As a real, red-blooded, sagacious American kid, eight years old Jackie Cooper, cast by Paramount to bring into life the child character "Skippy" of Percy Crosby's comic strip, is hard to beat.
When he looks at you out of his shrewd, blue eyes, which he has a cunning habit of screwing up as though the sunlight had hit them, he searches deep into your thoughts.
Jackie was just made to order for the Skippy part. He knows it and he likes it. As far as he is concerned you might just as well know that first as last. He is happy and well-satisfied over the selection of 5 years old Robert Coogan, brother of Jackie, to play Skippy's pal, "Sooky," a part Paramount had a difficult task filling.
Skippy likes to typewrite. Give him a machine and he'll play for hours. Serious play, in which he picks out his own thoughts on the keyboard with clever accuracy. When he gets through, he has something to offer. He admits that after he has done what he wants to do in football, and is through with acting, he might be a writer "when I'm no good for anything else much" as he naively puts it.
On the subject of girls, Skippy is rather reticent. But he admits to quite an attachment for little Mitzi Green, who is in "Skippy" with him. Jackie Searl, who is his pal in the cast, agrees to this general idea without reservation.