Peggy-Jean Montgomery was in her second year of a $1.5 million ($23 million in 2022) contract with Universal Studios as well as a sideline job paying her $300 per day in vaudeville. She was one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood during that time based on her enormous appeal with the movie public. Just three years after appearing in her first film, 'Playmates,' in 1921, Peggy-Jean was taking the nation by storm.
What's remarkable about her odyssey is that when she made October 1924's "Helen's Babies" with Clara Bow, she was a mere five-years old. Going by her stage name, Baby Peggy, she had appeared in over 150 films, most of them money makers. "Helen's Babies," based on a John Habberton 1878 novel of the same name, has Peggy along with her sister, Budge (Jeanne Carpenter), being babysat by Harry Burton (Edward Everett Horton), author of a best selling book on how to raise children. He agrees to watch the kids so his sister and hubby can go on a well-deserved vacation. Trouble is, Uncle Harry doesn't like kids and knows next to nothing about them. The book was pure bunk that its publisher knew would sell a lot of copies.
Naturally, Baby Peggy and Budge cause havoc with Uncle Harry, making his life miserable. He's saved by Peggy's family next door neighbor, Alice Mayton (Clara Bow), who's so attractive that the bachelor Harry falls for her. For budding actress Clara Bow, she was super busy making two other films at the same time as "Helen's Babies." She became so confused as to what picture she was showing up in that she arrived on set with the wrong wig on for her role as Alice. Director Edward Cline, the noted comedy film director for Buster Keaton and W. C. Fields, was forced to delay production while Bow went back to get the proper wig fitted.
With all the money she made in movies and on the stage, Peggy should have enjoyed the fruits of her labors. However, her parents, Baby Peggy's financial handers, were proliferate and careless spenders, draining her hard-earned millions. The 1929 stock market crash placed the family in financial straits where the parents resorted to food coupons from the Motion Picture Relief Fund. Baby Peggy received a high school degree and ran away from home in 1935. Her marriage to bartender Gordon Ayres in 1938 was equally awash in poverty as newspaper columnist Walter Winchell discovered in 1940, finding the pair in a small New York City studio with only doughnuts to eat.
Wanting to get a complete break from Baby Peggy, she adopted the first name Diana and took her artist second husband's last name, Cary, when they married in 1954. She eventually accepted being the former childhood actress, writing several books on her personal experiences and the movie industry. In addition, she became a film historian, giving lectures around the country about the era of silent movies and the personalities during that remarkable time. In February 24, 2020, at the age of 101, she passed away, marking Baby Peggy as the last star of the silent movie generation and closing a unique chapter in cinema.