Louis Jourdan

Charles Boyer

Gregory Peck

Ray Milland

Children of the born to the famous have collapsed under domicile insecurity, while the world outside clamors for smiles and autographs from their celebrated parents. Many have committed suicide, while others hang around hoping their surname alone will give them that all-important break. A smaller group ignore Hollywood and forge an identity for themselves. And there are those who have written books. When Anthony Quinn oldest daughter told her father she plans to write a book... "Promise me you will never do a Christina Crawford on me!" replied Quinn. 

The catch-cry of most Hollywood children is that they never really had parents, because they were always on the verge of a divorce. Even if mother is not an actress, she didn't have the energy to raise children, because she was devoted to the actor father. If she wasn't she didn't last long. Actors don't have time for children if they want to make it big. 

Drew Barrymore recalls, "Until I was 5 years old my father and I were very close. Then my parents separated I had a nervous breakdown. I was nine at the time. By the time I was eleven I was drunk. By the time I was fourteen I had my first joint" 

Of the many children of Hollywood stars who have been able to warmth themselves in bask of the glow just as many have committed suicide. 

The proxy burden of fame took Louis Jourdan's 20 year-old son, as it did the only son of  actor, Charles Boyer. After he shot himself, Charles became an old man overnight. One year later Charles took his own life. 

Gregory Peck was unable to work for two years after the suicide of a son from his first marriage. Jim Arness recovery took four years after his daughter, Jenny committed suicide in 1975. 

The daughter of the talk-show host Art Linkletter jumped to her death from a window in his home. The son of Mary Tyler Moore the star of her own television show ended his life which contributed to the end of her marriage to Grant Tinker. 

Ray Milland's son Daniel blew his brains our in the bedroom of his Beverly Hills home. And Paul Newman's son Scott who was hoping to be as good an actor as his father was found dead in a hotel of too many pills and alcohol. Even posthumously the legacy of fame had a price. Robert Taylor had been dead several years when his 23 year old son died of an overdose of drugs. 

The problem can be attributed to the fact that these children have a problem establishing their own identity. Many have changed their names in a bid to escape.  Still others wanted nothing to do with their parent when the reached adulthood. 

As children they were rallied to the backseat, as their parents talked nothing but business. But what could I do? It was my work. Alan Alda never really lived in Hollywood since his childhood. His father Robert Alda was a film star. He portrayed George Gershwin in RHAPSODY IN BLUE (1945). When Alan committed to M.A.S.H. he would leave his New Jersey home late Sunday to report Monday morning to the studio in Hollywood and flew back on Friday for the weekend at home with his family. He did this for 11 years, until deciding it was too much and called it quits. Alan had polio when he lived in Hollywood as a boy. It may have been the reason he raised his children away from Hollywood. 

Echoing the complaint of other movie star parents, Gregory Peck explained, "When you're working you have to get up at five in the morning. When you come home at the end of the day you're too tired to talk to your children. You can't give them the time they need and all you really have to give them is time. If not you lose them. Hollywood made them famous, beyond their wildest dreams, and Hollywood killed them. Yet despite all reasoning, suicide, whether it is a punitive gesture (outward punishment) or an act of quiet desperation (inward aggression) the price is same (the cost of a life) and Hollywood has certainly had its share of victims.