After weeks on location and studio sets filming 'Sooky' (Paramount's sequel to 'Skippy'), the screen's littlest star and biggest sensation had been enjoying his first day's play. With football engaging his attention, the only time Jackie Cooper would spare for an interview was between dinner and his bed hour - 7:00 to 8:00.
Anxious to lose none of the brief audience granted, the reporter arrived before Jackie had appeased his small boy appetite. Meantime I surveyed his newly-leased Beverly Hills home, Spanish stucco with walled patio and eveything. Quite different from the homespun cottage near Venice where Jackie dwelt as boss of his neighborhood gang. But remember stars have to keep up a front in Hollywood! And when a fellow gets $1300 a week and is allowed $400 of that for living purposes, he can afford to put on style!
However, when I entered that formal living-room with its cold, white walls, Italian fireplace, red velour drapes, and carved Spanish furniture upholstered in brocade, I couldn't fit Jackie into it. Yet, queerly enough, his personality dominated the room. Under shaded lamps on the baby grand piano and the long refectory table back of the couch reposed framed photographs of the snub-nosed boy with the lower lip hanging out. His freckled face with the old-man look in it glowed under the lamplight, warming the entire atmosphere.
I sat studying the make-up of the screen's finest child actor since Jackie Coogan. Fellow players among his elders had told me of his wisdom, his inability to be fooled, his penetrating, quaint wit similar to Will Rogers. Said Irene Rich who played his mother in 'The Champ':
"That boy is an old, old soul. Somewhere he has lived before. He says the most amazing things; has a deep knowledge. When he comes up and puts his arms around you, you feel as though a great personality had bestowed something on you."
A Real Boy.
How great an actor Jackie Cooper is, however, I did not realize until he bounced into that living room - a boy clean through. His mouth was full, forehead swathed in an interesting bandage, above which stuck straight up his unwieldly shock of blonde hair.
"Good heavens, Jackie, what's the matter?" queried the reporter. "Have you been in a fight?"
"Naw. My Uncle Jack and I was boxing just now and I gotter big knot here. Gee, it hurts like all outdoors."
"Did you cry?"
"Me cry! For That! Say, they throw me 50 feet and I don't let out a peep. It hurts, too, even if I do have pads on."
"Jackie is talking football now. Miss Peak," said his other, who had come in just behind him - a very pretty young woman dressed in white flannel with hair as black as Jackie's is blonde, features as regular as Jackie's are irregular. Evidently the boy takes after his father who died when Jackie was a baby.
Mrs. Cooper sat in on the interview while the boy, munching the remainder of a cookie, climbed up in a big squashy chair, swung his chubby legs over the arm, and settled himself to endure what I can well imagine has become very tiresome to him since his arrival as a celebrity.
"Now, about this crying business, Jackie. If it takes so much to make you cry, I'd like to know how you did such a good job of it in 'The Champ.' Take that last scene, for instance - you had everybody in the Chinese Theater sobbing with you."
"You mean the dying scene?" he asked. I nodded.
"You didn't see me have a tear in my eye when I walked in that room, did you? Well, I got in there and I said to myself, 'Your father's gone. It's true.' You have to get down to a scene, see," he explained. "You can't let nothing else in your mind."
(His mother stirred and Jackie quickly corrected himself)
"You can't let anything else in. You have to believe it's true. 'He's the only fellow who would play with you. He's the only father you've got and he's gone.' I couldn't help crying."
Doesn't Read Notices.
"How did you like what the critics said about 'The Champ?' I asked the star who shared honors with Wallace Berry.
"I didn't read 'em; I didn't have time. I was working then."
"Jackie," remarked his mother, re-entering the room. "Didn't you read any of those reviews I put on your table?"
"Oh, maybe a few headlines. They said 'Cooper bring tears to your eyes.' 'Cooper does fine work.' It was very nice of the press to have done it, but I thought they oughtter said something more about Wally, too,"
"Mr. Beery is your hero, isn't he?"
"You mean he saved me or something?"
"No, no. I mean somebody you admire or like best."
"I like my mother best."
"Of course," smiled Mrs. Cooper. "But you know you worship Wallace Berry, King Vidor and Richard Dix."
Jackie dug his hand into his supply of spitballs.
"Sure. When I finished that picture with Richard Dix, I guess I wrote him as many as five letters and he never replied to a one."
"Dix was about to get married then, Jackie," I comforted. "Maybe he was too busy reading and writing love letters."
"Well, he could have written a kid." His famous lower lip quivered. Then as quickly the boy brightened."
"Wally and I had a fine time talking about airplanes. He wanted to take me flying, but I says, 'I'd love to, Wally, but Mr. Mayer has it in mmy contract I can't do that!' He offered to give ma a shoot (parachute Jackie meant) and let me test it first - jump off the table and everything. But you see I couldn't break my contract. - It was great at Caliente when we were shooting the horse race."
