Front Row Dress Circle

I read just recently that Gary Coleman (Diff’rent Strokes) has become a married man…well done Gary and all happiness to you and your new bride! if ever someone needed some happiness in their private life it is Gary. But his story reads like so many people who started life in celebrity-ville as a young child. Gary was a wondefully talented child and is now a wonderfully talented man. Some, like Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) are fortunate and make the transition from child-star to adult-star smoothly.  But just as Hollywood can be a yellow brick road for some child stars it has also proven to be a road full of obstacles and bumps eventually leading to heartbreak, ruin and even death for many others. Here are some who went the bumpy way, often tragically…

* Bobby Driscoll (above) was a cute and very talented child actor back in the late 40’s and early 50’s. He appeared in Song of the South (1945), as Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island (1950) and voiced Peter Pan in the Disney film of the same name in 1953.  He grew from a cute kid into a rather gangly and awkward teen and along the way found less work as studio bosses did not know what to do with him.  In the late 1950’s he developed a drug problem and quickly became addicted to heroin. His story had a very sad ending. He was found dead from an overdose in a dirty tenement in East Village New York by two young boys in 1968 at the age of 31.  His physical deterioration had become so bad that police could not identify him. As a result his family were not informed and his body remained in the city morgue for nearly a whole year until he was finally buried in a paupers grave on Hart Island. He was finally identified, 18 months later, after his mother requested assistance from Disney studios - a fingerprint taken from him years earlier was matched with police records taken after his death. He remains in the same grave today. Perhaps one of the saddest cases of all, poor Bobby

* Jackie Coogan was the very first real child star appearing with Charlie Chaplin in The Kid  (1921 )among other films. He never reproduced his fame as an adult and spent his adult years almost penniless as his parents had spent all his earnings before he turned eighteen. As a result of this a law called the Coogan Law was introduced to protect the earnings of child stars from their greedy parents and agents - it is still in force today though more stringently applied now than it was then. Jackie Coogan went on to become Betty Grable’s husband and, more famously, as Uncle Fester on The Addams Family tv show. He also appeared in a guest role on the Brady Bunch as the man who backed into Carol’s car in a carpark.

* The kids from the old Our Gang series of short films had a tough trot in later life with most of the group dying tragically or even violently. Alfalfa was shot to death in 1959 at the age of 31 in a gangland dispute over a debt.  Brisbane committed suicide in 1981 depressed about his forgotten fame. Chubby grew into a very obese teen due to a glandular problem and died at the young age of 18.  The original Pete the Pup (there were a series of them) was poisoned by an unknown person. Waldo grew up to become a Minister and was killed walking on a pavement by a car. Wheezer was killed in a miliatry plane accident at the age of 19 in 1945.

There are many more…but we will leave those for another time.

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