Junior Durkin

He was born Trent Bernard ("Junior") Durkin in Atlantic City, New Jersey on July 2, 1915. His father, Bernard, was a hotel owner who abandoned the family while Junior was quite young. His mother, Florence "Molly" Edwards, was an actress who quickly geared Junior and his two older sisters, Gertrude Durkin and Grace Durkin toward performing. Junior first set foot on stage at age 2 1/2 playing the part of Cupid in the play "Some Night". From there he was seen in such shows as "The Squaw Man," "The Blue Bird," "Poppy," "Paid" and "Floradora.

" Following a role in "Dagmar" starring legendary 'Nazimova' as a countess in January 1923, the 8-year-old Junior took his first bow on Broadway with the melodrama "The Lady" toward the end of that year with veterans 'Mary Nash' and Elisabeth Risdon. Junior returned to Broadway as Tommy Tucker in Gilbert & Sullivan's musical "H. M. S.

Pinafore" (1926), then earned his strongest reviews yet in the Broadway comedy "Courage" (1928), also starring Janet Beecher and featuring sister Gertrude, which ran for 8 months. He and sister Gertrude also toured on the vaudeville circuit around this time.

Quiet, benign, blue-eyed, rangy-framed child/teen actor Junior Durkin, who was an absolute natural on film and possessed major "down home" appeal, showed strong promise in just the few 1930s films he appeared in. A fatal roadster accident quickly ended the dreams of this young "Henry Fonda" type just as he was about to transition into grownup-roles.

Following his mother's death in 1930, the young actor and both his sisters, who now had stage and Broadway experience, headed West to Hollywood to test "early sound" pictures. Junior was immediate placed in the Warner Bros.

domestic drama Recaptured Love (1930) and received noticeable reviews as the son of estranged parents.

Junior was next paired well with child actress Mitzi Green in The Santa Fe Trail (1930) headlining Richard Arlen, with both children receiving their share of praise.

Brief as it was, Junior became life-long friends with superstar Jackie Coogan when he tested and won the role of Huckleberry Finn opposite Coogan's Sawyer in what would prove to be a highly popular movie version of the Mark Twain classic Tom Sawyer (1930). Both boys were the same age. With Mitzi Green delightful as Becky Thatcher, the three young actors received heaps of praise for their naturalistic performances.

The movie was so well received, in fact, that all three were reunited in the film version of Huckleberry Finn (1931). Blessed with a shy, ingratiating smile, Junior, along with the other two, received equal applause for these same roles.

Junior co-starred in the drama Hell's House (1932) with an early Bette Davis and Pat O'Brien as a bucolic "good kid" who gets mixed up with the wrong city crowd, a bootlegger and his dame, and takes the fall for a crime his mentor committed.

Junior's next film Man Hunt (1933) showed off Junior's natural charm as a boy sleuth who involves himself in a murder and robbery.

Returning then to the stage with a starring role in the comedy "Growing Pains" at the Pasadena Playhouse, the show moved to Broadway in November 1933 but ran only 29 performances.

Dropping the name "Junior" from the marquee, the young actor was fourth billed as "Trent Durkin" in the Richard Arlen/Ida Lupino comedy Ready for Love (1934) in his pursuit of a grownup image.

Big Hearted Herbert (1934) with Guy Kibbee and Louisa May Alcott's Little Men (1934) with fellow kid actors Dickie Moore, Frankie Darro, Tommy Bupp and Cora Sue Collins followed.

Junior's last film would be RKO's Chasing Yesterday (1935), which would be released posthumously.

Became very close friends with child star Jackie Coogan throughout most his film career. The tragic car accident that killed Coogan's father, Jack Coogan Sr.., as well as Junior, indirectly led to a court trial that resulted in the Coogan Law. This California law would put away 15% of a child actor's earnings as opposed to being entirely the parent's property. Following his father's death, young Coogan's mother married his stepfather (also his manager). They squandered the boy's millions and the boy was forced to sue them. In 2000, the state ruled that all earnings belonged to the child and the parents had no claim whosoever.

According to Tim Doherty, in his in-depth article on Junior in the April 2014 issue of Classic Images film magazine, the boy was orphaned when his mother died in 1930. He and his sisters were placed under the guardianship of Marian Gering, a Broadway producer.