Search For Tomorrow Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

the mid-'30s. The Mount Vernon, New York, young man had been studying at the Westchester branch of the City College of New York when he was offered a dramatic scholarship. "That started me thinking," Larry recalls, "that if I was good enough to get a scholarship, I might as well try my luck in the business right away, instead of trying in school.

"I started working at a small station in New York, WWRL," Haines relates, a nostalgic smile brightening his eyes. "It was a pretty heavy schedule for me in those days. I worked seven days a week, starting at ten and going on past midnight. But I loved it, and I learned what the medium was all about. I auditioned for everything - and if you asked me for the number of shows I eventually did, I'd have to say something like 15,000! I was on all the old shows - Gangbusters, The FBI, Peace and War, Inner Sanctum. I had a running part as Lefty Higgins in Rosemary for a couple of years, and I played Lew Archer on The Second Mrs. Burton for something like four years. I still love radio," Larry said softly, "and I do some CBS radio mysteries now, which are heard here in New York on WOR radio."

I wondered what made the kind actor so fond of a medium most actors have virtually abandoned to musicians in these past years. "I love radio because it allows the audience to paint its own sets," Haines replied thoughtfully. "The audience can create their own sets and their own characters in their minds. It makes more of a demand on listeners' imaginations."

While Larry munched his luncheon sandwich and chatted about his affection for radio, it occurred to me that it must have been difficult for him to make the switch to television. "It certainly was!" he said with emphasis. "I had a great deal of qualms! I had worked in radio for about fifteen years, and was used to that.

"Also, television was a completely new medium back then...that was about twenty-seven years ago. Things were a lot more hectic in those days. The equipment wasn't as good as it today and there was a lot of attention on the set because it was all live - we didn't have any tape. Things were always going wrong - ladders would fall down, people would miss cues, all sorts of things. But it was a challenge, and I took it. In fact, I was on television's first soap opera, called The First Hundred Years."

I interrupted Larry to ask about some of the funny things that had happened on the set in those years, back in the time before the technicians and their machines could wipe out any inadvertently humorous mishaps. It was a question that Larry warmed to immediately; his sense of humor is avid and joyful.

"There were two incidents on Search that I remember in particular," he grinned, "although there must have been lots of them, as I've always been the clown on the set, trying to make everyone laugh. And, since I do have a sense of humor, the crew and the cast would always pick me to pull pranks on.

"One time, I was doing a scene with Melba Rae, who played my wife, Marge, for so many years. The scene involved my coming home from work very hot and tired, and Marge soothing me and making me comfortable by offering to get me my slippers. When we rehearsed the scene, everything went fine. Then, when we were on the air, Melba went to get my slippers, but when I tried to put them on, I found that they were stuffed with newspapers. I couldn't get my feet into them at all!"

Gulping back my appreciative laughter, I managed to ask Larry what in the world he did to redeem his dignity in the scene. "I just ad-libbed around it," he chuckled, sounding like the pro he is. "I said something like, 'Marge, how many times have I told you to keep the kids from fooling around in my closet!'"

Larry's small, brightly lit dressing room was now resounding with our combined laughter. I urged him to tell me about the second funny incident he remembered.

"Well, there was the time on Search when I was supposed to come by and take Jo (Mary Stuart) to the airport. When we prepared that scene, she was supposed to come down the stairs of her living room. I would pick up her two valises, which were lying at the foot of the stairs on the set, and we'd set off for the airport. When we played the scene in front of the cameras, it all went well. Mary didn't trip on the stairs coming down and I didn't forget my lines. Everything seemed like it was going perfectly. Then I leaned over to pick p the valises...and almost fell over backwards! They had been loaded with sandbags! I couldn't budge them!"

"What on earth did you say that time, Larry?" I asked.

The actor smiled and repeated calmly, "I just said said, as if I were kidding around with my good friend, Jo, 'Honey, what in the world are you taking with you?'"

It is this easy-going amiability that sets Larry Haines apart as a genuinely nice man. His friendly handshake and sincere gaze make him instantly endearing, and his shy, down-to-earth, modest demeanor encourages trust and confidence. As soon as Larry greeted me at the CBS studios on New York's West Side, I stopped feeling like a stranger or an interloper. I was with a gracious host - a host who is as relaxed and fun-loving as he tries to make everyone around him.

