The Child Star Left Behind (Cousin Jody)
KAR
http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=676&IssueNum=37
THE CHILD STAR
LEFT BEHIND
by Erik Himmelsbach
Former child stars gone bad are the human equivalent of
multi-car collisions. We gawk as they careen out of control and snicker at
the detritus of crime and drugs they drag onto the television superhighway.
When they turn up on the talk and reality shows - damaged, deluded, and
desperate - we chuckle at their pathetic plight as they sell the remains of
their totaled careers for scraps of cash.
Johnny Whitaker may be an ex-child star, but he still has his
dignity. You won't see him taking a pounding for a paycheck on Celebrity
Boxing or verbally jousting with Ron Jeremy and Tammy Faye on The Surreal
Life. His life has been surreal enough without jumping aboard the freak show
circuit.
Besides, Whitaker, now 44, has more important things to do.
Instead of soundstages and sets and self-serving tales of woe, he's more
likely to be holed up in a musty Van Nuys office, counseling non-English
speakers with debilitating crack problems. The former Family Affair star
founded the nonprofit Paso Por Paso a year ago with the objective of
bringing the twelve-step community to individuals in their native language.
"People who don't know that I am Johnny Whitaker know that I am
'Juanito,'" he says. "I am this white guy in the San Fernando Valley who is
helping out the Latins who aren't speaking English very well, but have
problems."
But if you've spent a nanosecond in front of the television you
can't miss him. Other than the middle-aged paunch and touches of gray,
Whitaker is a grown-up duplicate of the freckled redhead, who, for a 10-year
period from the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s, was arguably the hardest working
kid in show business.
"I was always the orphan, urchin, poor little boy that, you
know, was lost," he says. Most memorably, he spent five seasons as Jody on
the hit sitcom Family Affair, starred as Tom Sawyer in a Disney film
opposite Jodie Foster, and was the human star of the whacked-out Sid and
Marty Krofft Saturday morning creation, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.
But, like every child actor before him, Whitaker had the
misfortune of growing up. And life as an adult was considerably less
forgiving. After his Family Affair costar Anissa Jones killed herself via an
overdose in 1976, Whitaker faded from view, attending Sylmar High School and
Brigham Young University, and performing missionary work in Portugal.
Upon his return to the States, Whitaker tried to live a normal
life, but he could never be normal - he couldn't shake the residue of
growing up in Hollywood, a dangerous fantasyland that encourages suspended
animation. "We grow up without being able to have those normal functions of
adolescence," Whitaker says. "We finally come to adulthood and still have to
go through those points, those stages of adolescence. It's natural, common,
and we have to pass through them. Uh, as, unfortunately, we do it in front
of the country when we rebel against authority. When we find our sexual
identity."
Whitaker was always a very good boy. But adulthood was a bitch.
An ugly divorce in 1988 devastated him and sent him on a seven-year spiral
in which crack cocaine became is best friend. "Chemicals are wonderful," he
says. "They make everything go away. They make you feel great. There is no
big hole. There is no first love that dumped you for somebody else feeling.
You are the one that everybody wants."
Fluent in Spanish, his language skills came in handy when he was
looking to score. "This white boy, I could get good dope on the street of
Los Angeles, and they would be surprised, looking at Jody getting dope. But
I always got the drugs," he laughs.
Whitaker finally kicked for good nearly seven years ago. Clean,
he was starting at ground zero of his life: There was no money, no career.
He was living in Sylmar with his parents. "I had a choice between life and
death. And I chose life. Thank goodness," he says. "But life isn't easy. I'
ve got a lot of problems today. But my answer to those problems isn't drugs
or alcohol. Uh, my answer is giving back. Helping other people."
Whitaker began studying at Pierce College, and through its
Addiction Studies Department, he became an accredited Chemical Dependency
Specialist. "I took service as another addiction. Which is a good one," he
says. "In helping other people and being a part of the recovery community, I
realize that it may be my calling."
Although he still teaches acting, performs occasionally, and
appears at autograph shows, Whitaker has been able to break free from the
shadow of his past. He's still living with his parents, and he often
struggles financially for even the most basic of supplies for Paso Por Paso.
But the ending to this tale is nevertheless happy - and sappy - which means
we won't be seeing it on E! True Hollywood Story any time soon. "Life is
never going to be fair," Whitaker says. "But life is exactly what you make
it. And, uh, life is wonderful for me today."
mslinda
TV City for a while?
Linda C.