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Now grown up, Mi+zie Green and Jackie Coogan have been urjable to capture the public fancy as once they did when they were starred together in Tom Sawyer.
Shirley Temple is a fine proof that kid stars need not fade after adolescence. Her roles grew up with her, and helped her through the awkward age to new fame.
Mickey Rooney is the only still-popular member of this group. Jackie Cooper is making grcde B movies, while Freddie Bartholomew is now entertaining in night clubs.
■ Seven years ago, five-year-old Margaret O'Brien hit the popularity jackpot in Journey for Margaret. Since then, in one success after another, she's become the youngest major star in pictures. Now. at 13, she's confronted by a hurdle that few child stars in the past have managed to survive.
Margaret O'Brien is facing that classic bugaboo, "the awkward age" — the age when lovable tots begin to grow into rangy, sprawling creatures with knobby knees and angular elbows.
At the moment, Margaret's doing fine. Having finished one of the major roles in Little Women, she's now busily engaged in The Secret Garden. She's bigger box-office than ever.
And yet — is she slated, in a year or so, to fade into screen oblivion?
Time was when that would have seemed a foregone conclusion. It's by no means that today. For the truth is that "the awkward age" has of recent years been rapidly losing fright-power as the horrendous prospect it once was. There are any number of cases to prove this fine fact. There's Shirley Temple. There's Elizabeth Taylor. There are, among others, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin and Peggy Ann Garner and Jane Powell.
We'll get to them in a minute. First, let's examine some of the sad cases in the past that have justified the general fear of this bugaboo.
One of the first that springs to mind is that of Freddie Bartholomew. Freddie was an extraordinarily appealing and talented ten-year-old when the public fell in love with the little guy after David Copper field in 1935. His next role was in Garbo's Anna Karenina — and from then on he received star billing. For a while, his fan mail at MGM exceeded that of Clark Gable. By 1939 — Freddie's career was finished. At 14 he was a long, gangling string bean, all wrists and neck. "If the cinema tired of me," the youngster said as he set out to salvage what he could with a personal appearance tour, "I should keep my chin up and carry on with other things." Freddie kept his chin up, all right, but he's still trying his best to make a screen comeback via summer stock, vaudeville and night clubs. At this writing, he's making night club appearances in Australia.
Take the two Jackies, Cooper and Coogan.
Jackie Cooper was launched into pictures by his uncle, director Norman Taurog. a shrewd man who knew all about Hollywood. When Jackie was coining the money with roles like Skippy, Uncle Norman saw to it that the boy's income was salted away for the rainy days..
It's a good thing he did. Today Jackie is still on the screen, but he (Continued on page 109)