"I like to kid around," he agreed. "I love to laugh, and I love to cause other people to laugh. But not at anyone's expense. I'm not a prankster, and I wouldn't embarrass anyone. But I do like to joke around - to try to say funny things. I've been that way ever since I was a kid."

There is, though, no compulsion on this particular actor's part to upstage anyone. Larry isn't an attention-grabber or constant ego-scratcher. When he heard his name called last year as the winner of the Best Daytime Actor Emmy, he "just couldn't believe it. I never expected it," Haines insisted earnestly. I was up against such fine actors - marvelously talented men like Macdonald Carey, Shepherd Strudwick, Michael Nouri. I didn't think for one minute that I'd get it!" His voice trailed off for a moment. "But, of course, I was deeply emotionally touched when the award was voted to me. To be voted on by your peers for something like that is a very, very flattering thing."

And Haines is a sensitive, reachable man, who is moved by most honest shows of appreciation. While we sat chatting in his dressing room, a small boy wandered in. Speaking shyly and hesitantly, he asked Larry for his autograph. Drawing out the child, obviously interested, Larry discovered that he was a child actor. "I want to thank you," he said to the boy, "for asking for my signature. It's a great honor for an actor to be asked something like that by another actor." The child, grown two feet taller with the dignity and kindness gravely shown him by Haines, left the dressing room happily.

Larry's love for children is evident in the tone he uses when talking about his own daughter, Debbie, who's twenty-one and a student at Jacksonville University. "Debbie doesn't know what she wants to do yet," he explained. "At first, she thought she'd go into journalism. Then she considered clinical psychology. And then, at the back of her mind, she's always considered communications - television or film production.

"I don't believe in pushing her in any one direction. I can give her my best advice, and I certainly want the best for her. But I would never dictate to her. That's something I never had done."

"Was there," I wondered, "any particular guiding rule that you gave Debbie when she was growing up?"

"Just love," he answered quickly. "And always being able to communication openly. I think that's the whole answer.

"But then, we've always been a very close family. My wife, Trudy, and I have been married for...so long...thirty-two years! Were a very small and close-knit family. I am a very family-oriented man. We've always tried to do as many things as possible together. Debbie has turned out to be very athletic - she's gotten more proficient at sports than I am. She and Trudy are also very good golfers, which is now my primary sport, along with boating.

"Trudy and I met in high school," Larry recalled. "We both went to Mount Vernon High School. I never really knew her, but I had heard that she was a good dancer, so I asked her to the senior prom. She accepted, we had a good time - and then we didn't see each other for five years. We just went our separate ways. I went on the college road and Trudy entered the business world - she worked at Harper's Bazaar magazine for awhile.

"We re-met accidentally, in Grand Central Station. She was going back to Mount Vernon from the city; I was going tin the opposite direction. We had our own two-person high school reunion on the platform, talking about old times.

"Almost from that first re-meeting, we started talking to each other seven days a week and dating really seriously. But I'm old-fashioned about some things, and I wanted to make sure that I could support her before we got married, so we ended up waiting for five years before we did marry."

After the ceremony, Larry insisted on another "old-fashioned" concept: "I like my wife to be at home. I didn't want her to work. Not," he added quickly, "that I object to women, in general, pursuing careers. But I think that one of the things that helped keep our marriage going was the fact that we didn't have a conflict of careers. From the beginning, Trudy and I had the common goal that I would become successful at my chosen profession. I think that many times competitiveness of two careers in one family breaks up marriages.

"Trudy and I didn't have that conflict. She is completely unrelated to my field - although she does love the theater and ballet and show business. She's a wonderful critic of my work. I rely on her judgement, and always have.

"And she's always shown that she cares. She's been most encouraging when things didn't look bright. Instead of her taking the attitude, 'Look, you're not going anywhere, find another type of work,' she kept reassuring me."

The Haines live in Weston, Connecticut, a pleasant suburb that affords them the opportunities for golfing and boating they enjoy so much. Although Larry is intensely serious about his career, "I don't take my work home with me. Once I finish a scene, or a day's work, that's it." His is a balanced life, and he cherishes his time with his wife, daughter and their friends.

