I realize it's Thursday, but this particular Wednesday's Child is not full of woe, but has come far and clearly has far to go.

Dean Stockwell is one of my favorite former child actor dudes, from Anchor's Aweigh to Battlestar Gallactica, he does the thing he does with charm and sweetness, even when he plays a crumb bum.

Born in Hollywood to vaudevillian mother, Nina Olivette, and Hollywood actor/singer Harry Stockwell, Dean Stockwell was probably only ever going to go into show business. Indeed, he and his elder brother, Guy, became child actors well before their teenage years, though Dean would have the longer resume in both film and television.

Stockwell's good looks and natural acting style helped him make a successful transition from child star to adolescent working actor, unlike many of his contemporaries. He took a bit of a break in the 1960s to do some hippie stuff with friends Dennis Hopper, Russ Tamblyn, and Neil Young, but still racked up quite a few TV credits. The man has worked more-or-less continuously since the age of 9 and has been a welcome presence on many a popular television show.

In his spare time, Stockwell is an artist whose medium is collage, and it's some pretty cool stuff: http://stockwellart.com/rds/?page_id=3.

A life well-lived.

I was probably 9 or 10 when I first got the bejeezus scared out of me by The Innocents  (1961) even though I didn't completely understand everything that was going on at the time. I do remember being completely mesmerized by radiant, spooky little Pamela Franklin as Flora, the possessed young charge of equally luminous Deborah Kerr as Miss Giddens, the freaked out governess.  

Not her next picture, but the next one I saw, was The Nanny *(1965), where she played the cool, confident, teen-aged neighbor friend of a disturbed boy accused of drowning his little sister. Very cute, plus she smokes. By the time Franklin turned up in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) with the best part after Maggie Smith's -- the semi-evil, precocious Sandy — I was completely in love with her: dark hair, big grey-blue eyes, British accent, school uniform; oh my god.

So what happened?! How did we get from there to Food of the Gods (1976)? Somehow, by the time she was in her mid-twenties, Pamela Franklin had become the go-to gal for '70s horror pictures. Don't get me wrong, Satan's School for Girls (1973) is a fabulous piece of work, but it does seem a little unfair. At this stage in her career, Franklin was living in Los Angeles with her actor husband, Harvey Jason, and was making a number of guest appearances on popular shows and making TV movies. Like many British performers, she moved easily between film, television, drama, and comedy, but we Americans are less able to cope with genre fluidity in our celebrities, so my guess is she just got slotted in as a TV-movie actress. The pictures she made during this time were pretty forgettable, so that didn't help.

Pamela Franklin worked on everything from Green Acres to Fantasy Island, until finally quitting the business altogether in 1981 at the ripe old age of 31. She never aspired to be a big star and was kept very grounded by her parents, who were very keen observers of how other parents prodded their child performers. Franklin lives in Hollywood with her husband of more than 40 years, where he and one of their two sons run Mystery Pier Books, Inc., a bookshop that specializes in collectibles and first-editions.

Not bad.

Finally. A kid with good parents. 

If you've seen a picture with Jackie "Butch" Jenkins in it (and you have), you'll remember him as the most natural child on the screen. In my (and Pauline Kael's) opinion, he's the best thing about The Human Comedy and the only thing that makes me want to watch Margaret O'Brien* at all, but especially in Our Vines Have Tender Grapes. 

He was funny-looking, completely unaffected, and believable as the bigger name's younger brother, even if one of those stars is Elizabeth Taylor and the other is Mickey Rooney, because yeah, they could be related. By the time he was 11, Jenkins had made 13 pictures -- four of them with James Craig -- then up and quit after he developed a nervous stutter. His mother, actress Doris Dudley, took him out before the business further screwed him up and invested the money he made for him, so that he was quite well off by the time he was in his thirties.

Jenkins lived happily in Texas for many years and became a successful non-show-businessman. He said that he never regretted leaving films and was "very grateful to my mother for taking me away from it...There may be a better way to live than on a lake with a couple of cows, a wife, and children but being a movie star is not one."

"Butch" Jenkins died August 14, 2001 in his sleep at his home in Asheville, North Carolina just a few weeks before his 64th birthday.

A pretty happy ending.

A basket of "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggghhhh!!"

