Celebrity Biographies
Jackie Cooper
He was the first child prodigy of the talkies, and also the first to receive an Oscar. Furthermore, few except Mickey Rooney can boast of having had a more extensive career than his. The mythical Jackie Cooper died on Tuesday, May 3, 2011, in Los Angeles, at the age of 88.
It was exactly in that same Californian city that John Cooper, Jr. was born on September 15, 1922. His family was closely related to the cinema, since his mother, Mabel Leonard, had been a child actress, his uncle, Jack Leonard , he was a screenwriter, and his stepfather, CJ Bigelow, was a producer.
Thus, it is not surprising that he was presented to a casting at the age of 7, in which he was chosen to play a secondary character in The gang (Little Rascals) , one of the most successful serials of the 20s and early of the 30s. Although at first his character was very secondary, he ended up being one of the protagonists.
His first non-series role was as the lead in Norman Taurog’s The Adventures of Skippy . Cooper had a bad memory of the shoot, as Taurog threatened to shoot his dog to make her cry in a sequence. For his role, Cooper was nominated for an Oscar for best actor, quite a feat, since he was not only the first child nominated in this category, but he was the only child under 18 years of age to compete for a leading performance award until in 2004 Keisha Castle-Hughes competed for Whale Rider (there have been others in supporting roles).
He then began a long association with actor Wallace Beery , with whom he achieved success in films such as Champ and Treasure Island (1934) . Cooper has a bad memory of his years with Beery, whom he describes as a cruel man with an alcohol problem.
Like other child prodigies, as an adult Cooper failed to maintain his photogenicity, his star fading after titles like The Revenge of Frank James and The Ziegfeld Girls . In the 1950s he experienced a second golden age thanks to television, starring in The People’s Choice and Hennesey series . He also reinvented himself as the director of well-known series such as Cagney and Lacey or Jake and the Fat Man .
Additionally, he played Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet, in Superman , and its three sequels. His last role on the big screen was in A Girlfriend for Two (1987) , as a supporting role.
Married to June Horne, they divorced in 1944, and were later joined by Hildy Parks and Barbra Krause. He wrote his autobiography, titled “Please Don’t Shoot My Dog”, after the dramatic flashback to the filming of The Adventures of Skippy .