The movies' youngest leading lady gave her first interview today.
Sitting straight in her little red plush fireside chair in her own star dressing room at the Hal Roach studio, and holding in her arms her very own doll, "Laurie Ann," flaxen-curled Jean Darling, three-year-old new "leading lady" of "Our Gang," told what she thinks of motion pictures, literature and life in general.
Starting in with the movies, Jean admitted she likes to act, doesn't worry much over the future of the film industry, and if motion pictures are still in their infancy, she thinks that is the most delightful state in which to make their acquaintance.
Jean's last picture was one in which she played the part of juvenile nurse to a still tinier baby.
She clapped her hands as she thought about it, and joyously proclaimed that she liked the picture best of all.
"The little baby was so sweet," she said, clinging to the last word like it was a stick of taffy.
Acting may be work for grown folk, but for Jean it is just the most fun ever, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she was restrained from going out onto the set which, she was assured, had all been taken away. She will start on a new picture Monday, having finished the last one early in the week.
Jean's principal ambitions are two, to secure a little rocking chair for her dressing room in addition to the straight red plush one, and to possess a real, live kitten.
She has been asking for the kitten in her prayers every night for several weeks, but the rocking chair wish, according to her mother, Dorothy Hamilton, is of more recent origin.
Her favorites in the "Gang" are Jackie Condon and the plump Joey Cobb.
And she keeps fit, so the interviewer gained, by turning somersaults and handsprings on the floor in her dressing room.
This art is a recently acquired one, presumably from the slender Jackie Condon rather than the more corpulent Joey Cobb.
Other occupations are tenderly mothering the somewhat worn "Laurie Ann" to the exclusion of a gigantic new teddy bear which decorates the cabinet on one side of the dressing room, sewing designs on pasteboard cards with brightly colored thread, and engaging in lengthy conversations with grownups about the lot.
Jean is pretty nearly a general favorite with actors, officials, and the heads of the big Roach organization, but her preference is said to be for the gate keepers and the janitor, with whom she is frequently seen.
If the Roach studio likes Jean, the admiration is mutual. Ever since her first picture with the "Gang" as a little extra girl, merely to walk past the big mission style studio building has been to break into dancing and handclapping.
"Happy cakes, happy cakes, there's Roach's" is Jean's greeting.