It's very difficult for him, Larry says, to really believe that Search for Tomorrow is celebrating its 25th anniversary on the air - and that he has played the role of Stu Bergman for that length of time. The years on the show have brought him close friends - among them Mary Stuart and Millee Taggart and her husband - and warm memories of a pleasant working base from which he has been able to sporadically branch out. Larry looks upon the new freedom of expression on daytime drama as the most notable change in these past years. "Drama is the mirror of life," he says with sincerity. "There should be freedom in the arts with which to portray what happens in real life - without, of course, getting pornographic about it.

"I'm a very lucky man," Larry Haines repeats, happily, and he's one of the rare few we know who can legitimately make that statement about their lives.

[DRW50]

July 1973 Radio TV Mirror

[DRW50]

there was Sam Reynolds - played by dear Bobby Mandan. But Sam didn't come on the show as a love interest. It just sort of happened, because we liked working together so much and the audience liked the teaming, too. We had a ball. It was a lovely five years. Then Bobby wanted to go to California. He liked living out there and the different kind of work.

"The writers kept putting obstacles in the way of Sam and Jo's marriage," Miss Stuart laughed. "But the main obstacle was that Bobby wanted to move to California. And then, of course, he did Applause on Broadway and left for the coast. We were always so sure he'd come back - but we were wrong. On the show, Sam was supposedly killed in a plane crash.

"Then Dr. Tony Vincente - our Tony George - came in."

Had a romance between him and Jo been planned from the beginning?

"I don't think they were sure. That is, until we got to know Tony very well. Playing opposite an actor - well, it's like a real relationship. It's that thing about 'chemistry.'

"Sam (reincarnated by Roy Shuman) was brought back as a survivor of that plane crash - but now mentally unbalanced. The story line had been abruptly changed. Jo had always been supposed to marry Sam. But we'd all agreed: 'That's ridiculous. It just has to be Tony!' So Sam was killed off, and that paved the way for Jo and Tony to get married."

Val Dufour, who played the dear, departed Walter Curtin on NBC's Another World for seven years joined the Search company last November, and found himself playing another lawyer - namely John Wyatt. He introduced us to three Search players: John Cunningham (Dr. Wade Collins), Courtney Sherman (Kathy Phillips), and Peter (Scott Phillips).

Simon had something of a splash on the off-Broadway scene with his Harold Pinter-like play, In Case of Accident.

We asked if he was at work on a new play. "No," was his terse reply.

"Yes, he is," came the more open John Cunningham. "But he refuses to divulge the details to any of us."

The beautiful Miss Sherman and her husband, actor-writer Ed Easton, live in a lovely apartment in a crumbling tenement in a colorful West Side section of Manhattan called "Hell's Kitchen." They were in the midst of a court battle with the landlord.

While John Cunningham was appearing on Another World (as Dr. Dan Shearer), he also doubled in the Broadway musical theater at night. We asked the singing actor if he had plans to do any further moonlighting.

"I'm looking," John admitted. "I was just prevented from doing one because I was too busy on the show."

Outside the studio where Search is taped daily, we chatted briefly with Gary Tomlin, who plays Bruce, Tony and Jo's teenage ward. A native of Indianapolis, Ind., Gary told us: "I quit the University of Indiana after a year-and-a-half and came to New York to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts." He smiled. "Where else? My first professional job was a Coca-Cola commercial. I played Vivian Vance's son in a short-lived Broadway comedy called My Daughter, Your Son. And I've played the blind son opposite actresses like Maureen O'Sullivan, Sylvia Sidney, and Jan Sterling in Butterflies Are Free. Right now, I'm the standby for the roles of the two sons in Jean Kerr's new Broadway play, Finishing Touches. I'd done some one-day work on the soaps, but this part on Search is my first continuing role and I'm enjoying it."

We also asked Billie Lou Watt, the gracious lady who plays Ellie Harper, what was new. "Well, my husband (actor Hal Studer) and I have joined a workshop group connected with the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and we're busy rehearsing a production of Chekhov's The Anniversary. You've gotta brush up on your stagecraft, y'know."

