My start in advertising.

When I was about four-years-old I was all straight blonde hair and big blue eyes. I was the all-American white boy; I was cute as a bug's ear. Naturally, my parents thought they should capitalize on my looks and propel me on to stardom.

The first spot I appeared in was for a cereal that's since gone belly-up. It was by Nabisco and called Team flakes, since it was a 'teaming' of wheat, rice, corn and oats in every flake.

On the surface my job was pretty simple. I had to take a big, milky spoonful of flakes and look at the camera and smile my best all-American boy smile.

The only hitch was they didn't refresh the cereal between takes. And by take three or four, those four teamed up grains were a soggy mess. It was all I could do not to gag.

The next spot I was in was for a cereal called 40% Bran, also by Nabisco. Here I was the littlest in a group of seven or eight boys and girls. The lead boy, not me, had to swing a baseball bat and then we all had to cheer.

I remember the wardrobe girl, she would probably be about 80 now, propped me with a bright green woolen baseball cap. In the New York Yankee steeped world I lived in, this hat was quite a novelty. I remember being sad when I lost it.

After that, my parents had to make a decision for me, anyway that was the way they saw it. I could either grow up and be a stage kid, that is get in a lot of commercials and miss a lot of school, or I could grow up normal, as it were.

They stopped taking me to auditions. And I went back to Mrs. Welch's first grade.

I did have to join SAG and AFTRA, however. And my Social Security income record reports that I made almost $3,000 in 1962.