Very successful child actor who grew up to be very successful. For a long while I kept getting this guy mixed up with Jackie Coogan of The Kid. I kept saying Uncle Fester was played by Jackie Cooper. Not true.
They listed his death as from old age. Now, he was elderly at 88. But these days, I don’t think of that as ancient. I think of mid-nineties as ancient.
Great Caesar’s Ghost!
I never saw any of the movies he made as a child. Although I knew he was in *Our Gang. * Nor do I remember his TV series. Of course, I recognized him as Perry White from the Superman movies starring Chris Reeve.
And yes, I know John Hamilton said “Great Caesar’s Ghost,” and not Cooper. The line is still associated with Perry.
Boinked Joan Crawford when he was a teenager and she was in her thirties. Had that thing for older women, but wasn’t going to carry a torch for Miss Crabtree.
And now probably laying something heavy on the nose of Chubsy Ubsy.
I’ve been going thru Netflix dvd/stream of “Columbo” episodes. The first time I ever saw the show when it was on TV Guide said “former child star Jackie Cooper” would guest star . I thought that was Jackie Coogan who played “Uncle Fester” on the Addams Family. Watched it and said “he sure looks different with hair”. He played a politician who murdered his campaign manager and his wife was Joan Linville, who played the hot Romulan commander in “Star Trek TOS”.
I remember a story about Cooper from when he was in The Champ with Wallace Beery. There was a scene where he was supposed to cry and was unable to, so the director sent Beery over to tell him that a dog had died. When he started crying, they stuck the camera in his face.
Heh. I used to think Jackie Cooper, who I would see in The Little Rascals on local TV every weekend, grew up to play Uncle Fester. I thought he’d really let himself go. This earlier Cooper/Coogan conflation is no doubt why I thought Jackie Cooper died decades ago.
For some reason an old made for TV movie he did sticks in my mind. He was a pilot who specialized in aerial photography, and something freaky happened to a bunch of film stock, and it ended up developing pictures showing jagged lines where earthquakes were about to strike. He ends up flying into this little nearly abandoned town in the middle of nowhere to get the people out before the next quake hits.
As an aside, Cooper had a long career in the Navy and naval reserve and ended up retiring at the rank of Captain. He had a multi-engine pilot license as well. Seems like he was an extremely talented and interesting guy.
I love his crush on Miss Crabtree in the “Little Rascals.” Remember when he and Chubby were competing for her attention. Chubby said, “Aw Miss Crabtree, you can call me ‘Chubsy Ubsy’.”
May I point out he also had a very, very good television show,* Hennessey* (years ahead of its time) where he played a military doctor. He wrote number of the scripts, directed many, and even wrote and played the wonderful jazz theme for the show.
I knew him mostly from Superman. 