Child Actor Jackie Cooper Dead at 88

[jon]

Jackie Cooper died on Tuesday, at age 88. He was already a legend as a child actor in the early 1930s, especially working with Wallace Beery, who detested kids. Later generations know him as the gruff editor in the first four Superman films of the 1980s. He did even more behind the camera. I'm reading elsewhere that some of his film work took him to Canada.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Entertainment ... it-110505/

Here is what I wrote elsewhere, in response to a comment about how rare it is for someone to actually hang on to as much money as Jackie has from his years in Hollywood:

Beyond that, in that Hollywood era, Jackie Cooper was one of the very few to survive the transition from child star to "anything but poverty". As so many relatives of child stars robbed them of their wealth, and few made the transition through "the awkward years" into a successful adult career of any kind.

Many a child star, even in the early Rock era, blew all their dough on drugs and/or died by OD'ing. Frankie Lymon comes to mind. I was going to mention Billy Gray of "Fathers Know Best" fame, only to read in imdb.com that he successfully sued Leonard Maltin for mixing him up (in Maltin's movie books) with a notorious drug addict and pusher of the same name.

Point being: it took a lot of strength and good luck for Jackie and a small handful of others (think Margaret O'Brien) to become successful adults after the screwy life of a child star.