Child Stars of 1930s
by BatBanks | created - 16 Nov 2015 | updated - 05 Apr 2016 | PublicNot Particular Order.
1. Shirley Temple
Actress | The Little Colonel
Shirley Temple was easily the most popular and famous child star of all time. She got her start in the movies at the age of three and soon progressed to super stardom. Shirley could do it all: act, sing and dance and all at the age of five! Fans loved her as she was bright, bouncy and cheerful in ...
2. Judy Garland
Actress | The Wizard of Oz
One of the brightest, most tragic movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Era, Judy Garland was a much-loved character whose warmth and spirit, along with her rich and exuberant voice, kept theatre-goers entertained with an array of delightful musicals.
She was born Frances Ethel Gumm on 10 June 1922 in ...
3. Mickey Rooney
Actor | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Mickey Rooney was born Joe Yule Jr. on September 23, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. He first took the stage as a toddler in his parents vaudeville act at 17 months old. He made his first film appearance in 1926. The following year, he played the lead character in the first Mickey McGuire short film. ...
4. Jane Withers
Actress | Giant
During the early times of the Depression when life was more famine than feast, child stars became the blue plate special of the day, served up by Hollywood to help nourish a nation besieged with troubles. Following 20th Century-Fox monumental success with Shirley Temple in the early 1930s, every ...
5. Dickie Moore
Actor | Gabriel Over the White House
Dickie Moore made his acting and screen debut at the age of 18 months in the 1927 John Barrymore film The Beloved Rogue (1927) as a baby, and by the time he had turned 10 he was a popular child star and had appeared in 52 films. He continued as a child star for many more years, and became the ...
6. Marcia Mae Jones
Actress | The Way We Were
Marcia Mae Jones was born on August 1, 1924, into an acting family. Her mother, Freda Jones, was an actress, and all three of her siblings -- Margaret Jones, Macon Jones, and Marvin Jones -- were child actors. But Marcia Mae had the most successful career, and she was the only one of her siblings ...
7. Jackie Cooper
Actor | Superman
Jackie Cooper was born John Cooper in Los Angeles, California, to Mabel Leonard, an Italian-American stage pianist, and John Cooper. Through his mother, he was the nephew of actress Julie Leonard, screenwriter Jack Leonard, and (by marriage) director Norman Taurog. Jackie served with the Navy in ...
8. Deanna Durbin
Actress | It Started with Eve
The girl who one day would be known as "Winnipeg's Sweetheart" was born at Grace Hospital on December 4, 1921, as Edna Mae Durbin. In her early childhood there were no obvious signs that one day she would be a bigger box office attraction than Shirley Temple. Renamed Deanna Durbin for show business...
9. George 'Spanky' McFarland
Actor | Bedtime Worries
George 'Spanky' McFarland was born on October 2, 1928 in Dallas, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for Bedtime Worries (1933), Beginner's Luck (1935) and Second Childhood (1936). He was married to Paula Jeanne Wilkinson and Doris. He died on June 30, 1993 in Grapevine, Texas, USA.
10. Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer
Actor | Second Childhood
Carl Switzer was an American child actor, singer, dog breeder, and hunting guide from Paris, Illinois. He became famous for portraying Alfalfa in the film series "Our Gang" during the 1930s. His character was one of the most memorable characters ever portrayed in the series. Later in his career, ...
11. Sabu
Actor | The Thief of Bagdad
Sabu Dastagir (or Selar Shaik Sabu, depending on your resource) was born on January 27, 1924, in the little town of Mysore, India, which is nestled in the jungles of Karapur. The son of an elephant driver (mahout) in service for the Maharajah of his town, the young stable boy learned responsibility...
12. Scotty Beckett
Actor | A Date with Judy
Scotty Beckett was one of the cutest, most successful child actors of the 1930s and 1940s. His descent into a life of alcoholism, drugs, and crime remains one of the most tragic of Hollywood stories.
