Jackie Coogan Movies

Buttons was another mild entry in the ever-fading career of juvenile star Jackie Coogan. This is the story of a London slum boy who manages to land a job as a page on a luxury ocean liner. Performing above and beyond the call of duty, "Buttons" prevents leading lady Gertrude Olmstead from entering into a disastrous marriage with fortune-hunting Roy D'Arcy. Inevitably, the ship hits an iceberg, but while the passengers and the rest of the crew head for the lifeboats, "Buttons" loyally returns -- to go down with the ship with his best friend, the captain; fortunately, both are saved just before they sink beneath the waves. After completing Buttons, 13-year-old Jackie Coogan temporarily retired from films to enter military school; he would not be seen on screen again until 1930's Tom Sawyer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Internationally popular kiddie-star Jackie Coogan was rapidly outgrowing his cuteness when he starred in his 1927 vehicle Johnny Get Your Hair Cut. The title is predicated on the fact that Coogan's celebrated bangs are shorn in the course of the story. Outside of this "gimmick," however, the film is a pedestrian effort, in which orphaned Johnny O'Day (Coogan) is adopted by kindly racehorse owner Baxter Ryan (Maurice Costello). Johnny returns the favor by riding Ryan's horse to victory and by saving the life of his winsome stepsister. Johnny Get Your Hair Cut was "supervised" by Coogan's father, which probably meant that Jackie Sr. was paid a huge sum of money to stay home. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although Jackie Coogan is dressed up (or rather, down) for this comedy in much the same way he was for Charles Chaplin's The Kid, there are two big differences -- he's four years older than when he made the Chaplin film and starting to lose his childish charm. A fire breaks out at an orphanage in New York's Lower East Side, and young Tim Kelly (Coogan) escapes in his nightshirt. He hides from the cops by ducking into a junk wagon belonging to Max Ginsberg (Max Davidson). Ginsberg takes him in, and when Tim proves himself to be an excellent "rag man," the two become partners. Years before, Ginsberg had invented a type of sewing machine, but Bernard (Robert Edeson), a crooked lawyer, cheated him out of the patent. Tim tracks down the devious Bernard and makes him square things with Ginsberg. The two rag men, now incredibly wealthy, become New York's most exclusive antiques dealers. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

This so-so Jackie Coogan vehicle was based on the novel, A Dog of Flanders, by Ouida -- and the dog in the film, by the way, is the famed Mack Sennett canine, Teddy. When his mother and grandfather die, little Nello (Coogan) is left all alone in the Dutch village of St. Agneten. The only one who will befriend him is Alois (Jean Carpenter), the young daughter of Baas Cogez (Lionel Belmore), the richest man in the village. Cogez drives Nello away, and he is befriended by canine Petrasche (Teddy). When Cogez's barn burns to the ground, Nello is blamed. He is about to be sent to an orphanage when famed artist Jan Van Dullen (Josef Swickard) comes to town offering a prize for the best sketch done by a child. Nello enters the competition, but his drawing is overlooked and another child wins. The youngster gets lost in a snowstorm, but Van Dullen discovers his drawing and goes looking for him. Petrasche helps him find Nello, who is near death. Cogez comes to respect the lad, and Van Dullen adopts him. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Little Jackie Coogan, the most popular child star of his generation, once again played a poor but spunky ragamuffin in this lachrymose silent drama from independent producer Sol Lesser. Believing her husband to be unfaithful, Helene Savelli (Josie Sedgwick) takes her little son Jackie (Coogan) to live on the Holden farm. Helene dies shortly thereafter and Jackie runs away from home when the Holdens (Bert Woodruff and Anna Townsend) are forced into the poorhouse. In the Big City, Jackie befriends Gallo (Cesare Gravina), a sidewalk musician who just happens to be the former teacher of world famous violinist Paul Savelli (Arthur Edmund Carewe), Jackie's long-lost father. Before he dies, Gallo manages not only to reunite father and son but restore the farm to the kindhearted Holdens. A family affair, Daddy was "A Jackie Coogan Production," "personally supervised by Jack Coogan" and written by "Mrs. And Mrs. Jack Coogan." ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

One of the most accessible of Jackie Coogan's silent vehicles, My Boy is also one of his best and most representative. 7-year-old Coogan plays an orphaned immigrant who hides out from the immigration authorities in the shack of impoverished ex-sea captain Claude Gillingwater. At first, Gillingwater is resistant to Coogan's moppet charms, but before long they are as a close as father and son. The officials eventually catch up with Coogan, and the stage is set for a unhappy ending (even after seven decades this sequence will have you reaching for the Kleenex). Fortunately, Coogan's wealthy American grandmother decides to adopt both Jackie and lovable old Gillingwater. My Boy was "supervised" by Coogan's father, a set-up roughly comparable to the proprietary interest taken in recent years by the father of Macaulay Culkin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the ads for this comedy-drama, child-star Jackie Coogan looks almost exactly the same as he did in Charles Chaplin's The Kid. Here he's in an orphan asylum, desperately trying to keep his dog with him. Eventually he is adopted by a plumber (Wallace Beery) and his wife Gloria Hope). But this plumber isn't the lovable slob Beery later became in films like The Champ -- he's brutal and mean and neglects his work. Jackie, in fact, goes on a plumbing job in his adopted father's place and causes mayhem in the client's home. But instead of being angry, the woman gives the boy five dollars, which he takes home to his new mother. When the plumber takes the money from his wife and hits her, Jackie leaps into action and fights him. A policeman interferes and the plumber unleashes his wrath on him as well. The cop is saved only when Jackie drops a flower pot on the plumber's head. The plumber is arrested and sent to jail on Jackie's testimony, and the wife's parents come for her, taking the two of them off to a happier life on their farm.
~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

The Kid was Charles Chaplin's first self-produced and directed feature film; 1914's 6-reel Tillie's Punctured Romance was a Mack Sennett production in which Chaplin merely co-starred.

The story "with a smile and perhaps a tear," begins with unwed mother Edna Purviance leaving the Charity Hospital, babe in arms. Her burden is illustrated with a title card showing Christ bearing the cross. The father of the child is a poor artist who cares little for of his former lover, carelessly knocking her photo into his garret fireplace and cooly returning it there when he sees it is too badly damaged to keep. The mother sorrowfully leaves her baby in the back seat of a millionaire's limousine, with a note imploring whoever finds it to care for and love the child. But thieves steal the limo, and, upon discovering the baby, ditch the tot in an alleyway trash can. Enter Chaplin, out for his morning stroll, carefully selecting a choice cigarette butt from his well used tin. He stumbles upon the squalling infant and, after trying to palm it off on a lady with another baby in a carriage, decides to adopt the kid himself. Meanwhile Purviance has relented, but when she returns to the mansion and is told that the car has been stolen, she collapses in despair. Chaplin outfits his flat for the baby as best he can, using an old coffee pot with a nipple on the spout as a baby bottle and a cane chair with the seat cut out as a potty seat. Chaplin's attic apartment is a representation of the garret he had shared with his mother and brother in London, just as the slum neighborhood is a recreation of the ones he knew as a boy.

Five years later, Chaplin has become a glazier, while his adopted son (the remarkable Jackie Coogan) drums up business for his old man by cheerfully breaking windows in the neighborhood. Purviance meanwhile has become a world famous opera singer, still haunted by the memory of her child, who does charity work in the very slums in which he now lives. Ironically, she gives a toy dog to little Coogan. Chaplin and Coogan's close calls with the law and fights with street toughs are easily overcome, but when Coogan falls ill, the attending doctor learns of the illegal adoption and summons the Orphan Asylum social workers who try to separate Chaplin from his foster son. In one of the most moving scenes in all of Chaplin's films, Chaplin and Coogan try to fight the officials, but Chaplin is subdued by the cop they have summoned. Coogan is roughly thrown into the back of the Asylum van, pleading to the welfare official and to God not to be separated from his father. Chaplin, freeing himself from the cop, pursues the orphanage van over the rooftops and, descending into the back of the truck, dispatches the official and tearfully reunites with his "son". Returning to check on the sick boy, Purviance encounters the doctor and is shown the note which she had attached to her baby five years earlier. Chaplin and Coogan, not daring to return home, settle in a flophouse for the night. The proprietor sees a newspaper ad offering a reward for Coogan's return and kidnaps the sleeping boy. After hunting fruitlessly, a grieving Chaplin falls asleep on his tenement doorstep and dreams that he has been reunited with the boy in Heaven (that "flirtatious angel" is Lita Grey, later Chaplin's second wife). Woken from his dream by the cop, he is taken via limousine to Purviance's mansion where he is welcomed by Coogan and Purviance, presumably to stay.

Chaplin had difficulties getting The Kid produced. His inspiration, it is suggested was the death of his own first son, Norman Spencer Chaplin a few days after birth in 1919. His determination to make a serio-comic feature was challenged by First National who preferred two reel films, which were more quickly produced and released. Chaplin wisely gained his distributors' approval by inviting them to the studio, where he trotted out the delightful Coogan to entertain them. Chaplin's divorce case from his first wife Mildred Harris also played a part; fearing seizure of the negatives Chaplin and crew escaped to Salt Lake City and later to New York to complete the editing of the film. Chaplin's excellent and moving score for The Kid was composed in 1971 for a theatrical re-release, but used themes that Chaplin had composed in 1921. Chaplin re-edited the film somewhat for the re-release, cutting scenes that he felt were overly sentimental, such as Purviance's observing of a May-December wedding and her portrayal as a saint, outlined by a church's stained glass window. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide