Some people are just born to be stars. Jackie Coogan was one of those people. The son of a vaudeville dancer and actor and an actress who had known stardom as a child on the stage, Coogan was one of the original child film stars.

By the age of four, he was performing on stage alongside his father. Charlie Chaplin gained knowledge of Coogan’s talent and saw him perform, then invited him to star alongside him in the 1921 silent film, The Kid. Chaplin played his popular tramp character who attempts to rescue a street urchin, played by Coogan, from a life on the streets. The film was a great success and Coogan went on to become the biggest child star of the 1920s. He was heavily promoted, with pictures of him in different poses and places all over the world in every magazine.

Towards the end of the Roaring Twenties, Coogan was growing up, but his career seemed to be winding down. By age thirteen, his popularity began to wane to new child stars for whom he paved the way. He tried out “talkies” with starring roles as famous American child heroes in Tom Sawyer (1930) and Huckleberry Finn (1931), but they were not as popular as his silent films from his younger days.

Unfortunately, at about this time, Coogan’s parents divorced. His mother remarried a man named Arthur Bernstein, who became Coogan’s business manager. Just a few years later, Coogan was in a terrible automobile accident with his father and his best friend, of which he was the only survivor.

Naturally, as Coogan matured, he wanted and needed access to the money he had made as a child. Over the course of his career as a child star, he had made nearly $4 million, but his stepfather-manager and his mother refused to give Coogan his money. At the time, California law gave parents the rights to their child’s earnings. Coogan took his mother and stepfather to court, but was awarded only $126,000 of the millions. This case led California legislature to pass the Child Actors Bill, or the “Coogan Act,” which sets up a trust fund for child actors so that their earnings are safe.

Coogan was not only a new kind of child actor, but he even helped to have legislation passed which gives children the ability to be stars in their own right. Where would today’s young superstars like Mylie Cyrus (Hannah Montana) and Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) be without Jackie Coogan?

And Mylie Cyrus can thank him for all of the t-shirts, bookbags, and posters that bare her character’s name, as Coogan was also one of the first stars to be merchandised. His name and image endorsed tons of products, especially those geared towards kids. Today, that merchandise are hot collectibles, as they are indeed a piece of Hollywood history. For example, Geppi’s Entertainment has a Jackie Coogan peanut butter tin available for immediate sale through their Hake’s Americana and Collectibles division. It features six different images of Coogan in different roles, including his character from The Kid. You can check it out at www.hakes.com, where they have all kinds of hard-to-find collectibles on sale right now! They add new stuff every week, so be sure to check back often!