We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
for February 1936
27
Wide World
The world says that his 21st birthday dropped a fortune into "The Kid's" lapbut read what Jackie has to say about it
Jackie, above, with Betty Grable at the party celebrating his twenty-first birthday. Upper left, Coogan as "The Kid," the Charlie Chaplin picture which made him famous. Left, as "Tom Sawyer," one of Jackie's come-back efforts.
The Truth about
Jackie Coogan's
ion Do ars
//
EVER since his twenty-first birthday, Hollywood has been standing by waiting to watch Jackie Coogan hit the high-spots with the thousand dollar bills his childhood genius earned him ! Where would the first great child actor of the screen find his happiness now that he had become the boss of his own million dollar trust fund? Movies, millions, and marriage were at his command, and rumor had it that young Coogan had been waiting for just this chance to spend without benefit of parental guidance or trust fund watchfulness. Even the headliners weren't quite sure just how much Jackie had to spend, but the guesses were between $500,000 and $2,000,000.
On that fateful twenty-first birthday even Mussolini and Haile Selassie had to make room for Jackie on the front pages of the newspapers, for everybody, over twenty years old, remembered "The Kid."
To the movie fans of fifteen years ago he is still the wistful, bedraggled urchin who reached such heights of genius at the finger tips of the great Chaplin that the memory of his shadow has far outlived his physical presence on the screen. Hollywood, closer to him, has watched indulgently as the chubbyfaced little boy outgrew his stardom q » » , i and developed, first, into a long-legged, Dy W3li6r
skinny young school boy and later into the juvenile romantic delight of the gossip columnists. But a couple of months ago, when The Kid became twenty-one, the outside world and the inside world were united on one point of interest :
What was the richest kid actor in the world going to do with all his money — now that he had it ?
For if that question could be answered, one would also find the answer to an even more important question, what kind of a man had Tlie Kid become ?
Certainly the newspaper clan left no stone unturned in their guessing game. Yachts ? Imported automobiles ? Diamond rings for the pretty little girls he took to Hollywood parties ? Travel ? Maybe, his own motion picture company on a major scale?
I understand that so persistently did the press stalk him on his birthday that Jackie went into hiding, refusing to answer the dizzy questions shot at him by reporters over the telephone. In fact, for two entire months he had managed to elude personal interviews pretty well. I ought to know. I'd been on his trail almost that long! When I finally tracked him down at the Santa Monica Swimming Club he told me that it was p the "conf oundedest thing" that had ever
K3ITIS©y happened {Continued on page 82)