Jackie Coogan

Birth Name:

John Leslie Coogan

Birth Date:

October 26, 1914

Birth Place:

Los Angeles, California

Death Date:

March 1, 1984

Place of Death:

Santa Monica Hospital, Santa Monica, California

Age:

Cause of Death:

Heart failure

Cemetery Name:

Holy Cross Cemetery

Claim to Fame:

Show Business

Jackie Coogan was an actor and comedian who began his film career as a child actor in silent films. Coogan's role in Charlie Chaplin's film The Kid (1921) made him the first child star in the history of Hollywood. 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 6, in The Kid, which gave him immediate international fame and led to roles in such films as Peck’s Bad Boy (1921), My Boy (1921), Trouble (1922), Oliver Twist (1922), Daddy (1923), Circus Days (1923), Long Live the King (1923), A Boy of Flanders (1924), Little Robinson Crusoe (1924), Old Clothes (1925), The Bugle Call (1927), Tom Sawyer (1930), and Huckleberry Finn (1931). In 1923–24 he was making $22,000 a week and earning 60 percent of the profits from his pictures. It was estimated that he was paid $4 million dollars before the age of 21 (valued at approximately $50 million in 2024). Upon turning 21, when he inquired about his trust fund and found out that all but $100,000 was left as his mother and step-father used all his money for a lavish lifestyle. During World War II Coogan served in the U.S. Army Air Force. At the end of enlistment, Jackie went on to appears in dozens and dozens of television and movie appearances including Ozzie and Harriett, Cowboy G-Men, Peter Gunn, McKeever and the Colonel, Perry Mason, The Red Skelton Hour and, of course, as the iconic Uncle Fester in the Addams Family television series.

Fun and Not-So-Fun Facts

In 1935 he was the sole survivor of an auto accident in which his father and three others were killed. In 1938 he sued his mother and stepfather (his former business manager), only to learn that his parents had spent virtually all of his multimillion-dollar fortune. The larger result was that the California legislature enacted the Child Actors Bill, popularly called the “Coogan Law,” ensuring child movie actors such rights as having their contracts approved by the courts and their income governed by financial institutions.

In 1933, Jackie Coogan was a student at Santa Clara University and his fraternity brother and friend was Brooke Hart, the eldest son of Alexander Hart, the owner of the L. Hart & Son department store in downtown San Jose, California. Brooke Hart was kidnapped and subsequently murdered by two drifters Thomas Harold Thurmond and John M. Holmes. While the two murderers were being held in the local county jail, the townsfolk formed an angry, violent mob and stormed the jail and dragged the two men to St. James Park across from the Santa Clara County Jail, and their public lynching was broadcast as a “live” event by a Los Angeles radio station. It has been confirmed by several sources that Jackie Coogan wound and placed the hanging noose over the murderers necks.

Cemetery Information:

Final Resting Place:

Holy Cross Cemetery

5835 West Slauson Avenue

Culver City, California, 90230

USA

North America

Map:

Map of Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California

Grave Location:

Section F, Tier 56, Lot 47

Grave Location Description

As you drive through the cemetery entrance take a hard left and drive up towards The Grotto. Drive 50 feet past The Grotto on your left and park. Walk directly to your left into Section F approximately 150 feet into the center of the section. Because every single memorial looks identical it may take you a little bit of time to located the final resting place of actor Jackie Coogan.