How Hard Is It to Find Good Help?

Complaining about the difficulty of finding suitable home help is a traditional leisure activity of the moneyed classes. If you’re not just rich but also celebrated, the problems increase. There’s that added danger that the butler, chef, maid, personal trainer or even the guy who cleans the pool just might choose to expose the contents of your underwear drawer to the tabloids.

Of course, if you’re Madonna, you’re not worried about anyone seeing your underwear, but you probably are worried about who gets to see your baby. So finding a discreet nanny becomes a priority for the Material Girl and many other of Hollywood’s top-billed working moms.

To make matters more complicated, most celebrities start not just new to fame, but also new to money, with no background as employers of servants. Show biz is a world where one lucky hit can take you from waiting on tables to hiring a household staff with no knowledge of how to find them.

So what’s a rich and famous person to do?

The three top nanny agencies in the Los Angeles area are considered to be Baby Buddies and Nannies Unlimited, both in Beverly Hills, and Almost Angels in Pacific Palisades. All have worked with stars. All choose to be discreet, refusing to name clients.

Kimberly Scarritt worked in film production before she opened Almost Angels six years ago, partly because she had experienced difficulty finding a suitable nanny for her own children, and partly because she felt the agencies didn’t treat the women applying for such work with enough respect.

“Obviously our nannies know the importance of being discreet. I haven’t heard any stories of any of my nannies being approached to tell all for money. I don’t think they are unduly harassed.

“I am, though,” she says. “Tabloid reporters have been trying for months and months, today, tomorrow and probably 10 years from now, to talk about the stars my nannies work for. But why would I jeopardize my business, hurt my clients, lower my standards? It’s a matter of integrity.”

But confidences are breached. An actress who starred in a long-running nighttime drama once employed a young Belgian couple as household help. Not considering herself in the mega-star category, she didn’t expect to find unauthorized exposes about her lifestyle in print and didn’t demand a confidentiality agreement.

The couple sold a story to an overseas magazine. It portrayed the actress as lazy and bossy and was illustrated with stolen personal photos and pictures of the young housekeeper wearing the star’s clothes, including her wedding dress.

Owners of agencies say major celebrities do usually request that employees sign a confidentiality agreement in order to get the job. So a lawyer’s fee has to be factored into the expense of hiring help.

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Debbie Campos, owner of Meet My Maids in West Los Angeles, whose clients include some top rappers, says that when it comes to confidentiality, stars are looking for more than just a signed agreement. “They want a discreet person, someone who will respect their privacy--not some larger-than-life person, but someone who instinctively knows when it’s time to go to the staff quarters or when it’s time to stay around.”

Campos provides all kinds of domestic help--nannies, housekeepers, cooks, chauffeurs, flower arrangers. The approach to her is usually made by the star’s personal assistant, but eventually the star is included in the vetting process.

Campos says most celebrity households are very well run--”like a mini-corporation” with details such as taxes and benefits taken care of by the employer’s business manager. “Stars walk the walk,” she says in terms of making sure arrangements are legitimate and in being prepared to pay top wages.

“Noncelebrity clients tend to complain that stars ruin the market for other people,” Campos says. “The newly wealthy celebrities are not that far removed from hard work or hard times, and that can make them very relaxed and understanding of what domestic work entails.”

That the new chef may run to the tabloids about the contents of the refrigerator is just one breach of faith stars have to consider. After the soap star fired the Belgian couple, she tried another couple. The man, capitalizing on what he saw as a show-biz connection, began selling Mercedes-Benzes from an office in his employer’s guest house.

“His phone bill was larger than his salary. When he began peeling off $100 bills to pay us for his calls, and started taking our son to lunch on steak au poivre at Le Dome, when all we had at home were tuna sandwiches, we sensed something was wrong and they had to go,” the actress says.

Cynthia Yorkin doesn’t mind dubbing herself “the Joan Crawford of the nanny world”--someone fanatical about the high standard she expects from her home help. The actress-wife of producer Bud Yorkin has tried 22 nannies.

“People here don’t have a clue,” she says. “There is no training, no respect for the profession in America. It’s completely unprofessional, and the agencies’ references very often don’t check out. It adds to the problem when you are in this business and the young girls who apply turn out to think they can become actresses or behave like fans around your friends who are stars.”

Money and fame doesn’t make it easier to find good home help, and stars have to try all avenues--including co-opting set assistants to go pick up the dry-cleaning, following up on word of mouth or bribing another star’s great chef to move over to their kitchen. Even the agencies, (whose going rate for a top household can be as much as $1,000 a week with live-in accommodation), admit the home-help situation is far from ideal.

Edie Landau, a producer before she took over Nannies Unlimited in 1989, says, “American girls don’t grow up to be nannies. In England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand they do, but they can’t get green cards unless they are lucky in the immigration lottery. A major celebrity can’t afford to hire someone illegal, especially because people in the film business tend to travel in and out of the country a lot and the nanny must have the papers to get in and out without any difficulty. Also now you need proof of citizenship or green card to get a driver’s license, and in this town a nanny has to be able to drive.”

Unless driving is the bodyguard’s job. And that’s another thing. Star power doesn’t attract every potential good employee. “Life working for a celebrity might appear to be glamorous, but it can have restrictions,” Landau points out. “I know of one nanny for whom taking the baby on an outing consisted of going down to the tennis court on the estate with a guard accompanying them.”