Charles Herbert(1948-2015)
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Charles Herbert was a mildly popular 1950s child actor with a trademark
sulky puss and thick, furrowed eyebrows, who was known for playing inquisitive kids besieged by alien beings, including a robot, as well as by a human fly and several house-haunting ghosts. He racked up over 20 films, 50 TV
shows and a number of commercials during his youthful reign.
He was born Charles Herbert Saperstein on December 23,
1948, in Culver City, Los Angeles, California, to Pearl Jean (Diamond) and Louis Saperstein. His mother was an Austrian Jewish immigrant, while his paternal grandparents were Russian Jews. Noticed by a Hollywood talent agent
while riding a bus with his mother, Charles began his career at age four, on a 1952 TV show entitled "Half Pint Panel".
Elsewhere on TV, he showed up regularly on series fronted by such stars
as Robert Cummings and
Gale Storm. This period was marked by
amazingly high-profiled performances such as his blind child on the
Science Fiction Theatre (1955)
episode,
The Miracle Hour (1956).
On the feature film front, Charles made an inauspicious debut in the
Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz
comedy,
The Long, Long Trailer (1954).
Although director Vincente Minnelli
had handpicked him for the role, his part was completely deleted from
the movie. Other tyke roles turned out more positively and in a variety
of genres, including the film noir pieces,
The Night Holds Terror (1955)
and The Tattered Dress (1957),
the dramas, Ransom! (1956) and
No Down Payment (1957), and the
comedies, Houseboat (1958) and
Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960).
His most recognized genre, however, was sci-fi, and he appeared in a
number of films that are now considered classics of that genre. He
started off in a bit part as a boy playing tug-of-war with a dead
sailor's cap in
The Monster That Challenged the World (1957).
Up front and center, he came into his own playing the young son of dead
scientific genius Ross Martin, whose
brilliant brain is transplanted into what becomes the robot-like
The Colossus of New York (1958).
He loses another dad (David Hedison) to a
botched experiment in The Fly (1958),
also starring iconic master of macabre
Vincent Price. Lastly, Charles
headed up the cast in the somewhat eerie but rather dull and tame
William Castle spookfest,
13 Ghosts (1960). Castle handpicked
Charles for the child role and even offered the busy young actor
top-billing over the likes of
Donald Woods,
Rosemary DeCamp,
Jo Morrow,
Martin Milner and
Margaret Hamilton if he would
appear in his movie. In this haunted house setting, Castle's trademark
gimmick had audiences using 3-D glasses in order to see the ghostly
apparitions.
He had another leading role in the fantasy adventure,
The Boy and the Pirates (1960),
then film offers for Charles completely stopped. Growing into that
typically awkward teen period, he was forced to subsist on whatever
episodic roles he could muster up, including bits on
Wagon Train (1957),
Rawhide (1959),
The Fugitive (1963),
Family Affair (1966) and
My Three Sons (1960). By the
end of the 1960s, however, Charles was completely finished in
Hollywood, having lost the essential adorableness that most tyke stars
originally possessed. Unable to transition into adult roles, his
personal life went downhill as well. With no formal education or
training to do anything else and with no career earnings saved, he led
a reckless, wanderlust life and turned to drugs. Never married, it took
him nearly 40 years (clean and sober since October, 2005) to turn his
life around. During good times and bad, however, he has appeared from
time to time at sci-fi film festivals.
Charles Herbert died of a heart attack on October 31, 2015, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
sulky puss and thick, furrowed eyebrows, who was known for playing inquisitive kids besieged by alien beings, including a robot, as well as by a human fly and several house-haunting ghosts. He racked up over 20 films, 50 TV
shows and a number of commercials during his youthful reign.
He was born Charles Herbert Saperstein on December 23,
1948, in Culver City, Los Angeles, California, to Pearl Jean (Diamond) and Louis Saperstein. His mother was an Austrian Jewish immigrant, while his paternal grandparents were Russian Jews. Noticed by a Hollywood talent agent
while riding a bus with his mother, Charles began his career at age four, on a 1952 TV show entitled "Half Pint Panel".
Elsewhere on TV, he showed up regularly on series fronted by such stars
as Robert Cummings and
Gale Storm. This period was marked by
amazingly high-profiled performances such as his blind child on the
Science Fiction Theatre (1955)
episode,
The Miracle Hour (1956).
On the feature film front, Charles made an inauspicious debut in the
Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz
comedy,
The Long, Long Trailer (1954).
Although director Vincente Minnelli
had handpicked him for the role, his part was completely deleted from
the movie. Other tyke roles turned out more positively and in a variety
of genres, including the film noir pieces,
The Night Holds Terror (1955)
and The Tattered Dress (1957),
the dramas, Ransom! (1956) and
No Down Payment (1957), and the
comedies, Houseboat (1958) and
Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960).
His most recognized genre, however, was sci-fi, and he appeared in a
number of films that are now considered classics of that genre. He
started off in a bit part as a boy playing tug-of-war with a dead
sailor's cap in
The Monster That Challenged the World (1957).
Up front and center, he came into his own playing the young son of dead
scientific genius Ross Martin, whose
brilliant brain is transplanted into what becomes the robot-like
The Colossus of New York (1958).
He loses another dad (David Hedison) to a
botched experiment in The Fly (1958),
also starring iconic master of macabre
Vincent Price. Lastly, Charles
headed up the cast in the somewhat eerie but rather dull and tame
William Castle spookfest,
13 Ghosts (1960). Castle handpicked
Charles for the child role and even offered the busy young actor
top-billing over the likes of
Donald Woods,
Rosemary DeCamp,
Jo Morrow,
Martin Milner and
Margaret Hamilton if he would
appear in his movie. In this haunted house setting, Castle's trademark
gimmick had audiences using 3-D glasses in order to see the ghostly
apparitions.
He had another leading role in the fantasy adventure,
The Boy and the Pirates (1960),
then film offers for Charles completely stopped. Growing into that
typically awkward teen period, he was forced to subsist on whatever
episodic roles he could muster up, including bits on
Wagon Train (1957),
Rawhide (1959),
The Fugitive (1963),
Family Affair (1966) and
My Three Sons (1960). By the
end of the 1960s, however, Charles was completely finished in
Hollywood, having lost the essential adorableness that most tyke stars
originally possessed. Unable to transition into adult roles, his
personal life went downhill as well. With no formal education or
training to do anything else and with no career earnings saved, he led
a reckless, wanderlust life and turned to drugs. Never married, it took
him nearly 40 years (clean and sober since October, 2005) to turn his
life around. During good times and bad, however, he has appeared from
time to time at sci-fi film festivals.
Charles Herbert died of a heart attack on October 31, 2015, in Las Vegas, Nevada.