We couldn't help saying that we hoped a romance was blossoming between her character and Stu Bergman (played by A. Larry Haines). But soap actors are just as much in the dark as the audience as to what's going to happen next. "I really don't know," Billie Lou admitted. "Nothing's been mentioned to us."

Dino Narrizano (Dr. Len Whiting), who was recently written out of the soap, is featured in a new Broadway play. And another former member of the cast, Leigh Lassen (Patti Whiting) has opened a fun fur shop located near her home in Nyack, N.Y.

Millee Taggart (Janet Walton Collins) said she and her husband, Barry Kurtz, and their two children were not sorry they gave up their New York apartment and moved to a house in Harrison, N.Y. "Fresh air and green grass, that's where it's at," she exclaimed, beaming.

Ray Bellaran, who plays Tom Walton, is a young veteran of TV commercials. Ray, along with his two sisters, made his Broadway debut singing and dancing in the Shirley Booth musical, Look to the Lilies. The New Jersey-born actor commutes from the suburbs with his mother when he's on the show, which is his first soap.

The other son, Gary, is played by Tommy Norden. TV fans will remember him as one of Flipper's human pals. But Tommy started his career as a model, and appeared in hundreds of commercials. He was the first child to sing solo on TV's Sing Along With Mitch.

We watched Kathy Beller, the pretty young miss who plays Liza Walton, and W.K. Stratton (Randy) run through their lines.

We asked Kathy how she had gotten into the business: "Well, one day I walked into my parents' room and announced: 'I'm going to be an actress.' I was 14 at the time - and they just laughed. But I called a photographer, who was a friend of ours, and had some pictures taken. Then I made a tour of the agents' offices. I finally landed a commercial, did some more, and then summer stock. This is my first soap." She rolled her big, expressive eyes. "This is hard work, very hard work."

W.K. Stratton, who hails from Fort Royal, Va., told us the familiar actor's story. "I came here to train at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and then did summer and winter stock and Shakespeare in the Park."

Portraying an intern named Dr. Matt Weldon is the highly personable Robert Phelps. Asked for some biographical facts, he said: "Well, I was born in Bethelem, Pa., but my adopted home is San Francisco - that's where my heart belongs. I went to schools all over the country - and through a rough period of trying to find myself. I did a lot of movie work. Search is my first daytime TV show."

With one of the largest casts on daytime television, not all the actors on Search are on call on a daily basis. A lot depends on how "heavy" their particular story line is at the moment. We did not talk with Joan Copeland (Andrea Whiting) who was off on vacation, Ken Harvey (Doug Martin), or Carl Low (Dr. Rogers), who were enjoying respites at their country homes in New Canaan, Conn. and Nyack, N.Y., respectively.

On the magazine office set, wet met actress-equestrienne Ann Williams (Eunice Martin), who was immersed in a card game with a member of the TV crew. How were her horses? "Fine," she smiled, looking up momentarily. "I rode for two-and-a-half hours yesterday and I can hardly walk."

Friendly Andrew Jarkowsky (Frank) has gone right from his role of lawyer Mark Venable on Another World to the new part of an associate magazine editor on Search.

"I don't expect this to be a long-term role," he admitted. "Soap acting is grueling work. I'm planning to take a long rest when this job is over. I'm definitely going to tour India and then I'd love to come back and motor across our country. That's been a dream of mine."

Over the years Search has cast many well-known actors in important parts for the show - George Maharis, Don Knotts, Tom Ewell. But nothing was as significant as Linda Bove in the key role of Melissa.

Explained producer Edwards: "When we decided to do a story about a deaf girl, our writers did a thorough job of research. They met with David Hayes of the National Theater of the Deaf. After that, we felt that the best performance would be given by an actress who was actually deaf. And Linda Bove is certainly one of the company's most gifted members."

There's a new family in the town of Henderson: Terry and Jay Benjamin (James Hainesworth) and Jay's brother, James (Joe Morton).

The dynamic Joe is currently moonlighting as Valentine in the rock musical Two Gentleman of Verona. Both Broadway and Los Angeles audiences have seen him in productions of Hair. The singer-actor also appeared in the off-Broadway hit Salvation. Joe directed the original American touring company of Jesus Christ Superstar, in which he also played Pontius Pilate.

