Hollywood, Sept. 23.
St. Louis movie customers have never seen Jackie Cooper in person - few people outside of Los Angeles ever have - but they know him well from the manner in which he made a celluloid being out of Percy Crosby's Post-Dispatch cartoons, "Skippy." I saw the youngster on the lot at the M. G. M. studio the other day where he was playing with a toy airplane and pointing out that it was a model of the one flown by his best friend, Wallace Beery. He is hard to interview. He doesn't want to talk about himself or his pictures or about anything connected with the films. As a matter of fact, he doesn't want to talk at all, but if you have anything to say about airplanes or trains or baseball players he is a good listener.
When a film star is young, he doesn't get blase like his older brethen in fame. Life holds more of a kick for him because, when everything is new to one on the threshold of life, there is infinite variety to everything.
When they told Jackie he was to go on location to San Diego and Caliente for scenes in "The Champ," in which he and Beery were being co-featured, he was more elated than Wally, though he didn't know one-hundredth of the attractions the region below the border holds for older people.
"I get a kick out of it because I'll have a chance to sleep all night on a train - for the first time in my life," Jackie told me.
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The eight-year-old movie star isn't precocious, though one would expect a youngster, surrounded by adulation, so to be. In fact, he's rather naive about everything. Fame came to him so quickly he hasn't realized it - and, in fact, he doesn't know exactly what fame is, anyhow. He'd rather have an ice cream cone.
Athletic sports are his hobby. Intensely active, he immediately turns to anything that involves motion - particularly motion on his part. A punching bag on the set intrigued him for days. One of the stage hands put on gloves and played at boxing with him. He idolizes that stage hand. Wallace Beery he thinks is greater than the President - because Wally flies that big plane.
They are an ideal combination in a picture, because Wally adores children, and never gets tired of playing with Jackie. Sometimes he even teaches Jackie things to go home and say to shock Jackie's mother - and when results are reported he laughs prodigiously.
Jackie probably came by the histrionic talent he has - and it's real talent - through heredity. His mother was a vaudeville star. His uncle is Norman Taurog, a well-known director. So it seems that a strain of acting ability runs in the family.
Anyhow, back in 1928, when a youngster was wanted in a Lloyd Hamilton comedy at Educational, Jackie was given the job. It was a small bit. There was no fanfare of trumpets over it. Jackie discovered that work before the camera was more or less serious, though he had plenty of opportunity for play.
He learned all the lessons youngsters do on a set - to leave the "props" severely alone, for instance, never fool with cameras or electric wires, and so on. He was a seasoned little trouper by the time he's appeared in the Movietone Follies, in "Sunnyside Up," and then went into "Our Gang" comedies.
Finally came "Skippy" and launched him to fame overnight. "Donovan's Kid," "His First Seven Years" and a few others are on his list of appearances, but it was "Skippy" that made him the idol of fans young and old. Followed his new contract and "The Champ." Jackie's "all set" in pictures now.
There is a fly in every ointment. He has to go to school even on the set - for a teacher is always in attendance to coach him between scenes, just like other movie children.
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He has to battle with geography, which he hates. "Don't see why I have to learn it when I don't want to go any place," he avers. The multiplication tables were a bugbear to him, until Wally Beery undertook a little practical teaching on his own account. Jackie is crazy over airplanes."Think of planes," instructed Wally. "Suppose you see four in the air. Now imagine there are three times that many - how many?"
The airplane method taught Jackie his tables in no time at all.
Jackie isn't what one would call a pretty child. He is rather stocky, sandy haired, with light brown eyes, a round face and a ruddy complexion. But there is a something about him one remembers - that indefinite something that makes character actors. Beery has it. Lon Chaney had it. It's not appearances, nor exactly personality. It's hard to define.
He was born in Los Angeles. Hasn't traveled, doesn't like piano lessons, likes to read, particularly adventure stories, and is ahead of his grades in reading. Arithmetic is his downfall - he has to study hard to keep up in that.
He likes to make things with his hands, play with tools, and when he gets into manual training school he'll be a happy boy. He loves to follow electricians on the set and watch them work, or sit in a projection room and watch the machinery.
He's crazy over dogs and horses. Wanted his mother to buy him a colt he took a fancy to in Caliente. But they couldn't keep a horse in the back yard, so that was out.
He isn't allowed to drive a car, but is allowed to get behind the wheel and step on the starter. This is sheer bliss to Jackie. He likes baseball and football but thinks aviation is the most wonderful thing in the world, and isn't decided whether he wants to be an actor or a writer when he grows up.
He falls naturally into acting. King Vidor, his director in his most complicated role to date, had merely to explain the meaning of a scene to him until he "got" it, and then Jackie naturally did the rest.
"I just try to think like the fellow the director is telling me about," is how he explains acting. Many an older actor hasn't to this day learned that important idea.
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He has the fitness of things figured out perfectly. For instance, Edward Brophy, the company production manager, was also acting a part. Brophy tried to give Jackie a call when he was in makeup.
"Listen - when you're in plain clothes you're the production manager and can boss me - but when you're in costume you're just another actor," said Jackie.
Wallace Beery remarked the day I saw him that it was about lunch time. Jackie looked at his watch.
"It's only half past eleven - your stomach is quicker than the clock today," rebuked Jackie.
All in all, Jackie is just a typical American boy - and because he doesn't know what film fame and all that means, it hasn't a chance to spoil him.