A Covid-19 Comeback: Child Actors And TV Dinners

Deborah Herman didn’t need a pandemic to fulfill her mission. The author, editor and publisher just likes bringing light into the world.

“My goal is to provide books for readers that can boost their morale, and take their minds off the chaos of the world,” says Herman, publisher of Micro Publishing Media, a “niche and kitsch publisher” based in Stockbridge, Mass.

Have we ever needed a morale boost more? Lucky for us, MPM has just launched a delightful and nostalgic look back at the child actors many of us spent a lot of time with. TV Dinners: 40 Classic TV Kid Stars Dish Up Favorite Recipes with a Side of Memories answers those hmmm questions that sporadically come up, whether you’re playing a game of trivia or something just pops into your head. Like…is Timmy from Lassie still alive? Whatever happened to the Dennis the Menace kid? What’s Nellie from "Little House on the Prairie" doing these days?

As it happens, Timmy (Jon Provost, the second actor to play the part) is very much alive; the book’s author, Laurie Jacobson, is married to him. Jay North, aka Dennis the Menace, fell on some hard times, but is happily retired in Florida after working for years as a prison guard. And that meanie, Nellie? Alison Arngrim wrote several books and continues to amuse audiences in her one-woman show, "Confessions of a Prairie Bitch." Her TV dinner, Spicy Cinnamon Chicken, is our recipe this week, over here.

Jay North as Dennis Mitchell and Jeannie Russell as Margaret

TV Classics Press is just one of MPM’s shelf of imprints, but, Herman admits, it’s her favorite. The imprint’s first book, Lost (and Found) in Space, by former kid actors Angela Cartwright and Bill Mumy, was published in time for the show’s 50th anniversary. A book by Butch Patrick (aka Eddie Munster) followed, and with a great title: Munster Memories: A Mini Coffin Table Book. Another title is The Donna Reed Show: A Pictorial Memoir.

Not surprisingly, Herman is a TV nostalgia buff. She’s gotten to know many of the kid stars as adults, collaborating with them on the photo memory books. She’d been circling Jacobson’s orbit for a while.

“Once I’d been introduced to her, she gave me a proposal for TV Dinners,” Herman says. “What I do is collaborate with authors and help bring their vision into reality.” She’s created a formula for how the books look, and each one makes you feel like you're walking into the past.

The former TV personalities are eager to share their memories, and Jacobson, a Hollywood historian, gives more than a cursory glimpse of the shows they appeared in, why the actors left (or didn’t leave) the entertainment industry, and what they’re doing  now. Photos show us what they grew up to look like. Each star provides a recipe for a favorite dish, and while some of their tastes may have not matured much since Donna Reed was doing the cooking, it’s fun to hear the backstories. The reminiscences often lead to what they ate while they were on set or their treks to places like the Hot Dog Show, a popular lunch spot near the studios.

The earliest of the shows, from the 50s, remind us of a simpler time, when there were only three networks, families would gather around the TV, and eat Swanson’s actual TV dinners.

Angela Cartwright in "Lost in Space," and today

“Later, in the 60s, society was changing,” Herman says. “Families were starting to fall apart, but any problems the TV families had could be solved in 30 minutes. We’d watch them, and imagine that they were our families.”

If you’re a fan of classic TV shows, this book might be a timely companion. And if by this point in your enfrorced homebodying you’ve had about as much TV as you can handle, MPM has just launched a new imprint called Book Noshes, which will publish short books — easy to read, filled with images and uplifting stories.

“They’re meant to keep everybody from going off the ledge,” Herman says. Because there’s no such thing as too many morale boosts. Especially now.