of her ... ... star-mothe- ' - Hi r, f:-- Mario Thomas and father Danny (left) attend wedding of Theresa Thomas to Larry Gordon. r. Jane and Peter Fonda "educate" father Henry (left)? Could 0 example of an actress who feels she has been able to keep up a real relationship with her mother. "It's not a practical relationship any more," she said. "She's more like a dear friend. But she was delighted when I married Frank. She adored him." In the case of the Fondas, we interviewed as well as Henry Fonda said frankly that he thought both Jane and Peter would go far beyond, as he modestly put it, "any success I've had." He told us that Peter already e knew more about all phases of to 33 able he in been than had learn years. making "I feel," he said, 'like a novice when I'm talking to him." Talking of Jane, his eyes sparkled. "God," he exclaimed, "she's an exciting young actress! And she has already survived more mistakes than most actresses are allowed in a lifetime." Jane herself told us she thought it was a lot harder "to be Henry Fonda's son than Henry Fonda's daughter." "Peter adores my father," she continued reflectively, "but he was rejecting him." Jane told us that she feels, judging from her own childhood, that there are four definite stages of parental relationship. She described the first as "complete worship" and the second as "disillusion" "you know, when you say, 'He makes so many mistakes,' and you start blaming him for the troubles you have." She described the third of these stages as "complete rejection." "The fourth," she said, "is when you reach maturity and can say, 'nobody's perfect. " Jane frankly told us she married Roger Vadim after years of living with him for two reasons one, living with Vadim's children and two, her father. "I knew I was hurting him," she said. "I always said I would never get married until someone gave me one good reason for marriage, aside from the social, conventional one. Nobody ever did, but I married anyway, for social, conventional reasons and my father. "I think," she continued, "that in the future it should be made as difficult to get married as it is now to get a divorce or adopt children, for that matter. Take my father. All right, maybe he has been married five times. But if he'd been married only once and had four different affairs, nobody would think a thing of it Maybe he's the moralist. He married them. And take Elizabeth Taylor. I think she's Miss Morals herself. And Roger Vadim is, too." What, we asked her, did her father think of Vadim. "Well," she said, "Dad is Omaha, Nebraska, and Vadim is France and Russia. But I'll tell you one thing, if Vadim beat me up, Dad would beat him up!" who's proud of bringing up One his children to be actors is Lloyd Bridges. He mother-daught- star-pare- nt star-childre- n. motion-pictur- star-fath- : er er t rft Edgar Bergen made it in comedy-Candi- ce, drama. beamed as he told us how he had, as he put it, "brought Beau along" by putting him in episodes of all three of his tv series even though his son at first did not want to do it and was embarrassed about it. "I told him," Bridges said, "'Listen, Beau, it's just a job. If you're good, you'll get other jobs. If you're not, you won't.' "And now," Bridges continued, "Beau's takiug my role with hie brother Jeff. Beau's making a beautiful actor out of Jeff." What about his daughter Cindy? we asked. Here Bridges admitted he had not encouraged her acting, although when he was doing a play and one of the actresses had become ill, he had put Cindy in the part; and she had been good in it. "Actresses," he told us, "don't have the best lives or make the best wives. They have to have tremendous egos. I, for one, couldn't have married one." have an easy Does the child of a road to stardom? Let Mario Thomas, daughter of Danny Thomas, take that one. "When I wanted to go into show business," she told me, "Daddy made me promise to give it only two years. I said, 'Liste'i, it took you like a hundred !' "I don't know," Mario went on, "whether being the child of someone famous makes it twice as hard or just as hard. But whatever it is, I thought it was going to be just the other way. I thought everybody was going to give me everything, and I wouldn't be ready and then I found it wasn't like that at all. There is a preconception that exists that children of talented people can't be talented. It used to hurt. But not any more. "I love Daddy," Mario concluded, "and I love being Danny Thomas' daughter. But it does something to you emotionally. Nobody wants to be somebody's something not even a very special somebody's very special something. You just want to be you." Finally, Liza Minnelli is one star daughter, albeit an one, who feels that being the can come naturally. "But peoa of star daughter like don't for you ple it," she told us. "They're curious, but they don't necessarily like you." Miss Minnelli first went on the stage at the age of six. Her mother asked her to come up and join her in singing a song at the conclusion of her act for which, Miss Minnelli recalls, she was paid five dollars. But then that, too, was perhaps as it should have been. For Judy Garland herself had first been asked up on the stage by her mother at, of all ages, the age of two. star-pare- nt ed Family Weekly, August U, 1969 o |