Sherman’s MarchOther people may change jobs occasionally,...

Sherman’s March

Other people may change jobs occasionally, but Paul Sherman makes career swerves.

The 81-year-old Encino resident has been a hardware store owner, real estate salesman, sculptor and, as of three years ago, an actor.

He may become a race car driver or an animal trainer because he plans to live to be 150, and there are lots of things he hasn’t tried.

Anyone who, with no real experience, would go after an acting agent for the first time at the age of seventysomething can’t be expected to understand the concept of no-can-do.

Ten years ago, Sherman felt the lure of show business when he produced a play for Gateways Hospital, where he was a volunteer.

In 1986, he started to take voice-over lessons, as well as dancing and drama.

Then three years ago, he decided to go pro, so he showed up at the offices of actor’s agent Leanna Levy. On his first go-see, she sent him to try for a McDonald’s commercial and, competing against about 100 other hopefuls, Sherman got the part. He played a music teacher, waving his baton and French-fried potatoes.

Since then, he’s gotten his Screen Actors Guild card and has done more commercials than he says he can remember. But he particularly enjoyed the “Hard Copy� episode in which he played one of the Rolling Stones as he might appear 35 years from now.

He doesn’t remember which Rolling Stone, but then his idea of music is “Jack Benny, no, I mean Benny Goodman.�

Sherman first entered the business world in 1931 with the opening of his Paul’s Cut Rate Hardware store in Toronto, Canada, which he moved to North Hollywood in 1951.

In 1956, he decided “enough with the hardware� and became a real estate investment salesman for 30 years.

Sherman and his wife, Lillian, in 1961 purchased the home, in which they raised two children and where he still lives. His wife “went to heaven,� he says, in 1987, but not before she had seen the results of her husband’s show biz fever.

“If you had to pay to stand in front of the camera,� she once told him, “you couldn’t get your hands on your wallet fast enough.�

Between real estate and acting, Sherman took a side trip into sculpting, becoming one of the few artists--working in the medium of melted plastic--to be exhibited in the Palm Springs Museum of Art. But he only dabbles in that now.

He plans to go back into real estate investing soon because waiting for the next acting job in a slow market is not his idea of fulfillment.

“I’m a workaholic and I don’t like sitting around, so I think I’ll work at both professions until things pick up in the commercial acting field,� he said.

Sherman may have come by his energy genetically. His father, Benjamin Sherman, worked at Sherman’s Hardware in Toronto six days a week until he was 102. When he died at 111, he was an active consultant to his son Max’s merchandising company.

Powers Push

Bob Powers, 64, is compulsive, although he will deny it, but what do you call a guy who muscles his way from one addiction to another?

Eighteen years ago, Powers experienced a midlife crash and burn experience, almost losing his job at Lockheed Aircraft to the great deceiver, alcoholism.

Once he realized that alcohol wasn’t a friend, he put his party hat on the shelf and worked at getting his life on track. As part of his recovery, he started walking, and he walked until he says he wanted something more.

Which is why, in 1982, Powers reacquainted himself with the wheel, a set of them, actually, on an old bicycle his son, Jim, customized for him.

To say that he took to bike riding is like saying Greg LeMonde knows a thing or two about uphill racing.

Powers started doing the Victory pedal--from his home in Burbank along Victory Boulevard to Valley Circle Boulevard and back.

Twenty-one miles without breaking into a sweat.

And, after retiring from Lockheed four years ago, he’s added something extra.

For the past three summers, he’s been pedaling across the United States, last year not long after heart surgery. He says he can walk 10 miles in 2 1/2 hours or four m.p.h., “but that’s just to impress my cardiologist.�

He does about 75 miles a day on his 3,500-mile ride. This year’s ride will begin May 1 and end at his son’s home in Ithaca, N. Y.

On May 20, somewhere in Kansas, he will turn 65.

Money Owen

Owen Haynes is not an investment banker, but he says he knows how people can save hundreds, thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars--even in an economy that has been imploding like a dynamited house.

Hayes and his son, Robert, are construction contractors who say they have remodeling info that will help people hang on to some major bucks in the redoing-the-homestead process.

Together, they will offer their expertise, beginning in February, in classes at Valley and Mission colleges.

The classes are aimed at arming students with knowledge about things that will keep them from making astronomical financial mistakes, as well as giving specific information about such things as planning, materials, scale models, kitchens, baths and bedrooms.

Also types and costs of windows, skylights, French doors, fireplaces, plumbing, electrical work, as well as some very important things you should know about your contractor.

If only the how-to info extended to paying off the remodeling loan.

Star Masseuse

And now from the Welcome to L. A. file, we have Joanne Du Bois.

She’s a masseuse-astrologer who gives planetary advice on money and love while doing to your body that which it kneads.

Du Bois, who operates out of the James Laurence Salon in Encino, begins her massage by asking her clients for (guess what) their sun signs.

She says this gives her insight--the same way a doctor uses lab tests--to show where a problem is.

“For example,� she says, “if a person was born under Aquarius having a Saturn transit, I know that he or she is going through a lot of changes and tension.� OK.

She says astrology governs different parts of the body.

“For example, if the person’s sun sign is Pisces, I concentrate on the feet because Pisces have problems in that area.�

Overheard

“What was the reason I went to college again?�

--Recent UC Berkeley grad wondering when his diploma would help him get a job, as his parents promised for pix slugged SHERMAN