"Naw, I ain't gonna be no actor when I grow up." Jackie Cooper squinted his eyes and stuck out his lower lip a la Chevalier. "Ya know last season I thought I'd like to be a football player, but baseball players are pretty swell. I don't know, though, it must be pretty nice to be a street-car conductor with all the nickles hanging on your stomack - but I guess when I get too old to act I'll be a writer!"
And, having covered a large territory of the various professions, Skippy in person lapsed into a monologue concerning his writings. He has a typewriter - and reams of copy. His prize composition concerns a "naviator and his girl and his pal. And when his pal is shot the naviator crys and his girl who is sittin' in another plane feels awful bad about the other naviator and tells her feller not to feel so bad 'cause the naviator will probably get better an' anyway its safer to be a street-car conductor."
Jackie's decided leaning toward the profession of the man in a blue suit who changes quarters in tokens has an undetermined cause. But he is adamant as regards eventually turning down the picture profession, perhaps because he firmly admits to not liking 'movie kids.' Mitzi Green, Jackie Searle and Robert Coogan are different. They do not come under this classification.
"Yuh know what one of 'em said to me?" he questioned - his lower lip doing another Chevalier. "He said, 'Jackie, was that a real tomahato you threw at Jackie Searle in "Skippy?"' I said, 'No, that wasn't a real tomahato - that was a real tomayto.'" And whether or not this incident turned his mind toward guns, a few minutes later he was displaying his supply of firearms. There was a professional looking holster with a realistic looking wooden gun. The belt was filled with empty cartridges. Another of his prizes consisted of machine-gun bullets.
"Have those things powder in them?" Jackie's grandmother inquired rather shakily.
"Sure," answered Jackie.
"They're going to be thrown out in the morning!"
"Aw, don't do that," Jackie begged. "Maybe I can sell 'em for 50 cents.
"Ya know I got three uncles," he rambled on, "and all of 'em sing!"
"Do you sing?" he was asked.
"Me?" he almost snorted. "Say, I pretty near strained a tonsil singing 'That's You Baby' in the Fox Movietone Follies. Yuh see, I spoiled my voice trying to sing like Bing Crosby. Don't you think he's a swell fellah?"
It was in the Fox Movietone Follies that Jackie made his screen debut. After that he was placed under a two-year contract to Hal Roach, and at a very nominal salary. When Paramount decided to borrow the youngster for "Skippy," Roach signed him for five years, making plain that, unless Jackie signed, he would not be allowed to go to the other lot.
But in the end Jackie prospered by the deal, since Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer took over his contract last week. Under the new provision he is to work forty weeks out of each fifty-two for two years. He is guaranteed $1300 a week for this period, which figures $104,000 or more than $50,000 a year. There are also three yearly options for forty weeks each at $2000, $2500 and $3000 a week. In addition Jackie received a bonus of $4000 on the transferring of his services from Hal Roach to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer."