
After the popularity of my recent post about child star
Shirley Temple I thought I'd share another
vintage film star postcard with you here featuring yet another child actor -
Jackie Coogan. The film stills of him alongside Charlie Chaplin in
The Kid are some of cinema's most lasting and iconic images, whilst his later appearance as Uncle Fester in 62 episodes of the classic US TV show
The Addams Family in the 1960s assured his place in the annals of television history. He was also instrumental in helping to get the California Child Actor's Bill passed into law - it is also also known as the Coogan Act or Coogan Bill - which ensures that the earnings of child stars are safeguarded until they enter adulthood and cannot be squandered away by reckless parents or guardians (as indeed happened in the case of Coogan).
In this photograph Jackie Coogan is sporting his trademark pageboy haircut - he would be shorn of his locks in the 1927 movie
Johnny Get Your Hair Cut, in a clever gimmick used to both sell the movie and also mark the actor's growing maturity at the ripe old age of twelve!
The uncirculated
real photo postcard was issued by the Milan-based publisher A. Traldi (Ed. A. Traldi Milano). It is Traldi's lovely - and for the times, retro - Art Nouveau logo on the reverse of the card which also helps date it with some precision to 1929 at the latest, for their logo changed completely in 1930.
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