The Second Generation

Always full of glamorous tales about infants who were reared in theater dressing rooms, slept in bureau drawers and later rewrote their parents' names in lights, the chronicles of show business now bulge with real ones. A second generation is in various stages of giving old names new faces. Among the cast:

P: Strapping (6 ft. 5 in.) Johnny Weissmuller Jr., 17, son of the only Tarzan who could swim 100 yards in 51 seconds without mussing his hair, is in the upcoming movie, Andy Hardy Comes Home. P: Pat Wayne, 18, son of Cinemale John Wayne, stars in The Young Land, produced by Patrick Ford, 37, sometime screenwriter and stuntman, son of Director John (Mister Roberts] Ford. P: Susan (The Diary of Anne Frank) Strasberg, 20, daughter of Actors' Studio Director Lee Strasberg, has bubbled quickly to the top, co-stars on film with Henry Fonda in Stage Struck, on Broadway with Helen Hayes in Time Remembered. P: James MacArthur, 20, son of Helen Hayes and the late Playwright-Journalist Charles (The Front Page) MacArthur, entered Hollywood as The Young Stranger, did so well that Walt Disney signed him for The Light in the Forest and the upcoming Banner in the Sky. P: Warner Le Roy, 22, son of Veteran Producer-Director Mervyn (Random Harvest, Quo Vadis) Le Roy, last year took over a movie theater on Manhattan's First Avenue, remodeled it, presented Tennessee Williams' long-running Garden District. P: Anthony Perkins, 26, was a tot of five when his father, Broadway Matinee Idol Osgood Perkins, died. The versatile father's big reputation dragged the shy son into his own career, which now stands up solidly by itself with the Broadway triumph of Look Homeward, Angel and Hollywood stardom in Fear Strikes Out and Desire Under the Elms. P: John Kerr, 26, son of Actress June (Blue Denim) Walker, is Lieut. Joseph Cable in South Pacific, sprang into films from Broadway's Tea and Sympathy. P: Plato Skouras, 28, son of 20th Century-Fox President Spyros P. Skouras, formed an independent company three years ago with his brother, Spyros S. Skouras, 34. CJ Sam Goldwyn Jr., 31, son of Old Guard Cinemogul Samuel Goldwyn, 73, has independently produced Man with the Gun, The Shark fighters, and the soon-to-be-released The Proud Rebel. P: Charles Chaplin Jr., 32, and his nine-months-younger brother Sydney appeared with their father in Limelight, have duckwalked away on their own: Sydney plays opposite Judy Holliday in Broadway's Bells Are Ringing; Charles Jr. is a suspicious cop in MGM's High School Confidential. Also in H. S. Confidential: John Barrymore Jr., 25.

P: Hal Roach Jr., 39, is president (his father, 66, is a director) of Hal Roach Studios, which now produces TV films. P: Gene Fowler Jr., 40, a film editor for nearly 20 years, last year directed I Was a Teenage Werewolf, is now producing and directing Paramount's I Married a Monster from Outer Space. Father Gene Fowler, 68, oldtime cirrhosis-be-damned newsman and biographer of the John Barrymore era, wrote Barrymore's biography (Good Night, Sweet Prince).

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