One day in the early 1980s I was in “Italian 102” at UCLA and the prof announced that we would have some new students joining us. She had been tutoring 3  actresses on the set of a sitcom where they worked but the sitcom was on hiatus and so they would be joining us in Westwood.  She didn’t say who they were or what show they were on but was asking us not to make them feel uncomfortable or ask for autographs.

There were only about 15 of us left in this class since about 8 students had been dropped out of it. I don’t remember much speculation but I was curious to find out who it was since the teacher had made a point of not saying who it was.

2 days later I show up and some of the other students’ mouths

are literally hanging open. They are staring silently at these 3 young women who have joined us and I still have no clue who they are because I don’t watch much television.  To me they are just a vaguely Italian-American looking girl with beautiful eyes, a smartly dressed African American teen and a sort of non-descript middle American young woman. We go through the regular class with all the usual Italian dialog practice, question and answer, repetition and all that. The class breaks and no one says anything to the new students despite obvious interest.

I’m not the most outgoing person in the world but the teacher asked us not to make them uncomfortable and the whole situation was making me uncomfortable so I went over and said something like “Welcome to the class.  My name is Kurt…”  They smiled oddly and then introduced themselves to me “I’m Kim,” “Nancy,” “Mindy”   And now I can feel this ring of the other students has formed around us, still just watching intensely.

“You work in television?” I asked.

“Yes” was all that Nancy McKeon offered me so I went right on to talk about how I was repeating this class because UCLA’s course was much harder than UCSB where I took Italian the first time. One of them said they had been chewing through the course with tutors and it was nice to be in a bigger class.  They stayed in a little pack so it was me talking to all three of them at once and I’m asking “What’s your Major?” “Why did you pick Italian?” “Are you taking Italian Cinema?” stuff like that. Eventually someone else asked “Where is Blair?” and Nancy looked at her watch and said they needed to leave.

They were with us for another 3 weeks or so and they liked me because I had no interest in the show, had never really seen it. I had heard of it and knew “Different Strokes” but never saw an episode of “The Facts of Life” until years later. By the second week, some other students were asking Kim Fields about rollerskates, stuff like that. Just one or two odd questions at a time.

I remember Mindy Cohn being sort of easy going and approachable. Nancy McKeon had a dry sense of humor and Kim Fields was kind of quiet with a calm maturity.  Fields reminded me of other young people I have met who have grown up in the business like Christina Ricci and Sean Astin, the son of Patty Duke and John Astin.

(I’m of course kidding about the Clooney inspiration thing)