SUMMERTIME.
Sigourney Weaver, who spent one summer at Stamford summariz ing articles for Gloria Steinem, says, “I was scared of her even though she was nice to me.”
In 1961, during one summer break from Professional Children’s School, Christopher Walken worked for the Tarryl Jacobs Circus. His job? Lion tamer. “When head tamer Tarryl Jr. finished his performance, I’d enter the cage with Sheba the lion and, cracking a whip, demand: ‘Up, Sheba, up.’ And old, toothless, friendly as a dog, he’d deliver a suitably hair-raising roar. He was a consummate professional.”
Jake Gyllenhaal, a lifeguard on Martha’s Vineyard as a teen: “Someone got stung by a jellyfish, and I peed on their leg to counteract the sting. Otherwise, it was pretty tame.”
Louise Lasser, ex-Woody Allen wife, ex-star of “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”: “Dad sent me to different radical fringe camps. I didn’t get off one camp bus for 10 summers without Pete Seeger playing a welcoming banjo.”
Michael Eisner‘s first weekend at camp, his counselor pushed him into boxing an older bigger boy at their Saturday night matches. Little Mikey, who’d never thrown a punch in his seven years of life, got clobbered. But he never cried.
Did you know there’s been a Britney Spears Foundation which runs summer joints called Camp Britney for wannabe popstrels? Their manifesto? “Release the power of music to heal and fufill.” Obviously K. Federline never enrolled.
Tovah Feldshuh‘s answering machine: “You’ve reached our summer home. Some are home, some are not.”
Madonna: “I’d be put to work in my father’s vegetable garden weeding and spraying insecticide. Or fix up the yard at my grandparents in Pennsylvania. As a child I did not associate summer with fun and free time.”
Rapper Missy Elliott most recalls a summer with a broken arm in a cast after an overweight cousin fell on her.
Rocker Liz Phair spent her teen summers drinking and driving around in a convertible Volkswagen Rabbit in Winnetka, Illinois. (Like there’s anything else to do in Winnetka.)
Jewel worked at her aunt’s bed and breakfast in Alaska.
Sheryl Crow used to cruise around in pick-up trucks and hang out in the Dairy Queen parking lot in Kennett, Missouri. (Like there’s anything else to do in Kennett.)
Regis: “At 14 I used to deliver the New York Post in The Bronx. My route included middleweight champ Jake LaMotta, who’d be in his back yard those hot nights playing stickball in his underwear. I only got $2 pay and Jake, the only one who tipped me, gave me 25 cents every time. That was an incredible amount to me back then. I loved the guy for it.”
And what do they want most come summer? Billy Zane: “A good Frisbee game followed by a watermelon-pineapple-mint drink, blended on ice.”
Minnie Driver: “A Jill Stuart flowery dress that you can’t see your underwear though.”
Fiona Apple: “Just give me an air conditioner.”
Christina Aguilera: “I just always had this fantasy of working in a fast-food drive-though during July and August.” (Better she should drop in to Winnetka or Kennett.)
To the query, so how do you relax come summer, Hugh Grant responded: “I have no off time at all. Whatever I have is spent in a drunken stupor.” Everyone imagines this was a joke.
Actress Hope Davie: “Worst I ever had was a trip. A 10-hour car drive home from an island in Maine with a sick baby and a sick dog. As soon as we started, the dog threw up and then the baby threw up and we still had 10 hours to go.”
David Duchovny: “At 14 I was a real New York lifeguard. No topless bathing was allowed, so they’d send the youngest of us – me – to go tell the ladies to cover up. You’d think that was cool, but at 14 it was mortifying. They’d then cover their nipples with shells. I mean, the last thing a teenage kid wants is to debate with a half-naked woman.”
In Christopher Anderson‘s “George and Laura: Portrait of an American Marriage” former Bush fiancée Cathy Wolfman, who nearly ordered up the wedding invitations three decades ago, described their break-up: “When he asked me to spend another summer with the family at Kennebunkport and I refused, he was dumbfounded. ‘I don’t want to go to Maine, George,’ I told him. ‘And I don’t think this is going to work out.’ I slipped the engagement ring off my finger and handed it to him. George, stricken, began to weep.”
And I remember most a family with lots of love but little money. My parents had a Model T and took me, a skinny unattractive child with – as the scrapbooks prove – bow legs who looked lousy in a bathing suit, to Rockaway. Life now is different. The bathing suit and bow legs, however, remain the same.