Jackie Coogan

Has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1654 Vine St.

Jackie Coogan was born into a family of vaudevillians where his father was a dancer and his mother had been a child star. On the stage by four, Jackie was touring at the age of five with his family in Los Angeles, California. While performing on the stage, he was spotted by Charles Chaplin, who then and there planned a movie in which he and Jackie would star. To test Jackie, Chaplin first gave him a small part in A Day's Pleasure (1919), which proved that he had a screen presence.

When he wanted the money that he made as a child star in the 1920s, his mother and stepfather refused his request and Jackie filed suit for the approximately $4 million that he had made.

The movie that Chaplin planned that day was The Kid (1921), where the Tramp would raise Jackie and then lose him. The movie was very successful and Jackie would play a child in a number of movies and tour with his father on the stage.

Producer Sol Lesser admitted that the original master of Coogan's 1922 Oliver Twist (1922) was burned for its silver nitrate content--which was worth $80.

By 1923, when he made Daddy (1923), he was one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood.

He would leave First National for MGM where they put him into Long Live the King (1923).

Coogan worked to raise $1,000,000 for Armenians and Greeks displaced during World War I, working with Near East Relief. He toured across the US and Europe in 1924 on a "Children's Crusade" as part of a fund-raising drive, which ended up providing more than $1,000,000 in clothing, food, and other contributions (worth more than $13 million adjusted for 2012 dollars). Coogan was honored by officials in the US, Greece, and Rome, where he met with Pope Pius XI.

By 1927, at the age of 13, Coogan had grown up on the screen and his career was starting to go through a downturn.

His popular film career would end with the classic tales of Tom Sawyer (1930) and Huckleberry Finn (1931).

In 1935, his father died and his mother married Arthur Bernstein, who was his business manager.

In 1937, Jackie married Betty Grable and the marriage lasted for three years. During World War II, he would serve in the army and return to Hollywood after the war. Unable to restart his career, he worked in B-movies, mostly in bit parts and usually playing the heavy.

Under California law at the time, he had no rights to the money he made as a child, and he was awarded only $126,000 in 1939. Because of the public uproar, the California Legislature passed the Child Actors Bill, also known as the Coogan Act, which would set up a trust fund for any child actor and protect his earnings.

During his service in the US Army, in March 1944, he served in the China-Burma-India Theater as the pilot of a CG-4A Waco (a wood-and-canvas transport glider).

It was in the 1950s that he started appearing on television and he acted in as many shows as he could.

By the 1960s, he would be in two completely different television series, but both were comedies.

The first one was McKeever and the Colonel (1962), where he played Sgt.

Barnes in a military school from 1962 to 1963.

The second series was the classic The Addams Family (1964), where he played Uncle Fester opposite Gomez and Morticia from 1964 to 1966. After that, he would continue making appearances on a number of television shows and a handful of movies.

Always considered his proudest moment his 1972 reunion with Charles Chaplin. After two decades of exile from the United States, Chaplin returned in March of that year to receive the Handel Medallion in New York City and a special lifetime achievement Oscar in Hollywood. Coogan was one of several people on hand to greet Chaplin when he arrived at Los Angeles International Airport. After greeting the other members of the party with perfunctory handshakes, Chaplin, immediately recognized Coogan (whom he hadn't seen in decades), warmly embraced him, saying, "You know, I think I would rather see you than anybody else." Chaplin later told Coogan's wife, "You must never forget that your husband is a genius.".

Retired from acting in 1980 after filming "The Escape Artist". His last released film "The Fury" had been filmed in 1979.

Biography in "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives., Volume One, 1981-1985," pp. 174-176. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998.

Biography in "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith, pp. 116. New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387.