Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
Throughout early film history, children were central to
some movies, such as the title characters in Jack and the
Beanstalk (Edwin S. Porter, 1902) and The Adventures of
Dollie (D.W. Griffith, 1908), and in such parables as The
Land Beyond the Sunset (1912). Yet as the Hollywood star
system developed in the 1910s, many children’s roles
were filled by established adult actors like Mary
Pickford (1892–1979), who played the title role of a
ten-year-old in The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) at the
age of twenty-four. In 1919, Lillian Gish (1893–1993)
played the role of a childlike waif in Broken Blossoms
(1919) at twenty-three, and her adult co-star in that film,
Richard Barthelmess (1895–1963), played the role of a
boy in Tol’able David (1921) at twenty-six. This convention, which may have been due to Hollywood’s grueling work schedule in those days and would have been
prohibitive for real children, made the emergence of
authentic child stars seem unlikely.
Yet in 1921, an adult performer, Charlie Chaplin
(1889–1977), introduced the first actor to become
famous in films as a child—Jackie Coogan (1914–
1984). Chaplin cast Coogan as a seven-year-old in The
Kid (1921), a tender story in which Chaplin’s popular
tramp character adopts an orphaned boy. Coogan’s performance was remarkably emotional and assured, quickly
earning him further roles in films like Oliver Twist
(1922), Daddy (1923), and A Boy of Flanders (1924).
His success soon made him the youngest person in history to earn a million dollars, most of which his parents
squandered over the course of his youth. Such exploitation of child actors led to the California legislature passing the Coogan Act in 1939, which was intended to
protect acting children’s assets.
Following Coogan’s lead, many child stars emerged
in the 1920s, and like Coogan, few of them retained their
stardom beyond the decade. One of the youngest and
most popular was an actress billed as Baby Peggy
(b. 1918), who started making short comedies at only
twenty months old. Peggy thrived in features like Captain
January (1923) and The Darling of New York (1924), but
she gave up film acting, and her screen name, in 1926.
When she returned for a few movie roles as a teenager
in the 1930s, she went by her real name, Peggy
Montgomery, and retired from the business altogether
in 1938. Less remembered child stars of the time included
Ben Alexander (1911–1969), a popular juvenile performer of the 1910s and 1920s, who hit the high point
of his career with a prominent role in All Quiet on the
Western Front (1930), when he was nineteen; his career
went into sharp decline thereafter. Anne Shirley (1918–
1993) also had an initially prolific career, having started
acting in 1922 at the age of five, and later making such
classics as Anne of Green Gables (1934) and Stella Dallas
(1937), for which she was nominated for a Best
Supporting Actress Oscar. Yet she too left show biz
not long thereafter, retiring at the age of twenty-six.
Perhaps the most surprising decline befell Jackie
Cooper (b. 1922), who got his start in the late 1920s as
a member of the enduring Our Gang series and achieved
widespread fame by the age of nine in Skippy (1931), for
which he was the first child ever nominated for a Best
Actor Oscar. His next film, The Champ (1931), showed
his tear-jerking skills to even greater effect, but by the
time he made The Devil Is a Sissy (1936) as an adolescent,
his notability was waning. Even though he began an
auspicious series of films about teenager Henry Aldrich
with What a Life (1939) and Life with Henry (1941), the
series continued without him in 1942, when Cooper left
to fight in World War II. When he returned, he was
greeted with indifference, never regaining the fame he
had as a child.
The most popular child star of the 1930s, and perhaps the most popular ever, was Shirley Temple (b. 1928).
Temple’s success obviously motivated Hollywood to
promote child stars even more. Unlike Temple, some
managed to hang onto their fame, or at least their careers,
as adults. For example, Frankie Darro (1917–1976)
started in child roles in the 1920s and gained greater
visibility as an adolescent performer in such films as
Wild Boys of the Road (1933). While he never became a major star, he did make many films as an adult, his small
frame and boyish looks allowing him to continue playing
teenage roles in films like Junior Prom (1946), when he
was almost thirty. In fact, teenage movie characters slowly
became more common than their younger counterparts
during the 1930s, with performers like Deanna Durbin
(b. 1921), Judy Garland (1922–1969), and Mickey
Rooney (b. 1920) making a significant impact.
While not as popular as Temple, Jane Withers
(b. 1926) was another eminent child star in the preWorld War II era, and actually had her breakthrough
role starring opposite Temple in Bright Eyes (1934).
Withers showcased a wit and range that made her stand
out from her peers, yet she too had difficulty moving
beyond youthful roles and was rarely seen in movies after
her teens. And as if the lessons of Baby Peggy had not
been learned, the studios introduced two more characters
with similar nicknames in the 1930s: Baby LeRoy
(1932–2001) and Baby Sandy (b. 1938). LeRoy really
was a baby, starring with W. C. Fields in many films
starting at the age of one, and retiring from the screen at
the uniquely young age of three. Sandy was highlighted
in films as an infant just before World War II, but took
the cue from her predecessor and retired in 1942, at four.