Sheila Kuehl

Sheila James Kuehl (born February 9, 1941) is an American politician and retired actress, and served as the member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the 3rd District and as board chair and chair pro tem.

Kuehl was California's first openly gay state legislator, having previously served in the California State Senate and the California State Assembly, where she was the Assembly's first female speaker pro tem.

Kuehl was born Sheila Ann Kuehl in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Her father, Arthur, was an airplane construction worker at Douglas Aircraft.

He was Catholic and her mother, Lillian, was Jewish.

As a child actress, Kuehl performed under the stage name Sheila James.

At age seven, Kuehl began to take tap dancing lessons.

In one recital, Kuehl played an assistant in a skit called "The Old Sleuth" where she sat under a table listening for clues.

To indicate she was listening, Kuehl made faces, which caused the audience to laugh and encouraged her to make more faces, resulting in more laughter.

The skit was ruined, but the drama teacher, Mrs. Meglin, was impressed.

Kuehl later recalled that Meglin told her mother, 'The kid's pretty funny.

Can she read?' And my mother said, 'Oh, yeah, she can read, she skipped two grades, she's really very good.' Mrs. Meglin said, 'There's a radio series holding interviews...at an agent's office on Sunset Boulevard.

Would you be interested in taking her to the interview?

All she has to do is read...'

So we went for the interview and there were like 150 or 200 kids there and all you did was read.

And I was called back...and eventually I got the part in what probably was the last family radio series before it went all music and news...'"

Having landed the role at the age of eight, Kuehl (billed as Sheila James) starred with radio and film veterans Penny Singleton, Gale Gordon, Bea Benaderet, and Jim Backus on the family radio program The Penny Williamson Show airing live from Studio B of the NBC studios in Hollywood.

Airing in the adjacent studios were the popular drama The Cisco Kid and The Bob Hope Show with Doris Day (whom Kuehl admired).

Kuehl would later cite her interaction with the other NBC radio talent as influential in forming her professionalism and comedy skills.

The show centered around Singleton playing Penny Williamson, a widow selling real estate in a small town to support two daughters (played by Kuehl and Mary Lee Robb).

The show was "a light-hearted pitch for women's liberation, portraying Penny and her daughters as highly competent, self-sufficient females" dealing with bungling suitors competing for Penny's affections.

Due to her radio talent, Kuehl's agent convinced her parents to take her to auditions for a television role.

Kuehl was signed to play Jackie, Stuart Erwin's tomboy daughter, in the television series The Stu Erwin Show (also known as Trouble with Father), which ran from 1950 to 1955.

Kuehl later recalled "The same 200 kids I think were there for the interview [as had been for the radio audition] and I was called back and called back and called back and eventually I got that part. And beginning in 1950, I did that series for six years."

After The Stu Erwin Show ended, Kuehl continued to work as an actress while going to school.

Her academic success allowed her to skip two grades; by sixteen she was attending the University of California, Los Angeles.

As her college studies continued she moved into a sorority house and began spending summers as a counsellor for a children's camp.

At the age of eighteen, while working at the camp, Kuehl met a twenty-one year-old counsellor named Kathy and fell in love.

Kuehl would later recall "It was just a funny attraction that neither of us would acknowledge. Then, one night she and I were sitting together at her place. She was rubbing my back and we just, like, went to bed. It was wonderful. But then we stayed up all night wondering if we were really sick."

They concluded that they were "sick" but that nothing could be done.

Kuehl later recalled "There was no movement then. There was nothing to read. I knew no lesbians. We just figured this was a rare thing and that we were two women who'd fallen in love and that we had to keep it a secret because nobody would approve. We didn't dare tell a soul."

After that summer, with Kathy going to school in San Diego, the two exchanged passionate letters daily for a year.

During this time, Kuehl began acting the role for which she is probably best known – her portrayal of teen-aged genius Zelda Gilroy, the would-be girlfriend of the title character in the television series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which aired on CBS from 1959 to 1963.

Zelda was originally intended to be a one-shot character in the early Dobie Gillis episode "Love is a Science," but Dobie creator Max Shulman liked Kuehl and had her signed on as a semiregular cast member.

Kuehl later recalled how she landed the part.

"Well, when you're an actor with an agent, no matter how old you are, you go on interviews. I went on lots of interviews for lots of guest shots…and I had done two [episodes] on Love that Bob [The Bob Cummings Show] with Bob Cummings and Dwayne Hickman, who played his nephew, and the director Rod Amateau, so I had met all the people who eventually were going to be much of the team for Dobie Gillis. In 1959, I was at UCLA, and I went on an interview for Dobie Gillis and I walked on the set and they all said, 'Oh, hi, we know your work, you're fine. Just go across the street and meet Max Schulman [the writer director].' As it turned out, Max and I were the same height, and he was like buried behind the desk when I walked in. And he said, 'What's the first line?' And I said, 'I love you.' And he said, 'You're hired!'"

Signing a contract with Dobie producer 20th Century Fox Television required Kuehl, then 18 and in college studying theater, to change her major to English, so that Shulman, also a successful author, could act as her proctor on set to allow her to continue her studies.

Having signed a contract in 1960 to do 21 shows for the next season of Dobie, that same year Kuehl was elected an officer in both the university student government and in her sorority.

Despite this success, things became difficult that summer when love letters to Kathy that she had accidentally left at the sorority house were found by the cleaning staff and turned over to the alumnae council of the sorority.

Kuehl earned a bachelor's degree in English from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1962, during the show's final season.