Born Scott Hastings Beckett on October 4, 1929, in Oakland, California, he and his family moved to ...
13. Freddie Bartholomew
Actor | Captains Courageous
One of the most popular child actors in film history, Child superstar Freddie Bartholomew was born Frederick Cecil Bartholomew in Harlesden, London, the son of Lilian May (Clarke) and Cecil Llewellyn Bartholomew. From age three, he grew up in the town of Warminster under the care of his father's ...
14. Sunny Jim McKeen
Actor | Brother for Sale
Young "Sunny Jim" McKeen was featured in 39 "Newlyweds and Their Baby" shorts in the late 1920s, then went on to make a series of six sound shorts on his own. A very blond little boy, he was a contemporary of the child actors such as Allen 'Farina' Hoskins and Jackie Cooper, Davey Lee and Shirley ...
15. Mitzi Green
Actress | The Marriage Playground
Mitzi Green, also known as Mitze Green, was born Elizabeth Keno in The Bronx on October 22, 1920. At age 3, she began appearing in her parents' vaudeville act. In the early 1930s, she starred in several popular films with Paramount Pictures, including Tom Sawyer (1930) and Huckleberry Finn (1931). ...
16. Jackie Coogan
Actor | Oliver Twist
Jackie Coogan was born into a family of vaudevillians; his father was a dancer and his mother had been a child star. On the stage by age 4, Jackie was touring at age 5 with his family in Los Angeles, California.
While performing on the stage, he was spotted by Charles Chaplin, who then and there ...
17. Edith Fellows
Actress | And So They Were Married
Edith Fellows was born on May 20, 1923, in Boston, Massachusetts. When she was a year old, she and her father and grandmother moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. As a toddler, Edith was pigeon-toed and had trouble walking, and one doctor suggested that dance lessons might cure this condition. At ...
18. Billy Halop
Actor | Angels with Dirty Faces
Billy Halop's show business career started on radio in the 1920s and carried over to stage work on Broadway. There, in 1937, he and other teenage cast members of the stage hit "Dead End" were brought to Hollywood by Samuel Goldwyn for the film version of the play, which was a tremendous hit. Halop ...
19. Raj Kapoor
Actor | Mera Naam Joker
Raj Kapoor was the son of well-known Indian actor Prithviraj Kapoor, who acted both in film and on stage. After apprenticing in the Bollywood production studios of the 1940's, at 24 years of age Raj Kapoor produced, directed and acted in Aag (1948), with his new company, RK Films. His next ...
20. Anne Shirley
Actress | Murder, My Sweet
They didn't come packaged any sweeter or lovelier than Anne Shirley, a gentle and gracious 1930s teen film actress who didn't quite reach the zenith of front-rank stardom and retired all too soon at age 26. On film as a toddler, she went through a small revolving door of marquee names before ...
21. Eugene 'Porky' Lee
Actor | The Awful Tooth
Eugene 'Porky' Lee was born on October 25, 1933 in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for The Awful Tooth (1938), Our Gang Follies of 1938 (1937) and Canned Fishing (1938). He died on October 16, 2005 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
22. Sidney Lumet
Director | 12 Angry Men
Sidney Lumet was a master of cinema, best known for his technical knowledge and his skill at getting first-rate performances from his actors -- and for shooting most of his films in his beloved New York. He made over 40 movies, often complex and emotional, but seldom overly sentimental. Although ...
23. Allen 'Farina' Hoskins
Actor | Love Business
Allen 'Farina' Hoskins was born on August 9, 1920 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Love Business (1931), Moan & Groan, Inc. (1929) and A Tough Winter (1930). He was married to Frances. He died on July 26, 1980 in Oakland, California, USA.
24. Dorothy DeBorba
Actress | Love Business
Dorothy DeBorba was born on March 28, 1925 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Love Business (1931), Dogs Is Dogs (1931) and The Stolen Jools (1931). She was married to Max Ferdinand Haberreiter. She died on June 2, 2010 in Walnut Creek, California, USA.
