Schooldays of the stars

Press, 15 July 1987, Page 18

Schooldays of the stars

Larry Hagman, Benny Hill, Barbara Streisand, David Bowie, Michael J. Fox, Boy George, Mick Jagger, Leonard Nimoy, Sylvester Stallone ... what were they like at school? Here is a special mid-year report by DUO writer Tim Ward on how good — or bad — they were in class.

Benny Hill knew from an early age that he wanted to be a comedian.

He may not have been a perfect pupil at school — but he could always make the teachers laugh. And he was good at art. Benny recalls: “As a kid of 13 or 14 I was already playing the working men’s clubs. I did a funny vicar act.”

But what about some of the other big names in showbiz? What were they like at school? Were they teacher’s pet — or the classroom pest?

Larry Hagman, Mick Jagger, Patrick Duffy, David Bowie, Leonard Nimoy, Michael J. Fox, Boy George, Barbra Streisand, Sylvester Stallone... how did they fare at school? Here’s our special school report on these youngsters who went on to become rich and famous. Barbra Streisand hated her schooldays, because so many of her fellow pupils taunted and teased her.

As a shy, gawky kid, with a big nose, close-set eyes and stringy hair, she was always the butt of playground bullies. They called her “big beak” and “crazy Barbra” and the boys kept their distance because she was so different from the

other girls.

She avoided her fellow students after school and would spend her time in amusement arcades, applying mascara and orange lipstick. In high school, Barbra was the girl who never had a date for New Year’s Eve.

Her one high school crush was the only other kid who could match her eccentricity — Bobby Fischer, later to become world chess champion. Bobby avoided the other students and often sat by himself in the school cafeteria, wearing earflaps over his ears, reading “Mad” magazine and laughing aloud at the jokes. Barbra used to sit and have lunch with him. She recalls: “I found him very sexy. You could tell he was a genius, even then. What did we talk about? ‘Mad’ magazine.” Boy George was always playing truant and his former headmaster, Peter Dawson, describes him as “unteachable.”

Mr Dawson says: “He wouldn’t come to school, and he wouldn’t work when we did get him there!

“He was weird. He dyed his hair blond, which wasn’t too clever because it made it easier for me to spot him or notice when he was playing truant. “I can’t say I recognised his potential.” Eventually, George was expelled from his secondary school in South London.

Hollywood star Michael J. Fox was a model pupil — up to a point. He says: “I was a good student until about tenth grade, then I got bored. “My classmates thought I was strange. Because I was so small they thought

I was in the wrong class. When I went to junior high school, they thought I belonged in elementary school!”

“Dallas” star Larry Hagman had a very chequered school career. “I went to 16' different schools by the time I was 16,” he recalls. “I bounced around from military schools to boarding schools. School work never interested me much.

“I flunked high school but finally got my diploma.”

As well as being a poor student, Hagman was also a mischief-maker.

At one boarding school, he was expelled for starting a fire in the dormitory by carelessly throwing away a cigarette he had been smoking in bed.

TV acress Liza Goddard was the other extreme. She was an ideal pupil. Teacher Mary Eggar recalls: “Liza was a very pretty girl and she looked after all the school plays. I can recall her making a

huge success of *1066 And All That.’ *!She was one of those girls who never gave us any trouble.”

"Star Trek” star Leonard Nimoy took school very seriously.

“If a teacher came down on me for something it broke my heart," he recalls. “I would get so choked up I couldn’t talk. “But I was very impatient at school. I found it very boring and I wouldn’t do the homework.

“I faked my way through most of school.”

“Dallas” star Patrick Duffy’s priorities in school were, he says, “girls, and getting my car running.”

He admits: “I was about a C or a B as a student. I never took home a book. I was just in school socially.”

“Dallas” beauty Deborah Shelton, who plays JR’s mistress, Mandy, was a very sporty schoolgirl. “At my school we were all dreadfully healthy and into sports. Even the girls played American football,” she says. "It was particularly dangerous because we girls didn’t wear any padding. I was big and strong and I was not to be messed with.

“During my football career I broke a girl’s shin, cracked another’s breastbone and knocked out another girl’s four front teeth.

“My dad was a dentist, so that came in handy!” Wacky American comedienne Phyllis Diller was a very bright pupil. Her classmates thought she was “talented and funny,” she says. David Bowie, who went to school in South London, was not very academic.

His best subjects were art and woodwork, and he devoted most of his time to his music. But Bowie once stole the show at a school concert with a saxophone solo fronting a school group called George And The Dragons. He shared billing with The Little Ravens, whose guitarist was Peter Frampton. Mick Jagger paid more attention to music than to lessons, although he did win a place at the London School of Economics. “He didn’t aspire to great heights and was never inclined to work over-hard — although he was quite an intelligent boy,” was the verdict of Dr Walter Bennett, who taught Jagger at Dartford Grammar School, in Kent

"I was a very destructive kid,” says Sylvester Stallone. "I was booted out of 16 schools in 12 years because I was a chronic discipline problem.

“I was bom in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, which is a very sordid, tough neighbourhood. But I was out of there at a young age because my parents were very ambitious and aggressive, too. “So maybe it’s hereditary.”