Read Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition for Free Online Page A

got ready
to start shooting my first big scene. I was hanging in the schoolroom down the hall from the set when one of the show's assistant
directors showed up and asked me where I wanted my
TelePrompTer.
    "What's a TelePrompTer?" I asked, trying not to sound like a
dope.
    "You've never worked with a TelePrompTer?" the AD sputtered
back, while visions of blown lines and blown budgets danced in his
head.
    At this point I wasn't sure whether to be insulted or embarrassed, so I answered truthfully by saying "No."
    The AD trudged out of the schoolroom like a man walking the
fabled last mile.
    As you probably know, a TelePrompTer is a televisionlike box
that's placed very close to the camera lens. Someone sits nearby
and scrolls your lines onto the screen as you read them on camera.
It was sort of like electronic cue cards, and was really only used on
TV newscasts-and, of course, "Dragnet."
    A couple of minutes later I was on the set, with that same AD
nervously demonstrating the TelePrompTer for me. I thought it
looked kinda weird but that maybe it was some new kind of acting
accessory that would work even better than line memorization.
Not wanting to seem amateurish, I bit my tongue and never let on
that I already had my lines down cold. Instead, I said that I was
sure I could learn how to use the thing quickly, and would do my
best. The AD smiled at me patronizingly, convinced I'd blow his
shooting schedule all to hell.
    We got ready to rehearse. I squeezed in next to Joe Friday, and
the two of us stared into that little black box and delivered our
lines. Immediately I knew why "Dragnet" always had that brusque,
flat, unnatural air about it. It wasn't acted-it was read!
    By the time we had the cameras loaded up and ready to roll, I
had come to the conclusion that I didn't like the TelePrompTer at
all, and that no matter what the AD said, I was going to deliver my
lines from memory, the way I knew best. When the cameras finally
rolled, I listened, looked Mr. Webb in the eye, and delivered my
lines pretty well. We finished the scene in just two takes, and Mr.
Webb was impressed. "Hey, kid, how'd you learn all those lines so fast?" he asked me, with Joe Friday's every vocal nuance.

    "Well, we did run through it twice," I replied, giving him a
grade-A snow job that practically made me seem like a genius.
    "That's fantastic," said Mr. Webb. "I'm gonna have to remember
you."
    And he did. Two months later I appeared on another show he
produced, "Adam-12," and from what I heard on that set, Mr.
Webb had requested me by asking for "that egghead kid from the
Christmas `Dragnet."'
    Next came "The F.B.I.," another of those hokey, right-wing,
badly written "real-life dramas" wherein all the problems of the
world could be traced back to one of two causes, communism and
"those damn hippies." I came onboard as yet another member of
America's misguided but inherently good-natured youth, and collected another check.
    But my proudest early achievement was probably an appearance on a show called "The Invaders," a schlocky sci-fi thriller starring Roy Thinnes and guest-starring a sultry (and not yet basso)
Suzanne Pleshette. I was to play an evil young space alien bent on
global domination, and was really thrilled at getting the part. For
one thing, this marked my first appearance on a show that I actually watched; and it would also mark my first time shooting on location-until now I'd just been on soundstages, squirreled away on
studio back lots.
    My task was to pedal a bike to the top of a hill, whip out my
interstellar walkie-talkie/radio thing, call up my home planet (collect), and in a nutshell, plot the destruction of the earth. Sounds
simple, right? Wrong. That one scene took longer to shoot than all
my other acting experience combined.
    I learned that day about how shooting on location is nothing
like being on a studio set. On a soundstage, noise, light, weather,
crowds, and basic film-making