Charles Herbert

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.

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.

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.

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.

This period was marked by amazingly high-profiled performances such as his blind child on the Science Fiction Theatre (1955) episode, Science Fiction Theatre: The Miracle Hour (1956).

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).

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).

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.

By 1959, Herbert was at the peak of his career, earning nearly USD 1,650 per week (the equivalent to USD 14,760 in 2020), being among the most-desired and highest-paid child actors of his time.

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.

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.

According to Tom Weaver in his 2006 article on Charles in "Classic Images," a sad Jackie Coogan-like chain of events happened to him. The only money put away for him until age 21 from his TV and film earnings was $1,700. It seems that if you signed a long-term contract (i.e., a TV show), they would put away part (approximately 5%) of your savings. Charles, however, never had a long-term contract so all his money went directly to his guardians/parents.

Interviewed in Tom Weaver's book, "I Talked with a Zombie" (McFarland & Co., 2008).