James is the personification of versatility. Born in Newport News, Va., he studied set decoration, theatrical workshop, and directing at the Hampton Institute. Later, James taught acting, set construction, and lighting. After a stint with the Green Ram Theatre in Wisconsin, he came to New York and was immediately engaged as the assistant set designer for the successful off-Broadway production of Oedipus. He later took over the title role. He had major roles in films like Shaft, The Hot Rock and Speed is of the Essence. Jim is also an amateur boxer.

Lovely Camille Yarborough (Terry) was born in Chicago, Ill., and began her career as a danger-singer with the Katherine Dunham troupe. She appeared in Lorraine Hanbserry's To Be Young, Gifted and Black and wrote an article about the experience for the New York Sunday Times. "I'm mainly interested in being a writer," Camille confessed. "I want to write plays and songs, both the lyrics and the music. I write poetry too. I've been giving readings at various colleges on the weekends." Camille, who was also seen on stage in Sambo and Trumpets of the Lord and in the movie Shaft, played Miss Butterfield, a nurse, on the now-defunct Where the Heart Is.

- David Johnson

[DRW50]

From a May 1998 Weekly catching up with former soap names.

[Paul Raven]

That 73 article solved a mystery for me re the Benjamin family.I have seen those names in cast lists but never was sure who they were. I wonder if they were contract players and how much airtime they got as I have never seen them mentioned in summaries.

I have a feeling that Jay was a policeman and Terry a nurse so they could easily blend into the canvas without leading stories.Maybe there was more planned for them but writer changes got in the way.

Seems under John Edwards SFT was really trying to be contemporary and relevant and it was working.

[saynotoursoap]

Paul Raven, the Benjamin family featured prominently during the WGA strike of 1973.

The article has it slightly incorrect. James was Terry's brother, not Jay's. James's last name was Foster. He had returned from Vietnam, and was at Henderson hospital. Another patient had a heart attack, and James flashed back to his experience in Vietnam, where he had been a medic, and he saved the man's life. Impressed with James' skill and decisiveness, Bob Rogers took James under his wing, encouraging him to enter the newly created physician's assistant program. When Carl Devlin murdered Frank Ross, James came under suspicion for the crime. Jay, a police lieutenant, worked with Scott to prove his brother-in-law's innocence.

Elsewhere, Jay and Terry were buying a house, but their loan application was denied. They sought Kathy's legal assistance, because they felt that discrimination played a role in their denial, as their combined incomes should have ensured approval. Kathy and Doug Martin came to blows over the case, as Doug insisted that the bank president was not racist.

These plots played out along with the Linda Bove deaf story. Shortly after the writer's strike ended, within three months I would estimate, the Benjamins vanished from the canvas. Presumably, they continued to live offscreen in Henderson. Linda, of course, married in the storyline, and she and her new husband were shipped out, too.

[DRW50]

Were these stories planned out for a while or was it the strike writers (or the producer, Edwards) who saw the strike period as their best time to try socially relevant stories? What did you think of the stories?

Was Camille Yarborough involved in this story?

It's too bad this is all likely lost. It sounds very cutting edge for the P&G soaps at this time. And it also sounds like the highest profile stories Search ever gave to black characters.

The Linda Bove story is also very unique for soaps. I wonder if she left for Sesame Street or they just wrote her out.

[Thibaut1971]

Soap Opera's Greatest Stories & Stars Vol.8 #3 april 1984

[DRW50]

That's an odd photo with Lisa Peluso (?). It looks like he's with a vampire.

I wonder what the other soap offer was. I could see GL asking for him, especially since John Wesley Shipp was leaving.

[Paul Raven]

July 74 Ann Marcus named headwriter.

[DRW50]

Who was EP then?

When did Judy Lewis write for the show?

[Thibaut1971]

Soap Opera Weekly Vol.1 #24 05-07-1990

[DRW50]

Thanks. I'd never read that. Nice to hear more stories about the early days. I never knew Sandy Duncan was on the show.

