John Leslie "Jackie" Coogan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Coogan

John Leslie Coogan (October 26, 1914 – March 1, 1984), known professionally as Jackie Coogan, was an American actor who began his movie career as a child actor in silent films. Many years later, he became known as Uncle Fester on 1960s sitcom The Addams Family. In the interim, he sued his mother and stepfather over his squandered film earnings and provoked California to enact the first known legal protection for the earnings of child performers, billed as the Coogans Act.

Early life and early career

Coogan was born in 1914 in Los Angeles, California to John Henry Coogan, Jr. and Lillian Rita (Dolliver) Coogan, as John Leslie Coogan (not John Leslie Coogan, Jr., as some sources indicate). He began performing as an infant in both vaudeville and film, with an uncredited role in the 1917 film Skinner's Baby. Charlie Chaplin discovered him in the Orpheum Theatre, Los Angeles, a vaudeville house, doing the shimmy, a popular dance at the time, on the stage. Coogan's father was also an actor. Jackie Coogan was a natural mimic and delighted Chaplin with his abilities.

He is best remembered as a child actor for his role as Chaplin's irascible sidekick in the film classic The Kid (1921) and for the title role in Oliver Twist, directed by Frank Lloyd, the following year. He was one of the first stars to be heavily merchandised, with peanut butter, stationery, whistles, dolls, records, and figurines as some of Coogan merchandise offered. He traveled internationally, being greeted by huge crowds. Many of his early films are lost or unavailable, but Turner Classic Movies recently presented The Rag Man with a new score.

Coogan was tutored until the age of ten, when he entered Urban Military Academy and other prep schools. He attended several colleges, as well as the University of Southern California. In 1932 he dropped out of Santa Clara University because of poor grades. On May 4, 1935, Coogan was the sole survivor of a deadly car crash in San Diego County that took the life of his father and his best friend Junior Durkin, a child actor who appeared as Huckleberry Finn in two early 1930s films. The accident happened just before Coogan's twenty-first birthday.

In November 1933, Brooke Hart, a close friend of Coogan's from Santa Clara University, was kidnapped from his family-owned department store in San Jose and brought to the San Francisco area San Mateo - Hayward Bridge. After several demands for a $40,000 ransom, police arrested Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes in San Jose. Thurmond admitted that Hart had been murdered on the night he was kidnapped. Both men were then transferred to a prison in San Jose, California. Later a mob broke into the building; Thurmond and Holmes were then hanged in an adjacent park. Coogan is reported to have been one of the mob that prepared and held the lynching rope.

Coogan Bill

Main article: California Child Actor's Bill

“Mr. and Mrs. Bernstein will never be serious contenders for the title of Mr. and Mrs. America.”

—New York Herald Tribune

As a child star, Coogan earned an estimated $3 to $4 million (adjusted amount ranges from $40 million to $100 million), but the money was spent by his mother and stepfather, Arthur Bernstein, on extravagances such as fur coats, diamonds, and expensive cars. In their defense, Coogan's mother and stepfather claimed Jackie was having fun and thought he was playing. She stated, "No promises were ever made to give Jackie anything. Every dollar a kid earns before he is 21 belongs to his parents. Jackie will not get a cent of his earnings", and claimed that "Jackie was a bad boy." Coogan sued them in 1938, but after legal expenses, he only received $126,000 of the approximately $250,000 remaining of his earnings. When Coogan fell on hard times, Charlie Chaplin gave him financial support.

The legal battle brought attention to child actors and resulted in the enactment of the California Child Actor's Bill, often called the Coogan Bill or the Coogan Act. This requires that a child actor's employer set aside 15% of the earnings in a trust, and codifies issues such as schooling, work hours and time-off.

Charity work

Coogan took up the cause of the Armenians, Greeks, and others made destitute during the horrors of the First World War, working with Near East Relief. He toured across the United States and Europe in 1924 on a "Children's Crusade" as part of a fundraising drive, which ended up providing more than $1,000,000 in clothing, food, and other contributions (worth more than $13 million adjusted for 2010 dollars). Coogan was honored by officials in the US, Greece, and Rome, where he met with the Pope.

Later years

World War II

Coogan enlisted in the United States Army in March 1941. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he requested a transfer to United States 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 March 5, 1944, landing them at night in a small jungle clearing 100 miles behind Japanese lines in the Burma campaign.

Television

After the war, Coogan returned to acting, taking mostly character roles and appearing on television. From 1952 to 1953, he played Stoney Crockett on the syndicated series Cowboy G-Men. He guest starred on NBC's The Martha Raye Show. He appeared too, as Corbett, in two episodes of NBC's The Outlaws with Barton MacLane, which aired from 1960–1962. In the 1960–1961 season, he guest starred in the episode "The Damaged Dolls" of the syndicated crime drama The Brothers Brannagan.

Coogan had a regular role in a 1962–1963 NBC series, McKeever and the Colonel. He finally found his most famous television role as Uncle Fester in ABC's The Addams Family (1964–1966). He appeared as a police officer in the Elvis Presley comedy Girl Happy in 1965.

In addition to The Addams Family, he appeared a number of times on the Perry Mason series, and once on Emergency! as a junkyard owner who tries to bribe the paramedics, who have come to inspect his property for fire safety. He also was featured in an episode of The Brady Bunch ("The Fender Benders"), I Dream of Jeannie (as Jeannie's uncle, Suleiman - Maharaja of Basenji), Family Affair, Here's Lucy and The Brian Keith Show, and he continued to guest star on television (including multiple appearances on The Partridge Family, The Wild Wild West and Hawaii Five-O) until his retirement in the middle 1970s.

Marriages and children

1.Betty Grable, married on November 20, 1937, divorced on October 11, 1939.

2.Flower Parry, married on August 10, 1941, divorced on June 29, 1943. 1.One son, John Anthony Coogan (writer/producer 3D digital & film), born March 4, 1942 in Los Angeles, California.
3.Ann McCormack, married on December 26, 1946, divorced on September 20, 1951. 1.One daughter, Joann Dolliver Coogan, born April 2, 1948 in Los Angeles, California.
4.Dorothea Odetta Hanson aka Dorothea Lamphere, best known as Dodie, married on April 1952, they were together until his death. 1.One daughter, Leslie Diane Coogan, born November 24, 1953 in Los Angeles, California. Her son is the actor Keith Coogan, who was born January 13, 1970. He began acting in 1975. Two years after his grandfather's death in 1986 he changed his name to Keith Coogan from Keith Eric Mitchell. He played the oldest son in Adventures in Babysitting. Footage of Jackie with his grandson, Keith (uncredited on the imdb.com page) can be seen in the 1982 documentary "Hollywood's Children". 2.One son, Christopher Fenton Coogan, born July 9, 1967 in Riverside County, California. He died in a motorcycle accident in Palm Springs, California, on June 29, 1990.
Death

On March 1, 1984, Coogan died of cardiac arrest aged 69 at Santa Monica Medical Center in Santa Monica, California.

He is buried in Culver City's Holy Cross Cemetery. Coogan's younger brother Robert, also a child actor, died in 1978, aged 53.

Coogan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of 1654 Vine Street, just south of Hollywood Boulevard.

Selected filmography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Coogan#Selected_filmography

http://ww2gravestone.com/people/coogan-john-leslie-jackie/

American child actor, best remembered as the kid in Chaplin's The Kid. Played later Uncle Fester in The Addams Family.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Coogan

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001067/ 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. 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.

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). 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. 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. 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.

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. 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 & 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. He died of a heart attack in 1984.