I didn't really know anything about Patty McCormack's post-Bad Seed work until just this morning, and I suppose that's how her life has been since she appeared as the junior sociopath, Rhoda Penmark, in that weird, creepy movie. And it's not that I haven't seen her in anything since, it's just that I didn't recognize her without the Heidi braids and the sinister glare.

But we've all seen her. Look:

• She played Pat Nixon in Frost/Nixon 
• She had a recurring role as Adriana's mom in The Sopranos
• She was Jeffrey Tambor's character's wife in The Ropers, a sad, sad spin off of Three's Company.
• She guest starred on just about every popular television show since its invention, from Playhouse 90 to Route 66 to Emergency! to Dallas to Murder, She Wrote, and then some.

Born in Brooklyn, NY, to former professional roller skater, Elizabeth, and fireman, Frank Russo, Patty started out as a child model. She first appeared on television at age seven and soon found roles on Broadway, including the original production of The Bad Seed. She worked steadily throughout her childhood -- in spite of being so closely associated with the character that made her famous -- and transitioned relatively smoothly into teenage and adult roles.

Hers is a solid success story, and more power to her. Patty McCormack has been working for more than five decades; I guess I just have to check the credits more closely!

Please Don't Shoot My Dog 
By Jackie Cooper with Dick Kleiner, Morrow, 1981

Quite a lot has been written about Jackie Cooper -- not the least of which is his own memoir -- so I'm not going to beat (you should pardon the expression) a dead horse. For immediate gratification on that score, please visit Immortal Ephmera for an excellent article about the life of Mr. Cooper by Cliff Aliperti.

I've always like this guy, even though I was never much of an "Our Gang" fan and am loath to watch anything with Wallace Beery in it unless I absolutely have to. Cooper was a likable, believable, and competent actor, both as a child and an adult.

My earliest memory of him was in the first (first) Superman movie as Daily Planet editor, Perry White. I was informed at the time that Cooper had been the child star in Treasure Island  (1934), which I had only just the day before seen on television (even though it starred Wallace Beery) and enjoyed quite a lot. To be honest, up to that point I'd always confused him with Jackie Coogan, but what do you want, I was 13 and not paying that close attention. 

Much older and wiser now, I appreciate how Cooper was able to overcome his era's miserable treatment of young actors and the sad meme of bullying directors, an estranged parent, early fame and sudden public rejection with oncoming adolescence. He was sensible enough to work on television, both in front of and behind the camera, and by the mid-1960s was enjoying a solid career as vice president of program development for CBS.

As he approached 50, a whole new career as a character actor opened up for him on shows like McCloud, Ironside, Hawaii 5-0, Columbo, and one of my favorites, Circle of Fear. I don't know if he's a good guy, but I choose to think so. He married three times: two shorts and one really long, so maybe he found some personal as well as professional success.

His memoir is a pretty interesting if somewhat repetitive read, and now that it's beach season, not a bad choice if you can find it at a Goodwill somewhere.

Apparently, she "loathed playing piano for people; always have," but was quite good at it and made several records.

I had no idea Diana Lynn played piano at all, let alone that her virtuosity is what got her into pictures in the first place. Play she did, and in her first two pictures, the pre-teen was billed at "Dolly" Loehr until 1942, when Paramount signed her to a long-term contract and changed her name to "Diana Lynn."

Lynn's first feature role was as Ray Milland's fiancee (Rita Johnson)'s kid sister in The Major and the Minor  (1942), and while she's not in it for long, she's pivotal -- wise, canny, and helpful. Similarly, in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Lynn plays a smarter, infinitely more mature kid sister to poor ol' Betty Hutton.

As with many other child actors that preceded her, Diana Lynn got fewer and roles as she got older. It's not a little confounding, because she played such sophisticated, mature kids, but what do I know? In the 1950s, she worked mainly on television, but did have an adult lead opposite Ronald Reagan in Bedtime for Bonzo (1951), which may very well have been the last straw. She also performed on Broadway and on the London stage.

Her first marriage was in 1948 to architect John C. Lindsay, whom she divorced in 1953. Several years later, she married Mortimer Hall, son of Dorothy Schiff, publisher of the New York Post. Lynn felt that it was possible to balance career and family, and when interviewed in the 1960s about how she managed it all, she said, "I don't burden my husband with every detail of stagecraft...[and] I try to be instinctive about raising my children. I try to hear what they're not saying. It's working out. They're nice; they're happy; they've got manners." 