"Was that a real horse race?" I asked.
"I'll say it was! I got on that camera carriage that was going 50 miles an hour keeping up with those horses - you know they just shoved the camera right in the race, and I came pretty near falling off."
"Did you have to get on that camera carriage?"
"No. I just wanted to. It was exciting."
Hates to Get Up Early.
(It is easy to see why Mr. Mayer would keep Jackie out of an airplane).
"Caliente was the finest place I ever worked. I used to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and walk around looking at everything before I had to go on the set."
"Don't you get tired working, Jackie?" I asked.
"Oh, sometimes, when it isn't very interesting. What I don't like about it is having to get up at 6:30 in the morning. I'm the kind of boy that likes to sleep till 8:30."
"What are your favorite foods, Mr. Cooper?"
"Spinach," he said to my amazement, and to convince me he wasn't kidding me: "I had it for dinner tonight. The other children laugh at me but I don't care. I love spinach."
"He likes wholesome food," said his mother, "bread and steak and potatoes. At lunch he called for steak and bread so often at M-G-M Cafe they have named it the 'Jackie Cooper Steak Sandwich' after him."
The interview began to pall on Jackie, squirming in his chair.
"Will you excuse me?" he asked. And he was halfway up the steps when his mother said, "Wait a minute, Jackie, Where are you going?"
"Aw, I'm coming back" he replied in a disgusted tone of voice.
"Jackie must have something to tell his idol, my brother Jack," explained Mrs. Cooper. "They are great buddies."
While Jackie was upstairs, I asked Mrs. Cooper whether he realized how much money he was making and what a famous little person he had become.
"All he realizes is that he can have a lot of things he couldn't have before," she said. "He has a room of his own for the first time. We had a small house and Jackie and his uncle always roomed together. He takes the greatest pride in his room, puts his shoes in shoe trees, and carefully hangs up his clothes."
"Does he care about clothes?"
"He likes new things but he doesn't want anything babyish looking. The night of the premiere, I had a very hard time getting Jackie to pin a gardenia in his buttonhole. He said he didn't want to go out there looking like a sissy."
"How long have you know Jackie was an actor?"
"Ever since he was two years old. He began then doing anything to get a laugh. He has marked musical talent, too - a marvelous sense of rhythm. His father had a German foundation of music; he was well grounded."
"Jackie's father died when he was a little more than 2 years old. From that time on, he got in the habit of talking to God when he said his prayers at night - the chief subject of discussion being his lack of a father. When I saw Jackie do that scene in 'Skippy' where he throws himself on the bed and talks to God, I couldn't hold back my tears because I remembered the times he has said to God: 'Why is it I can't have a daddy like the other guys, Father? Gee, that's about the only thing I really do want. I know you can't bother with everyone, but I don't think it's right for me not to have a daddy, 'cause you know I don't ask for many things.' I was working in a music store when I met my husband, Johnny Cooper, a former vaudeville player. Jackie was almost born in that music store, and two months after his birth I was back on my job. Later, I went to the vaudeville stage as accompanist and would have gone to Europe but for the fact that it meant being too far away from the boy. My mother took care of him. When I came back I got a job at Fox Studio playing on sets - organ atmosphere, and then when the talkies came in, I was put in the music department.
His First Test.
"They were casting for the Fox Movietone Follies. Buddy deSylva and Lew Brown had tested about 200 children for a little song and dance act. None of them would do. I thought Jackie could sing that song, so I telephoned my mother to bring him over to the studio. I didn't let on he was my child and I told Jackie not to pay any attention to me.
"When they stood him up in that lot of children and asked me to play his accompaniment, I was so nervous I didn't know what to do. As soon as Jackie finished, Lew Brown said, 'There's the kid. I don't want to hear any more.'
"The next day I went into the projection room to see the test. You can imagine my excitement when I heard the executives scream with laughter as soon as the lower lip hanging down flashed on the screen. Still I didn't tell anyone at the studio he was my son. Jackie was known as Jack Leonard, my maiden name. A few days after they signed my boy to do the little part, Buddy deSylva saw a picture of Jackie on my desk. 'Why, there's that boy in the Follies,' he said. When I told him he was my son, he said, 'Why didn't you tell us?'
"Lew Brown took one of the Roach executives to see the preview of the picture, telling him there was a great kid he ought to have in 'Our Gang.' He was very much impressed and asked me to bring Jackie to Roach for an interview. The result was, after Jackie had done a little part in 'Sunny Side Up,' Roach signed him for 'Our Gang.'
"They paid Jackie $100 a week when he worked, $50 when he didn't. I kept my job at Fox, my mother taking Jackie to the studio every day. Paramount borrowed him to do 'Skippy.' You know the rest. M-G-M bought his contract from Roach and now is paying him $1300 a week. $900 of this goes in trust."
