LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Jackie Coogan: Charlie Chaplin
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Above: Perhaps you remember Jackie Coogan (1914-1984) as "Uncle Fester" on "The Addams Family" television program. At the time he showed up in the WMAQ studios in the La Salle Hotel in 1923, he was Hollywood's highest paid child actor, thanks to his appearance two years early with Charlie Chaplin in "The Kid". WMAQ engineer Donald Weller later recalled that Coogan had not the slightest bit of the "mic fright" that often plagued his elders in the early days of radio.
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As a child star, Coogan earned as much as $4 million, but the money was taken by his mother Lilian and stepfather Arthur Bernstein for cocaine and heroin. He sued them in 1935, but only received $126,000. When Coogan fell on hard times, Chaplin gave him some financial support.
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The son of a vaudevillian and an actress, Coogan appeared in his first film, Skinner's Baby (1916), when he was 18 months old. Charlie Chaplin later noticed him in a stage act and featured him, aged…
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While Chaplin was still upset about missing the opportunity, he was told that Arbuckle had actually signed Coogan's father, Jack Coogan Sr., not the little boy. Chaplin called Coogan Sr., and asked if his son was available for a film. He was, and Chaplin immediately started to work on "The Kid," his first feature-length film.
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The resulting feature, The Kid, was one of the great successes of silent cinema, cementing Chaplin’s reputation as the screen’s most popular artist, and establishing Coogan as the pre-eminent child star of the era. It is not Chaplin’s masterpiece - that honor is divided in critical consensus between The Gold Rush (1925) and City Lights (1931) - yet this film has retained its appeal to audiences of all age groups.
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