Saw this in Jerry's blog: Former Teen Idol [Leif] Garrett Charged With Heroin Possession

I always preferred older actors, but God, I still remember the florid headlines on those teenybopper magazines, Tiger Beat and 16, things like "Could you be Leif's girl? Take this quiz to find out!" "Ten kooky things about gorgeous, loveable Leif!" "Leif's secret heartache! Could you help him?" etc. (The headlines were pretty much the same over time; the names of the teen idols were interchangable as the years passed: from one of the Beatles to Peter Noone to Bobby Sherman and Donny Osmond to David Cassidy, and so on.) The teen idol du jour would be splashed on the front cover; in the case of Leif Garrett, it was often a pose that accented his big "puppy dog" eyes and his "kissable" lips (artfully enhanced by the faintest of makeup—or perhaps that old 70s standby the airbrush).

Dawn Lyn (Dodie from the last year or two of My Three Sons) is Leif's sister; I saw her name several months ago when I was idly surfing through www.jumptheshark.com and read the cruel comments people had written about her on the My Three Sons page. She made a very angry response, especially about her wardrobe, which was conceived to make her look younger and was not her idea. Hope she's faring better than her brother.

I occasionally watch specials about child stars and it seems a good/bad proposition. Many times it seems the children get through by having supportive parents and have actually been quite happy—people like Shirley Temple and Jon Provost and Melissa Gilbert—and then there are the kids forced into it for one reason or the other who suffer. The final solution for these kids is too often drastic, whether in their teen years or later: Anissa Jones. Dana Plato. Rusty Hamer. Bobby Driscoll.

Just sad.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 8:06:00 AM

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