Just this week a former Oscar nominated TV-star, and TV executive and director while amassing scores of acting credits, including playing Perry White in the four Christopher Reeve Superman films died this week. On Tuesday the former star died at the age of eighty eight in Santa Monica. Cooper was lucky enough to experience and enjoy a 60 year acting career. He was the most popular and widely recognized child star of the early 1930s and the first kid to shine in “talkies," until Shirely Temple. His pug nose, crinkly smile and pouty lip endeared him to a nationwide audience, first as Jackie in Hal Roach’s Our Gang comedies. This popular 1920s that depicted the story of neighborhood children and their adventures. It was also called the Little Rascals. Cooper was so popular as a child that he was referred to as the "American Boy." Jackie Cooper was born on September 15, 1922 in Los Angeles, he broke in as a bit player in silent films. Cooper acted in 15 Our Gang shorts between 1929 and 1931 His uncle, the director, Norman Taurog, cast him in the title role of Skippy, which was based on a comic strip. Cooper earned a best actor Academy Award nomination for the film. This was the the first time for a child actor to do so and still the youngest to receive an Oscar nomination for a leading role. These films were a great thing for Cooper. The films launched Cooper to stardom, and he went on to star opposite Wallace Beery in three films: The Champ, The Bowery, and Treasure Island. Like most child stars, Cooper hit a difficult period during adolescence, both professionally and personally. Due to age he was being replaced with younger child stars. Based on his experiences, Cooper later opposed children growing up as actors. None of his four children went on to perform. As a teen, he showed his maturity and acting skills in 1940’s Seventeen and gave an inspiring performance as a trumpeter in Syncopation before joining the Navy during World War II, where he was ranked as captain. After the war, Cooper found movie roles harder to come by, enduring such low-budget pictures as Stork Bites Man, Kilroy Was Here and French Leave. The experiences ruined his love for the acting, and he left Hollywood, touring in stock companies and performing on Broadway in New York. While in New York he also directed, produced, and starred in two series. For a period during the 1960s, Cooper thrived as a TV executive. He served as vice president of program development at Columbia Pictures Television. He began to direct episodic TV, and during the ’70s he was active in tackling tricky social issues like runaway teens. Based on his experiences, he couldn’t resist attacking the hypocrisy of show business. He returned to acting in the 1971 film The Love Machine, playing an obsequious and smarmy TV programming executive. He continued to direct for TV throughout the 1970s and ’80s, winning a pair of Emmys for M*A*S*H andThe White Shadow. He directed multiple episodes of those shows along with others. He also helmed two telefilms that centered on show business figures. Cooper was a man of the TV screen making not only appearances in his own shows, but others. He guested on dozens of TV series including Suspense, The Twilight Zone, Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, Columbo, The Rockford Files, St. Elsewhere and Murder, She Wrote. He was most recognizable to latter-day audiences for playing Daily Planet editor Perry White in the four Superman films starring Reeve from 1978-87. He also achieved a star on the Hollywood Walk of fame in 1960. He retired in 1989, and has lived a quite life, raising horses in San Diego. He was divorced twice. Once from June Horne, with whom he had a child, and Hildy Parks. In 1954, Cooper married Barbara Kraus, and the couple had three children. He is survived by two of this children. Jackie Cooper was a man to be remembered and had many great successes in his life. He went from child star, to famous executive and producer, all achieving great success. He was a man of many talents and his death is one that surprises and sadness us. However he will always be remembered and honored for his great impact on television.
May he rest in peace.
Love & Peace
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