There have been a million child actors, and many of them went on to achieve lasting success, but no one ever did it like Jackie Coogan.


In 1921, at the age of six, he co-starred with the greatest film star of that era in the top-earning film of the year. In the following years he made film after film and became a huge star in his own right.


As his childhood drew to a close, he did a beautiful thing which helped make the world a better and safer place for future generations of child actors: He sued his parents.


Actually it was his mother and stepfather. His biological father was cool. But Mom and the wicked stepdad blew all his money. It was about $50 million in 2022 dollars. He won the lawsuit, but there was only a little over a hundred grand left. Public sympathy for his plight led to the passage of laws to protect the earnings of child actors from being misappropriated.


As an adult, Jackie married Betty Grable. Perhaps there are people nowadays who have not heard of Betty Grable, so, for their benefit, let me just tell you about her. She was hot, like, super-hot. One of her claims to fame was that military personnel serving overseas in the second world war would as a matter of routine display posters of her in a bathing suit standing with her back to the viewer. Jackie basically married every soldier's sexual fantasy.



He was one of those soldiers, too. He flew gliders. Let me explain about that, because it's kind of amazing. A combat glider has no motor. It is towed aloft by a bigger plane and then let go. At that point the glider, heavily loaded with troops, weapons, and sometimes even vehicles, was supposed to float down behind enemy lines. It was…chancy. Courage bordering on lunacy. Trying to land one of those was a bit like trying to land a brick, and if something went wrong, there was no going around for a second try.



After the war, acting roles were plentiful. He was no longer as cute as he was when he was six, but still kind of cute, and anyway if you're a great actor cuteness is not absolutely necessary. He ended up being in over 150 movies and TV shows. Here he is, somewhat randomly, in the Brady Bunch.



And he was Uncle Fester. To me, that's the clincher.



If you can be a child star (the biggest of the decade), and then as a grownup marry the sexiest woman alive, and later on become a war hero, and then cap it all off by being Uncle Fester, well, what can I say. No one can ever possibly top that.


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