‘Kids’ Get What’s Coming to Them

Louis Lettieri’s first reaction was to groan when he picked up his mail one day last month and spied the envelope from Los Angeles County Superior Court.

This couldn’t be good news. Was it another summons for jury duty? Had be been sued? Did he get a ticket?

Instead, the court’s letter brought word of a long-forgotten payday.

For 42 years, a single U.S. Savings Bond, Series E, had been sitting in a vault in the basement of the Los Angeles County Courthouse, gathering dust--and interest. Its face value was $100. When Lettieri took it to the bank last week, he said, the bond was worth $793.92.

Lettieri, a 53-year-old accountant who lives and works in Irvine, earned the money when he was 11 years old. He played the part of “Little Beaver” in the pilot of a television show based on the Red Ryder Western series.

The son of a cook, Lettieri was discovered during the 1950s by an agent who lived down the street from him in Sherman Oaks. Although the Red Ryder pilot didn’t pan out, he did appear in a film with Humphrey Bogart, and in television shows with Broderick Crawford and Rin Tin Tin.

The story behind Lettieri’s modest windfall is a classic, only-in-Los Angeles blend of Hollywood, the law, forgotten funds, and old-fashioned gumshoe work.

For nearly 60 years, the court has been setting aside a percentage of child performers’ salaries until they reach adulthood. The practice began under a 1939 law inspired by child star Jackie Coogan, whose mother spent his fortune before he reached 21.

During the 1940s through the 1970s, the money was placed in savings bonds.

For many child performers, retrieving their bonds from the court was a right of passage. But dozens of others either didn’t know about their bonds or forgot about them.

Over the years, the court has periodically tried to find the owners of leftover bonds.

The most recent effort, which led to Lettieri’s pleasant surprise, began in 1995, when former child recording star Anthony Riparetti sent the court a letter asking about a notice he had found that initially was sent in 1973.

A court audit then turned up a list of some 40 names, which wound up on the desk of Barbara Greenwald, an energetic research attorney for Family Court who handles the contracts for minors employed by the entertainment industry.

A bureaucrat might have dragged her feet or even punted. Greenwald saw a chance to play detective.

“When they brought me this list, my mouth dropped to the floor,” she said.

She immediately sought out Paul Petersen, whom she had met through an actress who at age 9 had played Cookie on the television show “Blondie.”

A former Mouseketeer who also played son Jeff on the “Donna Reed Show,” Petersen is active on the Young Performers Committee of the Screen Actors Guild and is founder of the advocacy group A Minor Consideration.

Using his contacts at SAG, Petersen soon had solid leads on the names of 17 child actors and recording stars on the list. He posted the list on the group’s Internet home page. And he and Greenwald trolled the Net looking for more leads.

“When this was first happening, Paul and I were like two little kids,” Greenwald recalled. “We felt like Santa Claus. We’d e-mail each other and talk on the phone and we were giggling. It was so much fun. In some cases, it was significant amounts of money.”

Indeed, some have received bonds worth several hundred thousand dollars.

Following All Leads

Using home computers and stacks of dusty court files from the county archives, Greenwald and Petersen spent hours trying to track down the bond owners.

But some leads came unexpectedly.

Greenwald found jazz guitarist Larry Carlton when she spotted one of his CDs at a record store, read the liner notes and signed on to a fan club’s World Wide Web page.

Oliver Conant, who played in the coming-of-age film “Summer of ‘42,” was found through the Web site of Petersen’s organization, which urged cybersleuths to “Be a Detective!”

One did, sending this electronic mail message:

“Hi, I saw your posting and did some searching. Oliver Conant (“Summer of ‘42”) is an English teacher in New York City.” The message added that Conant had written some reviews for the New York Times.

It was enough information for Greenwald to find him through an Internet address directory.

Donny Osmond and Candice Bergen were the easiest to find. Greenwald addressed Bergen’s letter to the star’s handlers in New York as she watched “Murphy Brown.” And, she said, when she heard from Osmond, it was a thrill. As a teenager, she had given his poster a prominent place on her bedroom wall.

