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All articles courtesy of Jackson Hole News & Guide and Jackson Hole Daily.
Pearlman in Charge! Pearlman in Charge!
Shredding powder, laying low in Jackson Hole.
By Vanessa Pierce
March 29,2006
Alert to the readers of this sensational story:
There has been a child-star spotting in Jackson, an insider told the News&Guide. OK, so we here at the paper know already. In fact, he works right across the aisle from this celebrity reporter’s cubicle. Here is a clue if you still don’t know who the mystery man is. Can’t you hear the 1980s sitcom theme song right now? ...
“Charles in charge of our days and our nights, Charles in charge of our wrongs and our rights. … I want Pearlman in charge of me.” Pearlman?
Pearlman! Pearlman! Yes, Michael Pearlman, the News&Guide sports editor, athlete extraordinaire and all-American guy – aka Jason Pembroke, the 10-year-old character on the first season of the wholesome family sitcom “Charles in Charge.”
The complete first-season DVD was released in February, and this gave the News&Guide a chance to recognize our famous sports editor. Mark your calendars, celebrity fanatics, the Jackson premiere of the 1984 season – in which Pearlman played a mini-me named Jason – will be shown at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday at the Snake River Brewery & Restaurant, second floor. Buy some beers and be prepared to laugh at – with? – Pearlman. He will be there signing copies of DVDs, or his job is on the line, sources said. It might even be a flashback to his childhood, post-Jason role, strolling the mall with longtime friend Scott Griffin.
“We would get dropped by our parents, and there were like 20 people around,” Griffin said. If No. 1 Pearlman fan Jill McCall could be at the DVD release party, she would. “I thought he was the funniest,” said McCall about Pearlman’s character on the show. “He was the most quick-witted.”
McCall took notice as a rerun watcher while she was growing up in New Orleans. McCall e-mailed Pearlman a few weeks ago to explain her excitement about the new DVD with exclamation points and smiley faces. She is a 19-year-old student at Rhodes College in Tennessee. She loved the show so much, Jason in particular, that at age 14 she created a Web site dedicated to the sitcom.
“It was heavily Jason,” she recalled. “Is Michael married or anything?” she asked. “Does he have kids?”
Precious, but the answer is no. He is seeing a very nice girl, but technically he is single. Note to all the women out there in the land of Jackson Hole – or shall we say Hollyhole? – repeat, he is stealable. Like Squawlywood, we’re on the map with Pearlman in charge. Paparazzi saw Pearlman having cocktails at Spring Creek Ranch this week, ski touring on Teton Pass, drinking Jameson’s and Coke at the Mangy Moose on St. Patrick’s Day and frequenting his favorite lunch spot near his apartment on Glenwood Street.
And yesterday, the News&Guide caught up with the 33-year-old former child star on the tram dock to discuss “Charles in Charge” and life in Jackson Hole. Pearlman grew up in New York state. He came to acting at age 5 after a management company had recruited his redheaded, 15-month-younger bro Jonathan.
Pearlman, a browntop, but precocious and eager nonetheless, was the one to stick with acting. He worked consistently on commercials, soap operas and movies until he was flown to Los Angeles to film the pilot of “Charles in Charge.” He was 12 and a freckled-faced, gregarious child on the show.
“I think he was the same person on TV as he was in reading class in fifth grade,” said Griffin. “I don’t think it was a stretch for him to do that. … He was always more of a social butterfly.”
Pearlman said he liked working on the show. “It was a very friendly environment,” he said. Charles, aka Scott Baio, would take him out to movies on occasion. But there was pressure to memorize the script and blocking that went into the live taping.
“It was like a play, everything was choreographed,” he said.
And the script would change up to the last minute. After one year, the show, known for its wholesome humor and morals, was syndicated. Charles, who was a college student and live-in nanny for the Pembroke family, moved out and moved into another family’s home for the remaining five seasons. The Powell family actors were paid less, Pearlman said. And the Pembrokes were given the boot. After the sitcom, Pearlman found it harder to get hired as a teen.
“I didn’t have the eye of the tiger anymore,” he said on the tram dock. He didn’t want to wear a pager so his agent could beep him all the time. He was getting into other interests. Pearlman attended the University of Southern California studying public relations, then transferred back home to New York University and graduated with a journalism degree.
“I started developing my own philosophies on life,” he said. He wanted to pursue public relations in the music field until he discovered the business was about making art a commodity. So he moved into the sports field. His first job out of college was in the ski shop at Paragon Sporting Goods in New York City.
He had always been a skier; his dad introduced it to him at age 5. But this job helped him discover his inner mountain man.
“That winter I said to myself, ‘What am I doing in New York City? I really want to move to the mountains.’”
At age 23, he moved to Jackson Hole during the 1996-97 ski season, which set a record for snow. He’d researched other ski towns like Vail and Crested Butte, Colo., “but there was really no comparison,” he said. “And then it snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed.” The rest is history, as they say. After stints as a night auditor, property manager and waiter, he was hired at the News&Guide.
Pearlman stays in Jackson because the people are “genuine,” unlike the Hollywood crowd he learned to loathe. But Pearlman, the once precocious little tyke on “Charles in Charge” is still the same. “Oh, mama!” he yelled, dropping into fresh powder in Broken Branch couloir outside the Village boundaries.
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