Pretty sensible.

She had been running a fledgling travel agency in New York City when Paramount offered her the lead role in the film adaptation of Joan Didion's novel, Play It as It Lays. Just before shooting began, Lynn had a fatal stroke and died at the age of 45 on December 18, 1971. She left behind her husband and four children, two of whom, Dolly and Daisy, are in show business today.

I recommend Miracle of Morgan's Creek for a happy example of this fine actress' work.

Dick Moore is one of those actors I keep seeing, but  have never paid enough attention to. His is a distinctive look, with those large, brown eyes, and general sweetness. 

Moore's career began at age 18 months in the film, The Beloved Rogue (1927), as baby John Barrymore and continued fairly steadily until he retired from acting in 1957 at the ripe old age of 29. Like many child performers before him, the lion's share of his work and box office appeal occurred before he turned 10, by which time he had made 52 pictures, not the least of which were a year's worth of the early "Our Gang" shorts.

Unlike most of his contemporaries, Moore had a fairly good run in juvenile parts through the 1940s, and even took time to finish college and serve in the Second World War. A fact often cited during this period in his career is that he was the actor chosen to give Shirley Temple her first screen kiss. It was his first kiss ever, but not hers, as she was fond of saying. Just seems like something to mention.

By the end of the decade, the parts did begin to dry up and Moore turned to television for a while before quitting acting altogether, Afterward, Moore became an editor and public relations man for Actors Equity and had a very successful post-film career.

In 1984, Dick Moore interviewed 31 former child actors for his book Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (But don't have sex or take the car), a fascinating, sad and sensitive insight into the lives and problems faced by his cohort during Hollywood's golden age. It was in the process of writing this book that Moore met and began dating Jane Powell, an actress who survived child stardom in much the same way he did. They married in 1988 and are together to this day.

This poor kid. 

Born in Boston to unwilling parents, Edith Fellows was abandoned by her mother a few months after she was born and moved to North Carolina to live with her father and his mother. Edith displayed an early talent for singing and dancing and was noticed by a "talent scout" who claimed he could get her a screen test in Hollywood for fifty bucks. She and her grandmother took a train to Los Angeles, only to find an empty lot at the address they were given.

Her iron-willed and apparently unpleasant grandmother worked as a housekeeper to make ends meet and settled Edith in with another family to live. The son in that family was a movie extra whom Edith accompanied to the studio, where she was noticed by a director. For real this time. Soon she began appearing in comedy shorts and small parts in larger pictures.

Her big break came in 1935 as Melvyn Douglas's bratty daughter in She Married Her Boss, the girl Claudette Colbert beats some goodness into. Edith's performance was so well-received, that Columbia Pictures signed her to a seven-year contract, the first time a child received such a contract. With roughly 20 pictures already under her belt, Edith began a solid career as a singing child star for Columbia. At home, however, things were pretty bleak. Her grandmother was something of a tyrant who isolated her from people and took complete control of her earnings. In 1936, when Edith was established as a sensation, her mother showed up out of the blue and demanded custody...and money. A long court battle ensued which resulted in Edith having to choose between the mother she'd never met and her grandmother, the devil she knew. She chose the grandmother.

As Edith grew into adulthood, her charm for Columbia began to fade. In 1941, they decided not to renew her contract, because at 18, Edith was too old for children's roles and too short (fully grown at 4' 10") to be a leading lady. When she reached her majority in 1944, Edith tried to recoup some of her earnings from her "guardian" and found that of the $100,000 dollars coming to her, there was only $900 left.

So Edith Fellows turned to the stage. She appeared on Broadway in musicals and comedies, and guest starred on a few television shows. One night in 1958, during a performance at a charity event, she was struck with paralyzing stage fright. A doctor prescribed Librium for the condition, a drug to which she became addicted. A long period of drug dependence and alcohol abuse followed, with Edith working a series of low-paying jobs to make ends meet. She did not perform again until 1979, when a friend of hers in community theater wrote a play based on her life called Dreams Deferred and encouraged her to star it in.

Edith overcame her stage fright by performing in that play and it changed her life. She went off the pills and booze and embarked on a solid career as a guest star on a number of popular television series and TV movies, including Scarecrow & Mrs. King, Cagney & Lacey, and ER. She retired from show business altogether in 1995.