[DRW50]

July 1961 TV Radio Mirror

[DRW50]

was a professional model. At six, she made her first commercial film, and her first dramatic TV appearance on the dramatized religious program, Lamp Unto My Feet. At seven, she had a role in a Studio One drama. At eight, she originated the part of Patti in the CBS-TV daytime serial, Search For Tomorrow. For these past ten years, Lynn and Patti, together, have crossed the boundaries between childhood and girlhood.

Lynn has carried many regular roles in radio serials, done nighttime TV drama - including Play Of The Week twice, in "Seven Times Monday" and "The Climate of Eden." She has done off-Broadway plays, made an Elia Kazan movie, "Splendor in the Grass," with Natalie Wood, for release this summer. She does commercial films, recently appeared on NBC-TV in a one-hour Special For Women - the one called "Mother and Daughter," in which Patricia Neal and Arthur Hill played her parents, and she was the rebellious teenager.

Despite her show-business background, Lynn could be any very pretty, well-bred girl on any college campus. Her eyes, hazel and wide-set in a delicate oval face, are clear, kind and candid. Her hair hangs simply in a soft cloud of auburn-brown. She is five-feet-three, holds her weight to one hundred pounds.

Take this question of weight, just as a starter. When all the other kids are ordering hot fudge sundaes, Lynn can't. "I wouldn't be aware of having to watch my weight that much," she sighs, "if I wasn't on television. But I know very well that everyone photographs about ten pounds heavier, and I must stay around a hundred to look right on camera.

"At one time, I got about fifteen pounds over - just when I was sent a script for a movie. The girl in the script was described as 'painfully thin.' They had to 'shadow' me in the the screen test to make me look thinner. Other girls can get by with a few extra pounds. I found out an actress can't."

Although she doesn't look like an actress - she uses less make-up than most teenagers, wears untheatrical clothes - there's that other ever-present problem of having to make the best possible appearance at all times. "When I am dressed up, I may not meet anyone I know or who knows me. But just let me go out - even in my own neighborhood - without being properly dressed, and I meet everyone, including my TV fans!"

Still another problem is trying to be like everyone else in her crowd. Going to a party to enjoy herself as other girls do, not to be asked to entertain and not to be singled out as different. Forgetting she is an actress, separating her work from her social life. The last thing Lynn wants to do is to capitalize on it - if only people would let her.

At a charity ball, last winter, the boy who was her escort was busy in the receiving line while newsreel photographers were taking pictures. Lynn was attractively costumed, and they took her picture and asked her name. "This boy was surprised that I hadn't told them who I was. He went over to them afterward and said I was an actress and told them what I did. But I wasn't there as an actress, only as a girl lucky enough to be having a good time at a wonderful party for a wonderful cause."

Other boyfriends have been amazed if she acts like any other fan when glamorous tears are around. "I'm completely awed," she confesses. "When someone like Zsa Zsa Gabor or Julie London swoops into a party or a night club, looking absolutely gorgeous, and the photographers rush to take pictures and everybody stares, I stand there and share with the rest of them. Why shouldn't I react like any other teenager? Why pretend to be blase?"

Problems arise about dating. A boy who dates Lynn always runs the risk of having it broken, sometimes at the very last minute, through no fault of hers. "One night, I was to be hostess at a dinner party a boy was giving. Dinner was at seven-thirty, and I promised to be there not later than seven. I was filming a commercial, to be finished by five. But the filming went on and on, until ten in the evening, and I simply couldn't leave. It was unfair to the boy - yet I had an obligation to my work.

"Some boys simply don't or won't understand about my work," Lynn acknowledges. "If they take me to the theater, they can't see why I can't always go somewhere to dance afterwards. 'An hour more or less can't make that much difference,' they argue. I try to explain that an actress goes to work, sick or well, tired or rested - but she owes it to herself, to everyone she works with, to be well and to look well. A girl can go to school the next day with circles under her eyes, but an actress can't. And she has to be absolutely punctual and keep to a schedule, or else she throws off everyone else's schedules. She can't do only what she feels like doing, when she feels like doing it."

The greatest problems, of course, concern a teenager's education - how to get the best one possible in the "staggered" hours left for study. In Lynn's case, this has worked out well, largely because of the emphasis her parents put on doing school work first and studying scripts second, but also because of Lynn's own capacity for hard work and concentration.

