I remember I made $22 a week doing dinner theater in Norfolk, Virginia. Back then, in the '70s, that was pretty good for a teenager, for a part-time job.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I got a job when I was 15 because my allowance was about $20 a week which in New York was impossible. So I used to waitress across the street from where I grew up.
My first job was working in a dress shop in Los Angeles in 1940, for $7 a week.
My first paying job was guest starring in 'Touched By An Angel' when I was 12. It was very exciting. I couldn't believe you got free food all day and people were so nice to you.
Pretty much from 1979 through 1988, the backbone of my career was the theater. Working on Broadway a couple of times, working off-Broadway, and also doing a lot of regional theater. Make no mistake, I lived very frugally. I had an apartment that was real cheap. I would get two or three jobs per season, and in between I'd be on unemployment.
The first job I ever had was singing in a jazz club when I was like 15 with my friend, and we earned like 70 bucks. We were like, 'Oh my God!'
Since my parents both worked, they hired me when I was 11 to make dinner every night. I got a quarter a day. But I was always making things like duck a l'orange and baked Alaska. I was a little bit nutty.
I was a per diem floater in the same junior high school I went to. I sat in the office and made $42.50 a day, and whenever a teacher was absent, I'd substitute. I taught everything from English to auto shop.
I got a job immediately after leaving high school; I was lucky - three dollars a week and all I could eat, working on a vegetable truck.
I was making $150 a week in workshop. It was a rough year. I had trouble paying the rent. But I had evenings free to spend with my wife, Olive, and our baby daughter. In terms of family-building, it was one of the most blessed years of my life.
I used to work, part time, in a deli, in those days when your parents made you work just so you should know what work was like. And you'd make 4, 5, 6, ten dollars.