Edith Fellows died at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, a retirement community for members of the film and television industry, on June 26, 2011 of natural causes. She was 88.

I haven't seen that many of her pictures, but these I have, and these I like:

• She Married Her Boss  (1935)
• Pennies from Heaven  (1936)
• Girls Town (1942)

There is a very warm and thorough biographical sketch of Anne Shirley on IMDb, which I recommend to you, in lieu of my having to gratuitously paraphrase it here. 

Anne Shirley was one of those quiet, excellent child actors who played the younger version of whichever Hollywood actress was actually starring in a picture, or as that star's daughter. If you happen to catch her in anything before 1934 — and there were 31 pictures to choose from — she'd be credited as "Dawn O'Day," one of several stage names she was given as a toddler model. What was wrong with her given name, Dawn Paris, I don't know.

Shirley became a reliable bit player in feature films from the age of four, getting more and more notice as she grew into a beautiful teenager. Although she only appears briefly in the pre-Code Barbara Stanwyck vehicle, The Purchase Price (1932), her performance as a terrified farm girl is arresting. That same year, she played the young Ann Dvorak in Three On a Match, and manages to convey the discontent and fragility that overtake the adult character in her few short scenes.

The actress took the name "Anne Shirley" from the film that made her a star, Anne of Green Gables, changing it legally and professionally when she turned 16. And like good contract players, she made three to six pictures a year, most of them excellent, but in spite of critically successful performances, Anne Shirley never quite reached the level of stardom one would have hoped. Growing tired of the Hollywood grind and with one failed marriage behind her (to handsome John Payne) and one on the rocks (to soon-to-be-blacklisted producer and screenwriter, Adrian Scott) she retired from movies in 1944 at the age of 26.

She did go out with a bang, as it were; her last picture was the film noir classic, Murder, My Sweet, a hell of a high note.

Anne Shirley's third marriage to screenwriter Charles Lederer in 1949 was a happy one that lasted until his death in 1976. She lived the rest of her days in Hollywood as a painter and socialite. She died July 4, 1993 from lung cancer at the age of 75.

Her birthday is this Saturday, so why not screen something like So Big! or any of these others to celebrate?

The tragedy in this kid's life is legend. When Jackie Coogan -- the world's first up-marketed child star, maker of millions, darling of silent cinema -- became a legal adult, he learned that his mother and stepfather had spent nearly every penny of his earnings. When he took the pair to court, the boy's mother asserted that, "every dollar a kid earns before he is 21 belongs to his parents. Jackie will not get a cent of his earnings." Happy Mother's Day!

The court case that ensued resulted in the California Child Actor's Bill (also known popularly as "The Coogan Act" or "The Coogan Law"), which provides that the child's employer set aside 15% of his earnings into a trust (called by many a "Coogan Account"), provide some schoolin' and give the kid time off every once in a while. I hasten to add that this didn't go into effect until 1939.

Thirty-nine.

Another result of the case was that, after lawyers fees and court costs, young Mr. Coogan only wound up with half the earnings his parents hadn't already spent, roughly $125,000, all that remained from the 20 films he made before the age of 18.

Coogan was born into a vaudevillian family, his father a dancer and mother, ironically, a former child performer. Charlie Chaplin caught the family act and cast the boy in one of his upcoming pictures. He was so impressed with the child's abilities that he gave him the role of his life as the eponymous kid in The Kid, one of the best films ever. Coogan made a string of highly successful picture throughout the Twenties, but fewer into the Thirties.

When Coogan was 20 years old, he was hurt in a car accident that killed both his father and best friend. His mother married the sponge that would later help her spend his money shortly thereafter.

By the late Thirties, an older, less adorable Coogan found film roles harder to come by. He enlisted in the army during World War II, and because of his training as a glider pilot, ultimately transferred to the Air Force and flew British troops behind Japanese lines during the Burma Campaign.

He returned to acting on the smaller screen, appearing in guest spots on popular shows until finally landing the role of Uncle Fester on the excellent program, The Addams Family.

Jackie Coogan passed away at the age of 69 in 1984. His horrible upbringing is directly responsible for any security a child performer has enjoyed for the last 75 years. If you haven't seen The Kid, you should (and can, because it's streaming on the Huge Internet Megaplex named for a South American river), because he was amazing and beautiful in it.

Also Uncle Fester can put a light bulb in his mouth and make it shine.