Grade-school years were spent at the Mace School, from which many young stars have graduated - Tuesday Weld and Patty McCormack among them; Carol Lynley was in Lynn's own class. In June, 1959, Lynn - not yet sixteen - was graduated with honors from the Calhoun School for Girls, where she had taken her high-school work. She was admitted to Barnard College in New York - just before a movie role was offered her.

The college released her for the part, Search For Tomorrow wrote her out of its script temporarily. Then her mother, who acts as her personal manager, saw the complete script for the first time and refused it, because of scenes she found objectionable for Lynn.

"I hadn't minded the break in my college year," Lynn says, "because I'm two years ahead of my age group and I felt, if I missed one term, it wouldn't matter that much. But, suddenly, I was left with all these upset plans, involving my entire college program. So as not to miss out completely, I enrolled in some classes at Hunter College. I would like the same education I would get if I weren't an actress, but this takes more work and more self-discipline.

"Other girls have classes at regular hours. I take mine any time I can - sometimes I start at five in the afternoon and work through until eight-thirty. Sometimes, if I'm not on a show, I start early in the morning. Not that I'm complaining about it - I have been very lucky. I chose this way, and I don't mind having to pay the price for it."

There is the problem of how much freedom a teenager should have, even an actress who has been treated like an adult in the professional world. "I go with an older crowd, especially with older boys. Some actors, but mostly young business men. While I feel perfectly capable of handling myself in all situations, I still don't think it looks right for a girl of my age to do all the things the older girls can do. Like staying out as late as I please or going any place I please. My mother wouldn't like it - and I really wouldn't blame her."

"Lynn has a curfew," her mother explains. "If it's a Friday or Saturday night, and she telephones me and says she is having a wonderful time and wants to stay longer, I don't mind. I just want to know where she is. Every boy who takes her out must call for her at the house. That's one strict rule. She must be escorted back to her door. That's another rule. Outside of that, there aren't many others."

Lynn realizes that most of her friends can do things she simply hasn't time for. "My best friend wanted me to go to Washington, D.C., with her - but I had commitments those days on Search For Tomorrow. Last Christmas, our crowd went skiing over the holidays - but I had jobs to consider."

People are prone to think that, when an actress keeps busy and earns well, it's all profit. Lynn's money goes into many necessary expenses. More than half is paid out in income tax. "I am happy to pay the tax - happy to be earning enough to pay it. But nobody understands how little is left over when all the expense is added."

"A child in show business needs many special lessons," her mother says. "First, there's private schooling, because of the odd hours. This costs Lynn a minimum of $1,200 a year. There is tutoring in subjects she may have missed during the school year - algebra, geometry, languages. Special coaching is required for some parts. Dancing lessons, ballet, vocal lessons, dramatic coaching.

"When she plays a younger role - which she can, simply by changing her hair style and her clothes - she has to get a whole new outfit. If she plays an older girl, the clothes she has may not be suitable. She had to buy a new wardrobe just to take one audition, although nothing came of it. But it was important for her to look right."

Her mother adds: "She pays dues to three professional unions - A.F.T.R.A., because of her radio and TV work; S.A.G., because of her movie work; and Equity, because of her stage work. Fan mail must be handled - she keeps up with it as best she can - and all this involves expense."

There are advantages in being a teenage actress, and Lynn is quick to admit them. Some boys like to date an actress. They feel she has that "extra something" that makes her more desirable. On the other hand, there are boys who shy away from a girl already doing professional work for professional pay. This puts her at a disadvantage.

She has learned concentration, cooperation. To control her temper, even when she may feel she has good reason to blow up. To take criticism, listen to instructions, and take direction. To be part of a smooth-working team.

"I love my career," Lynn says. "It's my first love. But, as I grow a little older, I realize that it has its place - that, in order to grow as an actress, one has to grow as a person, and being an actress is only a part of my life. Getting out and having a good time has always been more fun for me when it was a change from work.

"There is no denying that being an actress has often interfered with other things I wanted to do. No denying the dates I missed, the parties I couldn't go to, the evenings I wanted to stay up late and had to be in bed by nine.

"But I chose it, and I enjoy what I'm going more than anything else. I have a wonderful life. I know I'll never feel the cost has been too high."