"Did Jackie have an agent?"
"Yes. But we paid the agent $10,000 cash to release him. Now I am his business manager and his secretary. He pays me $75 a week. His grandmother takes him to the studio every day, and he pays her $75. My mother married when she was 15. She never had any young life. Going around the studios has made a new woman of her. She has gone today for the first time in years for a holiday with some friends."
Attends Show With Miss Peak.
Down the steps clattered the feet of the child who was making life easy for two "mothers" who had worked so hard for him. He flung himself in his mother's lap, and with another "Excuse me," whispered something in her ear.
"No. No. Jackie, not tonight," replied his mother.
"But you promised." His voice faltered.
"I know, but something has come up and mother has to go out."
Whereupon the little boy who boasted that he never cried when they threw him 50 feet in a football game, flung himself in the nearest chair and blubbered like any other small boy crossed in his heart's desire.
"You are a mean mother," he said. "You won't take me anywhere. You keep on making promises and making promises and breaking them."
"My goodness, Jackie," said I. "What's this all about?"
"Mother promised to take me to a show tonight and now she won't do it."
"Allow me, Mr. Cooper," said I. "I'd adore treating you to a show."
"But I'll bet what I want to see you've already seen," he insisted, martyr-like. "What I want to see is 'The Cisco Kid'."
A month before I had seen Warner Baxter in this picture in the projection room at Fox Studio, but I didn't let on. Before you could say "Jack Robinson," Jackie, all sunshine again, was upstairs and back, wearing a blue reefer coat and a blue beret pulled down over his hair. The bandage was gone; I could see nary a bump on Jackie's forehead.
"Have you got any money?" inquired Mrs. Cooper.
"Sure," said Jackie, pulling a wallet out of his pocket and displaying two $1 dollar bills. "I still got that money, too, I won betting on location. That's where I make most of my money," he explained to me. "I bet the director I can do scenes the first time. While were at Arrowhead on 'Sooky,' I won 'most $5."
Hand in hand we went down the walk to the waiting studio car which had taken me over for the interview. Jackie gallantly helped me in, and then climbed in the seat beside me.
"To the Beverly Theater, James," we ordered, rolling off in great style.
Likes Warner Baxter.
En route, Jackie seemed to have left his small boy ways behind. Chatting affably, he informed me that he didn't think the "Cisco Kid" could be as good as "Old Arizona," but anyhow he was very fond of Warner Baxter.
Arriving at the theater, he scrambled down and helped me out. We walked up to the box office.
"Who's paying for this?" he asked.
"I am, of course. Isn't it my treat?"
"Well," agreed Jackie, "Don't get a divan. They cost more and I like the little seats better."
(Naturally. Jackie couldn't have seen over the top of one of the leather loge seats.)
Inside every neck was craned as my escort and I walked down the aisle. Jackie saying, "Let's go 'way down front. Don't you like that best?"
The screen is a blur to me the nearer I get to it, but this was Jackie's night. We sat three rows from the front. No longer was I the reporter and Jackie the movie star. Despite the fact that several years of his young life have been spent behind the scenes and in front of a camera, it seemed as rare a treat to Jackie as to a child permitted to go to the movies once in a while. Down went his chin on his hand. He was absorbed. Every now and then he would make some telling comment of an older head or ask a childish question. In the scene where the Cisco Kid visits his sweetheart shortly before he robs the bank, Jackie nudged me.
"Does she know he's bad?"
"Yes," I whispered back. 'She's one of the few who do know it."
"What does she love him for, then?"
"Some women are that way, Jackie."
He was busy thinking this over when the guns began firing. They were shooting at the Cisco Kid. His Spanish sweetheart rushes out and apparently is shot. She falls to the ground. Everyone rushes up to see if she is dead.
Jackie wasn't fazed. Loudly he reassured me. "Don't worry. She ain't dead. She's just making believe so the Cisco Kid can get away."
And sure enough, that is precisely what happened.
We had promised to be outside at half-past nine when Uncle Jack was to pick us up, but I couldn't budge that youngster until the last newsreel had been run off. Even as we started up the aisle when the Yale game was again being flashed on the screen. Jackie hung back, explaining certain points of the scrimmage.
He rode with me down to the Studio Club, making a manly effort to keep his eyes open and the conversation going. When Uncle Jack (a young man about 20 who has a position at M-G-M Studio) asked me where he could get a certain kind of dictionary, Jackie spoke up and said "I got one. It has a lot of words in it like fathoms which tells you how many feet."
"Say, Boy," teased Uncle Jack, "you'd better keep quiet after you used that big word 'turmoil' the other night."
By the time we reached the Hollywood Studio Club, the screen's littlest star was dead on his feet. To show what stuff he is made of, however, he stiffly got down from his seat, took me to the door and tottered back to the roadster. I dare say the sandman best him home.