# RIP Baby Peggy (last of the silent film stars?) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** celebrity-death\ **Created:** [February 26, 2020, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-baby-peggy-last-of-the-silent-film-stars/848583 "2020-02-26T23:12:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2020, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-baby-peggy-last-of-the-silent-film-stars/848583/1 "2020-02-26T23:12:05Z")
Diana Serra Cary, who became a self-made millionaire at age 4 as silent-movie smash-hit Baby Peggy, has [passed away](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/diana-serra-cary-silent-film-star-known-as-baby-peggy-dies-at-101/2020/02/24/c644e22c-5770-11ea-ab68-101ecfec2532_story.html) at age 101. I’d be surprised if there are any stars left from the silent era now. I had never heard of her, but apparently she was huge from 1921-24, with lots of product endorsements as well. True to child-star form, her manager-father eventually fought with the studio and got her blackballed from any more movies, at which point he went on to waste all of her earnings. She eventually went back to work in the studios as an extra, and apparently Hollywood wasn’t much different back then: > [@](#): > > “Men, more often than not, would cruise the set,” she once told the cinema and media publication Framework, “and if there was an attractive girl — once in a while they would try me — who wasn’t doing anything, they would massage your neck. I would get more tense, and they would say ‘just relax.’ They’d hang out and they’d make all kinds of innuendos, which I didn’t fully understand but I got the gist. I could see that this was hunter and prey.” > > She added, “Then I discovered something by accident: If I took a serious, scholarly book to work, it was just like mustard gas. Men just didn’t come near me.” She later became a well-regarded author of books about movie history. ---
**Author:** ![Author\_Balk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Author\_Balk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Author_Balk)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2020, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-baby-peggy-last-of-the-silent-film-stars/848583/2 "2020-02-26T23:33:39Z")
Wiki[edia has a list of 6-10 people who acted in the silent movie era. I don’t recognize any of them. Maybe she’s the last “star” depending on the definition of star. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_surviving\_silent\_film\_actors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_surviving_silent_film_actors) ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2020, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-baby-peggy-last-of-the-silent-film-stars/848583/3 "2020-02-26T23:57:01Z")
I knew of her and had read about her in a book about child stars. She was also in a documentary about child actors I’d seen. I found her story interesting, so I read her autobiography. She was an amazingly good little actress considering how young she was. She made a fortune in her brief career, but like many before the Jackie Coogan laws, her folks ran through her money like water. I also have a copy of _Captain January_ that was published to coincide with her movie version. Shirley Temple also made a version. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2020, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-baby-peggy-last-of-the-silent-film-stars/848583/4 "2020-02-27T01:33:02Z")
Turner Classic Movies has shown a wonderful documentary about her called “Baby Peggy: The Elephant in the Room.” I could tell she was highly intelligent, and they showed the results of an IQ test she was given when she started school; the score was 148. :eek: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1776077/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1776077/) RIP, Diana Serra Carey. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2020, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-baby-peggy-last-of-the-silent-film-stars/848583/5 "2020-02-27T13:22:43Z")
She was small, it’s the pictures that got big. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2020, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-baby-peggy-last-of-the-silent-film-stars/848583/6 "2020-02-27T15:55:50Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > She was small, it’s the pictures that got big. 🙂 That article also recounts how she did her own stunts. Basically, no one looked askance at holding a 4-year-old underwater or putting her where a horse could run right over her. One time they actually set fire to the set for a disaster scene, and it spread to the door that was supposed to be her escape. She didn’t break character; instead, she broke a window.