From Eight is Enough to Grace is Enough

Let me explain. I'm not reviewing the book here ... I'm reviewing the authors. Willie Aames and his wife, Maylo Upton have spent the last few years working on their combined autobiography from Hollywood hedonism in all its countless forms to the life-changing miracle of committing to an unshakable walk with God as they know Him.

I know both Willie and Maylo very, very well. I've known Maylo since she was a developing fetus in the womb ... the truth is, I am her proud and very loving father. She is, by far, the best thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life and I use every opportunity to tell her so, although she does not take praise or compliments very well.

Her mother and I met in college studying commercial art. She was this flirtatious redhead with the last name of Parker, Sharon Parker, who sat next to me in all our classes. Sharon was very popular with the male organisms on campus and had the most remarkable resemblance to actress/dancer/singer/writer Shirley McLain, who was at the top of her game at the time. Not only that, but Sharon Parker was my only real competition when it came to art assignments which caused a friendly rivalry between us. Sparing you all the details, over time, pizza, and endless conversations about religion (hers, Lutheran, mine Roman Catholic), it was to my great surprise that we, at ages eighteen and nineteen, fell in love and declared our lives to one another. She even dumped her long time boyfriend to be mine exclusively ... and made him her second husband after our divorce three years later.

It's important that you know about Sharon because she plays a dark and heavy role in the telling of my daughter's story. It's a story of incredible madness, religious cults, Satanism, dysfunction, avoidance of truth, shameless self-indulgence, exploitation of children (Sharon bore Larry and Kathleen from her second marriage), and even murder.

All of this I was tragically unaware off as I traveled the globe as a singer/dancer for years and seeing Maylo (in Gallic it means Mary) on those times when I would be in LA for any length of time. For her own reasons, even as a young child Maylo never let on how cruel and punishing her life at home was. Sharon and I (I thought) were on very good terms, conversing on the phone for hours at a time and laughing our fool heads off at things only funny to the two of us. So ... what was I to think? I had not an inkling of what was going on behind closed doors. Behind closed doors after Sharon divorced for the second time and then brought a repugnant, fat piece of trailer trash to live with her and the three children in their small, cramped apartments, one after another as they fled from rent payments in the middle of the night.

When my singing and dancing days ended I fell into what I thought would be an amusing part-time job as personal assistant to legendary screen goddess, Lana Turner. That amusing little job turned into ten years of my life in which I became Miss Turner's personal manager, handling all of her professional and personal engagements while developing an intimate relationship with her that I miss to this very day. Lana loved children and emphasized it by often saying, "I should have had one husband and seven children ... instead I got seven husbands and one child (Cheryl Crane)." When we were 'in town' and I'd have a Maylo day or weekend Lana would insist I bring her to her various homes so that she and Maylo could play together ... and I did. I wasn't allowed to play in their games because they were very private and just between themselves. So, I was surprised to read Maylo's remembrance of the hours she spent in the company of the woman I fell so deeply in love with. They're all in the book, some of them amazingly accurate and some a conglomerate of separate things melded into one that so often happens as time goes by. But, they're Maylo's personal memories and I'm not about to dissect them in favor of what I remember.

But, getting back to Maylo's story ... if you're beginning to form a mental picture of child abuse by now, you ain't read nothin' yet. Maylo lays it all out in grizzly detail in her portion of 'Grace Is Enough', co-authored with her TV heartthrob husband of twenty years, actor Willie Aames who grew up on American television playing the middle child, Tommy Bradford, on America's long-running-for-eleven-years favorite show, "Eight Is Enough". He's the blond, curly haired charmer with the deep, husky voice.

Willie was a millionaire by the time he was in his teens and lived a self-indulgent life in Hollywood, partying at the Playboy Mansion, dating and bedding the most beautiful females of legal age in the willing and able career-climbing crop. He even married at a relatively early age and sired a son, Christopher, now in his mid-twenties who remains in close contact with his dad, Maylo, and my seventeen-year- old granddaughter, Harleigh Jean.

When Harleigh Jean was just a year old Willie and Maylo, having accepted the Lord into their lives and being baptized Christians on their wedding day, decided they did not want to raise a child in Southern California given the pervasiveness of evil lurking there.

Willie got an offer he couldn't refuse in Kansas City, much to Maylo's dismay (Willie! I refuse to live anywhere that doesn't have a Saks Fifth Avenue, Giorgio Red, or Burger King!) He flew out to check things over and the day after Halloween (Harleigh was One. Maylo and I took her Trick or Treating. After the first resident placed candy in her plastic pumpkin she caught on immediately and was hot to trot from home to home, following the bigger kids. We howled with laughter), the two of them were bound for KCI with Willie waiting to take them to the most exclusive restaurant located in the most fashionable section of Kansas City known as The Country Club Plaza ... a stone's throw from Sak's Fifth Avenue.

Willie has remained an amazing husband and father and also a great supporter of me as my life progresses, as does theirs, through good times and bad.

I was fortunate to read the Galleys of 'Grace Is Enough' (Eight Is Enough?) and found many answers to questions I've been wanting to know for years but was afraid to ask. Now I'm looking forward to getting my own copy of the published work as it flies off the shelves of bookstores everywhere. On its first day of release it got a five star review on eBay or Amazon.com. I wish I could say the same about my own writings.

Not that it's of any real importance, but through the publication of 'Grace Is Enough' the world at large will finally be told that Lana Turner's former personal manager is actor/producer/writer/director Willie Aames's father-In law ... I title I'm proud to share with you, dear readers.

I may be coming across as a bragging father, but 'Grace Is Enough' is one of the most honest and courageous books ever written exposing the underbelly, temptations, and evil doing of that vast imaginary and real industry called Show Business.

For any one of you who has desired to live in that artificial light of greed and competitive wantonness where flesh is to be devoured, intelligence to be disconnected, and dreams snuffed out like vermin under foot I suggest you read 'Grace Is Enough' and learn the truth about getting somewhere on a treadmill into Hell. Better yet ... if you have a sibling, family member, best friend or neighbor thinking of hopping a Greyhound Bus to Hollywood make sure they have a copy of this new book giving them the lowdown on the perils that lay ahead. With any luck they'll get off the bus in Phoenix and book the next flight home.

They will not be the same after reading it.