Sherry Alberoni

ACTOR

Viewers of classic TV couldn’t not possibly have missed you when you appeared regularly on The Micky Mouse Club, The Many Loves of Dobie, The Tom Ewell Show, A Family Affair on and on. 

I worked in the business in Hollywood since I was 3 and I remember being shocked when I learned that an actor or actress didn’t sing their own songs. It was a very different culture back then. If someone on “The Mickey Mouse Club” crew so much as said, ‘Damn,’ they were gone the next day. You didn’t curse around the kids. We were very protected and insulated. I remember crying when I heard that Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis got divorced. I didn’t know anyone that was divorced. I came from a very close tight-knit Italian Irish family. We lived in Westchester because my mom didn’t want to live in Hollywood. She was a country girl from Kentucky who loved movies and fan magazines and they were smart enough to know that Hollywood wasn’t the greatest place for kids to grow up. Hollywood was mystery then, long before cable news, the internet, investigative reporters. It’s sad that now things have changed in the world and Hollywood. Can’t I have any fantasyland?  Do I really need to know all that?  Can’t we have a little magic and fantasy in our lives?  

When did you feel the ground shifting under you?

In the ‘60s. I’d suddenly be called to auditions and asked if I’d do a nude scene, I’d be shocked. What?  No!  I was right on the cusp of this old, safe, glamorous world and the dawn of this new one. It was down to me and two or three other girls, including Sue Lyon, who were the only ones given the scripts so that we could be screen-tested for Lolita. Mom took the screenplay to the monsignor at our neighborhood church who said, ‘If you allow Sherry to be in this movie, you will be excommunicated from church.’  My mom sent back the script to my agent saying, ‘No, we’re not interested.’  

Then a few years after Lolita, you got involved in Valley of the Dolls.

I remember hearing about the book and then hearing that there was to be a movie of Valley of the Dolls. I thought, ‘Whoa, that’s something.’ It was a whole new world opening up. When I got the call, it wasn’t an audition, I didn’t have to go in and read or anything like that. I had done a lot of voiceover stuff and they had heard my voice before. My agent told me they needed five of Patty Duke’s lines dubbed for the outdoor scene near the fountain shot at the then newly-built Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The lines needed to be redone because there so much extraneous background noise. I don’t know if Patty had gone back to New York or she wanted too much money or what. 

What do you remember about the session?

Usually my mother was at the studios with me 24/7, but I remember driving myself driving onto the 20th Century-Fox lot. The Administration Building was to the immediate left and you walked through that, then the stage was midway through the lot and to the left. The session was done on one of the big soundstages with a sort of circular shape, lined with cloth acoustic padding, and with a big movie screen. I’d never before done a dubbing like this. The director Mark Robson told me what they wanted, meaning he explained what was going on in the story at that point. I put on the earphones and watched the blip line on the screen which traveled from left to right. When the line reached a certain point, it’d be time to say the line of dialogue. I’d do it once or twice for sound and that was it.  We did it in maybe a couple of hours or less. 

Mark Robson didn’t ask me to mimic Patty Duke’s voice and I didn’t even try to. They just took the lines I recorded and plopped them in where they needed them. I guess just naturally we were close enough that it worked. He just said, We got it and that was it. I probably made  $500 and I remember thinking at the time, This is the easiest money I’ve ever made. 

Did you ever see the movie?

I saw Valley of the Dolls one hundred years ago at a movie theater. I really don’t remember much about it, though I certainly recognized my voice in those five lines at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The good thing is, though, nobody else seemed to think it wasn’t Patty Duke. 

Did you know Patty Duke at all?

One time in the early ‘60s, she and I were working in different shows on the same lot. In those days, Monday I’d be working at 20th, Tuesday I’d be at MGM, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I’d be back at school, the following week I’d be at Disney. There weren’t many kids working on the lot at the time and someone – maybe Patty’s social service worker or teacher – got the idea that Patty needed to be around kids her own age. They were trying to give her at least one child playmate. Everybody she related to and worked with were adults. So, they  came and asked my mom and got me to go over to where Patty was. 

Did you two get along?

We’d have lunch together or jump rope or use pogo sticks -- whatever kids did back then – and that happened maybe five or so times. I came from a regular family and I had friends, chores to do at home, things like that. She’d just look at me. She absolutely didn’t know how to relate to another kid, especially one who wasn’t like her. It was … different, I’ll say. She’d never known anyone like me and I’d never known anyone like her. Once one of our shows would be finished, we’d leave that lot and go onto something else. That was it. I never saw her again