The Kid Does Good

If the Talmadge sisters managed financial success, if not lifelong happiness, from their stint as starlets, then on the other scale there is the story of Jackie Coogan.

Perhaps best known in the 21st Century as the endearing Uncle Fester in the 1960s TV series, The Addams Family, Coogan's career in fact started about 50 years earlier as one of Hollywood's first child starts.

Making his screen debut at the age of 3, Coogan became a household name four years later when he was picked by Charlie Chaplin to co-star in The Kid the film for which he is quite rightly remembered.

Filled with charm and pathos, the film forever cemented in the minds of the movie-going public Chaplin's image of 'The Tramp'.

Sadly for Coogan, his childhood was more or less as pathetic as his on-screen character's life.

Swindled out of his fortune by his grasping parents and traumatised by a ruthless director who had the young star believe that his beloved pet had been sent out to be shot in order to make the lad cry on cue, Coogan's plight lead to the California Child Actor's Bill of 1939, which is still in effect today.


The bill governs working hours and conditions as well as safeguards earning and mandates education.

But if that was the first half of Jackie's life, his second was much improved. Although married four times (his first to Betty Grable), his fourth to Dorothea Odetta Hanson in 1952 endured to the end of his life in 1984.

Coogan was also a World War Two hero:

Coogan enlisted in the US Army in March 1941. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he requested a transfer to US Army Air Forces as a glider pilot because of his civilian flying experience. After graduating from glider school, he was made a Flight Officer and he volunteered for hazardous duty with the 1st Air Commando Group. In December 1943, the unit was sent to India. He flew British troops, the Chindits, under General Orde Wingate on 5 March 1944, landing them at night in a small jungle clearing 100 miles behind Japanese lines in the Burma campaign.

So here's to Coogan.

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