25. Billie 'Buckwheat' Thomas
Actor | Pay As You Exit
Billie Thomas was an African-American child actor who was best-known for appearing in the "Our Gang" film series from 1934 to its end in 1944.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Thomas auditioned for an "Our Gang" role when he was three years old. He was cast as a background player in the short films "...
26. Bonita Granville
Actress | Now, Voyager
Daughter of Bernard Granville, Bonita Granville was born into an acting family. It's not surprising that she herself became a child actor, first on the stage and, at the age of 9, debuting in movies in Westward Passage (1932). She was regularly cast as a naughty little girl, as in These Three (1936)...
27. Shirley Jean Rickert
Actress | 'Neath the Arizona Skies
Shirley Jean Rickert won a baby contest in Seattle when she was about 1-1/2 and her mother relocated the entire family to Hollywood, as she was sure she had a child star. Her first movie was How's My Baby? (1930) with Monte Collins and T. Roy Barnes. Shortly after that she went on an interview at ...
28. Norman 'Chubby' Chaney
Actor | Love Business
Norman 'Chubby' Chaney was born on October 18, 1914 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was an actor, known for Love Business (1931), Shivering Shakespeare (1930) and Pups Is Pups (1930). He died on May 29, 1936 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
29. Bobby 'Wheezer' Hutchins
Actor | Love Business
Robert E. Hutchins was born March 29th, 1925, in Tacoma, Washington. He was born to James Hutchins and Olga Hutchins (nee Roe). Robert was a very outgoing boy with a charming personality, because friends persuaded James and Olga to go to a Hollywood photographer and get his picture taken. The ...
30. Jean Darling
Actress | Jane Eyre
Having toured the world with husband, Kajar the Magician's Show 'Magicadabr', Jean Darling settled in Dublin and became an author of dozens of short mysteries for Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazines and Horror Fantasy for Whispers Magazine, etc. In 1980 she became Aunty ...
31. Virginia Gumm
Actress | The Wedding of Jack and Jill
Virginia Susanne Gumm was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, as Dorothy Virginia Gumm. She was an accomplished talented performer, an actress, known for La Fiesta de Santa Barbara (1935), The Wedding of Jack and Jill (1930), and The Harvey Girls (1946). She was a member of the Gumm Sisters, along ...
32. Dickie Jones
Soundtrack | Avengers: Age of Ultron
American actor who achieved some success as a child and as a young adult, especially in B-Westerns and in television. The son of a Texas newspaper editor. Jones was a accomplished horseman from infancy. At the age of four he was billed as the World's Youngest Trick Rider and Roper. At the age of ...
33. Darla Hood
Actress | The Bohemian Girl
Darla Hood was born in the small town of Leedey, Oklahoma on November 8, 1931. Hood began her association with "Our Gang" at the tender age of 2 1/2, as she stated on the The Jack Benny Program (1950). Her father, James Claude Hood Jr., a banker, and especially her mother, Elizabeth Davner Hood, ...
34. Frank Coghlan Jr.
Actor | Adventures of Captain Marvel
The son of a railroad clerk/pro boxer, Frank Coghlan Jr. was born in Connecticut and soon moved with his parents to California, where all three did extra work in silent pictures. Freckle-faced Coghlan was soon one of the era's most popular child actors, but with the advent of sound (and the ...
35. Mickey Kuhn
Actor | A Streetcar Named Desire
One of Hollywood's staple child actors during the 30s and 40s, Mickey Kuhn played alongside many a top Hollywood star from Leslie Howard and Conrad Nagel's son to playing Dick Tracy's ward. Once he reached the "awkward teens" stage, however, he found himself primarily unemployed or in unbilled ...
36. Donnie Dunagan
Actor | Son of Frankenstein
Born in Depression-era Texas, Donnie Dunagan moved with his parents to Memphis as a young child. There, as a three-year-old, he was taught to tap dance by a neighbor and entered in a talent contest at the Orpheum Theatre. Donnie won the $100 prize and caught the attention of a movie talent scout in...
