mine. I wasn’t into Bobby Darin
the “Splish Splash” guy, I was into
Darin doing “Beyond the Sea” and
“Mack the Knife” and all of that
great stuff.
I pursued my career as a teenager in Los Angeles when I was
still in high school. I was the only
non-professional that got into
the Los Angeles Theater Company. I moved back to New York
two weeks after I graduated high
school and had a part-time job in
a mail room at a textile company
New Jersey Stage
for two dollars an hour. It was an
exciting time. I was studying there
and got an agent and got my first
professional job at 18 in a musical
on Broadway. It was a failed show
called The Fig Leaves Are Falling
but a CBS Films casting director
saw me and flew me out to do a
screen test for a movie. I didn’t
get the role but Michael Douglas
did and Michael and I laugh about
that. I saw him a year ago and we
were laughing our butts off about
this movie. He said, “Thank God
you didn’t get it, it nearly ruined
my career!” But the screen test
led to me getting an agent out
in Los Angeles and then doing
auditions and starting to do television. I did Marcus Welby MD,
Mod Squad, Bonanza — all of those
shows, about ten of them.
From there I started going on auditions for pilots and it was weird
but I would not have had a professional music career if it was not for
The Partridge Family. Although I
played guitar and sang, it was just
for fun in my living room. The Par-
December 2014
pg 20