Lettieri was their most recent “hit.”

Now, just 11 names are left on the list.

Greenwald is still looking for Chris Barnes, one of the stars of the 1976 hit film “The Bad News Bears.” And for a 42-year-old man named John Clark, who as a teenager played in a band called the Little Bitty Soul Babies.

She trolls the Internet searching for clues to the whereabouts of Italian actress Franca Faldini. She wonders whatever happened to Diane Cassidy, an ingenue discovered at a racetrack in the 1940s who signed a seven-year studio contract, got her teeth fixed, made one picture for MGM in 1952 and vanished.

Some of the bonds in the vault are more than 50 years old. They belong to an actress named Jean VanderWilt, who appeared in films during the 1940s.

Son vs. Mother

At that time, the 1939 law giving judges the authority to order savings withheld for child performers was relatively new. It had been inspired by a Hollywood scandal--a lawsuit actor Jackie Coogan filed against his mother, Lillian Coogan Bernstein.

In his lawsuit, Coogan contended that he made, and she spent, some $4 million during his years as a sad-faced 1920s film star known as “The Kid.” By the time he turned 21, Coogan was broke.

His mother claimed she deserved every penny of the money her son made, and never intended for the fortune to be his. She said she didn’t squander the earnings and treated him generously, giving him $1,000 for his 21st birthday and lavishing love and affection on him.

The law was on her side then, and it still is. The state’s Family Code states that the mother and father of an unemancipated minor are entitled to the “services and earnings of the child.”

“The idea is that children do not own the proceeds of their own labor--isn’t that remarkable?” said Marc Staenberg, a Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer. He added that although children have historically been considered dependents--and the vast majority of them are--the law never anticipated the earnings that a prodigy actor or athlete now commands.

A law recently enacted in Florida, a state popular with golf and tennis prodigies, gives the earnings to the minor. Staenberg said children’s advocates are trying to come up with similar legislation to push in California.

For now, Greenwald said, the only protection is the Coogan Law and the hopes that a child performer’s parents do the right thing. Most of them do, she said.

“These were kids. Everybody was making decisions for them,” said Greenwald. “They weren’t handling the paperwork. They didn’t know it was here. They went where they were told to go. This money was put away for them for safe keeping.”

During the 1940s and early ‘50s, a young performer’s contract approval by the court was a well-staged media event. So it was with actress Piper Laurie in 1951.

On the same day Laurie’s contract was approved, Cassidy, the actress whose bonds still lie in the court’s vault, was put on a budget by a judge who ordered MGM to set aside 10% of her salary.

Cassidy, who was 19 at the time, according to a Times account, protested that she owed too much money for her New York wardrobe and to her agent. She wore a blue velvet cloak to court.

But Superior Court Judge Frank G. Swain gave her a dressing down.

“You don’t know how to live within your income,” he said. “You evidently expect to be pampered. This court doesn’t pamper. You heard the order. The money will be taken out of your paycheck before you receive it. The bonds will be in the hands of the court.”

And, some 47 years later, some of them still are.

Bringing Back Memories

For some performers, the amount left in the vault was small. But in the case of Darby Hinton, who appeared in the 1970s television series “Daniel Boone,” the face value of the bonds topped $40,000. He had assumed the money went to the Internal Revenue Service. He paid off his bills.

And, according to Petersen, actress Beverly Jo Morrow’s bond money saved her Nevada ranch from foreclosure.

Even when the payoff is small, curiosity can draw a former performer back to the vault--and to an afternoon of childhood memories.

And so, on a recent Tuesday, Lettieri drove from Irvine to downtown Los Angeles, paid the $11 parking fee and walked into Superior Court Department 2. After meeting briefly with Greenwald and Judge Paul Gutman, who signed a court order releasing the bond, he was escorted to the court’s finance office, where he signed a ledger book and picked up his bond.

“You earned that,” Greenwald congratulated him. “I’m just amazed that I found you,” she said.

“I didn’t need saving from my parents,” Lettieri told her. “You saved me from myself. I would have spent this money a long time ago.”

He paused for a moment, then added: “I wonder what else is out there.”