There aren't a whole lot of people who can relate to Bill Mumy's childhood.In the 1960s, he was among the busiest child actors in Hollywood.
"I was the first American actor to get a kiss from Brigitte Bardot!" he said, thanks to his starring role in 1965's "Dear Brigitte."It was a career born of roughhousing at the age of six: "So, one day I'm in my Zorro outfit and I'm jumping off of the bed, and I cracked my left leg, like in half," he said."But, it was my lucky break! So, I was sitting there in a cast watching 'Zorro' and 'Superman,' and I very passionately said to my parents, 'That is what I want to do.
I want to be inside the television.'"He was the son of a California cattle rancher, and a secretary at 20th Century Fox, who kept meticulous track of her son's work."She kept a record of my gigs," Mumy said, showing us her notes from May of 1961: "Did a 'Twilight Zone' called 'It's a Good Life.' Billy did a wonderful job.
$600." Mumy did three episodes of "The Twilight Zone" on TV, and worked with movie stars like Jimmy Stewart and Lucille Ball, all before he was ten.He learned how to behave from Cloris Leachman, and how not to behave from Alfred Hitchcock (who directed him in an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" called "Bang! You're Dead"), who was mean to a fidgety seven-year-old on set.
"And this is exactly what he said: 'If you don't stop moving about, I'm going to get a nail, and I'm going to nail your feet to your mark, and the blood will come pouring out like milk,'" said Mumy.But all of that was prologue, because in 1965, Mumy got famous – "action figure" famous – starring as Will Robinson, the youngest member of a marooned space-age Swiss Family Robinson, for three seasons of "Lost in Space." At its peak, more than 25 million viewers a week watched the adventures Mumy shared with his sidekick, a robot named B-9.Sixty years later, asked what it's like to stand next to a B-9 replica built by Hollywood robot builder Fred Barton, Mu...