37. Betty Driver
Actress | Coronation Street
Elizabeth Mary "Betty" Driver, MBE was a British actress and singer, best known for her role as Betty Williams (previously Betty Turpin) on the British soap opera, Coronation Street (1960) from 1969 to 2011, appearing in more than 2,800 episodes.
She had previously appeared as Mrs Edgley in ...
38. Billy Barty
Actor | Masters of the Universe
Billy Barty was born William John Bertanzetti on October 25, 1924 in Millsboro, Pennsylvania. He began performing at age three and began making pictures in 1927. He played Mickey Rooney's little brother in the "Mickey McGuire" comedy shorts series. He was equally adept in both comedy and drama, and...
39. Robert Blake
Actor | Lost Highway
American actor who began as a child in Our Gang comedies and reappeared as a powerful adult performer of leading and character roles. Born in New Jersey, the young Mickey Gubitosi won a role in MGM's Our Gang series at the age of 5. As one of the more prominent children in the Gang, he gained ...
40. Roddy McDowall
Actor | Fright Night
Roddy McDowall was born in Herne Hill, London, England, to Winifriede Lucinda (Corcoran), an Irish-born aspiring actress, and Thomas Andrew McDowall, a merchant seaman. Roddy was enrolled in elocution courses at age five and by ten had appeared in his first film, Murder in the Family (1938), ...
41. Matthew 'Stymie' Beard
Actor | Dogs Is Dogs
Matthew 'Stymie' Beard was born on January 1, 1925 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Dogs Is Dogs (1931), Love Business (1931) and Free Wheeling (1932). He was married to Annie. He died on January 8, 1981 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
42. Mary Ann Jackson
Actress | Love Business
Mary Ann Jackson was born on January 14, 1923. She was one of the earliest child stars of the twenties and thirties. Although she was better known as one of the child performers from the famed "Our Gang" comedies that are still popular today, Mary Ann began her film career at the age of four in ...
43. Cammie King Conlon
Actress | Gone with the Wind
Cammie King Conlon was born on August 5, 1934 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Gone with the Wind (1939), Change in the Wind (2010) and Living Famously (2002). She was married to Michael W. Conlon and Walter ''Ned'' Pollock. She died on September 1, 2010 in Fort Bragg,...
44. Sybil Jason
Actress | The Little Princess
Sybil Jacobson was born on November 23, 1929, in Cape Town, South Africa. By age 2 she had learned to play the piano, and she also demonstrated a remarkable talent for singing, dancing and mimicry. She moved to Great Britain as a small child, and by age 5 was singing, dancing, playing the piano or ...
45. Tommy Bond
Actor | Superman
Forever etched in our minds as the bully with the protruding lip who gave beloved Alfalfa plenty of angst in the "Our Gang" serial shorts, actor Tommy Bond was actually a gentle, benign soul off the set. Born Thomas Ross Bond on September 16, 1926, in Dallas, Texas, he was discovered by a Hal Roach...
46. Richard Selzer
Costume_department | Promises..... Promises!
Richard Selzer was born on August 29, 1922 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was an actor and costume designer, known for Promises..... Promises! (1963), Juvenile Court (1938) and Truck Turner (1974). He died on October 19, 2008 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
47. June Preston
Actress | Anne of Green Gables
June Preston was a Hollywood child star who went on to become a distinguished opera singer and, at the tender age of 24, toured with The Metropolitan Opera "Stars of the Metropolitan Opera" tour in 1952 in the lead role of "Mimi" in La Bohème opposite Metropolitan star, Jan Peerce as Adolfo. On the...
48. Virginia Weidler
Actress | The Philadelphia Story
Delightful child/juvenile actress Virginia Anna Adelaide Weidler (her friends called her "Ginny") had that knowing gleam in her eye that usually spelled trouble in one form or another for anyone nearby. She was born in Eagle Rock, California, in 1927, one of six children. Her mother was former ...
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