From happy campers to Hollywood stars
By Paul Bannister • Bankrate.com

Gwyneth seems to have had no bad memories, however clingy she was. She has returned to Williamstown to perform, celebrating her acting debut there in "Huckleberry Finn."

Jane Fonda had a tumultuous relationship with her mother, and it manifested itself when Jane was at summer camp.

Jane, say her biographers, had nightmares about Frances Fonda and became so hysterical it took the entire summer camp staff to calm her. The tragedy of their relationship -- Frances eventually killed herself -- drove Jane into self-hatred and bulimia, add the biographers.

Howard Hughes' mom, Allene, fretted about his "super sensitiveness" and inability to make friends when he went off to camp at age 10.

She demanded that the camp protect him from the "violent germs" of polio and eventually took him back home.

The next year, Allene again wrote to camp administrators asking them to help her son accept teasing without feeling hurt and resentful. He stuck it out and finished camp, but on his return home to Houston he complained of bad dreams and tiredness, and never went to camp again.

"Dumb and Dumber" star Jeff Daniels began his summer camping at Bruin Lake Boy Scout Camp in Michigan. His bunkmates, he says, were in a misery of homesickness.

"It was the first time away from home for a lot of them," he remembers. "About half of them sat in the tent and cried."

Late-night talker Conan O'Brien had his own way of dealing with homesickness when he was at Cragged Mountain Farm, in Freedom, N.H.

"I would think of fantasy situations, like a cholera outbreak," he confesses. "My father, who's a doctor, would rush up and save everyone and I got to go home."

"60 Minutes" anchor Mike Wallace, cartoonist Cathy Guisewite, songbird Norah Jones and "Amadeus" star Tom Hulce are among the 85,000 campers who have attended Michigan's Interlochen Arts Camp, though not in the same one of its 75 years.

Two teenage kids who did attend camp together formed a partnership that gave us some of the world's best rock 'n' roll songs.

If composer Mike Stoller and lyricist Jerry Lieber had not attended an interracial summer camp, they would not have fallen for boogie-woogie piano, not teamed up to write songs, and Elvis Presley would never have sung many of their numbers, such as "Hound Dog" and "Jailhouse Rock." Stoller and Lieber, by the way, also composed hits such as "Yakkety Yak," "Poison Ivy," "Stand By Me" and "There Goes My Baby."