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"All of This as a Child": Jackie Cooper Remembers Louis B. Mayer
From: Columbia University
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Columbia University Oral History Research Office |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
Jackie Cooper made his acting debut at just 3 years old. In the 1930s, he made more than 40 films, including Paramount's Skippy, which launched his career. In this excerpt from an interview with Columbia University's Oral History Research Office, Cooper reflects on his experiences on and off the set as a young star in 1930s Hollywood, and his memories of Louis B. Mayer in particular. |
Jackie Cooper reminisces about his career in the 1930s and Louis B. Mayer.
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Question: What I'd like to get at now is, back in the '30s, what it was like being a child star. What was your view of the studio? Did you meet Louis B. Mayer, for instance? |
 Cooper: Oh dear, I was on the yacht, oh yes, all those things ... |
Well, the word "decadence" has been tossed around an awful lot, but I think the '30s in motion pictures, and in Hollywood--well, naturally, like anyplace else, there were a lot of stable people out there, and a lot of unstable people out there. I've been in towns all over this country, and specially in the service, spent time in certain towns, and I find there are equally as many stable and unstable people, and as many divorces, as in Hollywood--except the Hollywood divorces and scandals get in the paper a lot more quickly than in someplace in Squigoswitch, Nebraska, or Gas-station, Nevada. |
In the '30s, as I began to grow out there in the business--oh, gee, what a balance--it's terrible. Because people just felt they had to have so much more than they needed. It's a lot different now; everybody's in business, everybody's concerned with taxes, and there aren't many people these days out there--or in many phases of show business--that are making $100,000 a year and letting it cost them twice that to live and getting deeper in debt. |
In those days, even as a boy, I watched some people that I knew were living way beyond their means. I remember the word "vacation" came up all the time. People thought: Gee, this is vacation, it's not going to last very long, and I'll go back to driving my truck or whatever. So they didn't learn their trade. The studio didn't ask them to learn their trade, they just worked them, and when that personality or that gimmick or whatever they had ran dry at the box office, they were dropped and out. This is what happened to many starlets and young male stars, and particularly former child actors. |
The swimming pool was important, the Cadillac was important, the best table at the Trocadero--I heard all of this as a child. Naturally, a lot of that era I've also read about. I wasn't as aware of it then, being so much younger than everybody else around, but I did see a good deal. I got all the treatment. I can remember, when we signed with Metro after Skippy, Metro bought my contract from Roach, where I'd been under contract to Our Gang, and there was much to-do with newspaper photographers the day of the signing of the contract, and then within a very short time we were on Mr. Mayer's yacht, going to Catalina, with some people that I'm sure I needed like Noah's ark needed homosexual dinosaurs. |
I ended up with Joan Crawford and Tallulah Bankhead and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and a bunch of people that I'm sure were frustrated also by my presence. I was 8 years old, and here I was with my mother, on this yacht, with nothing to do but boredom, and this trip lasted a week--going over there and staying and coming back. All I wanted to do was get ashore and pick shells off the sand, you know. But there again, I couldn't, because a crowd gathered, and I couldn't enjoy myself, and naturally my mother was afraid that if I was annoyed by the public, then I wouldn't be a nice boy, and would appear to be fresh and so forth. You can't blame the public. They never take this into consideration, because each one thinks it's the first time he's been bothered that day. Particularly with children. They're more apt to treat them like a little monkey anyway--"Isn't he cute? Look at this"--and they raise your chin up and muss your hair. Even children who aren't child actors don't care much for that sort of thing, and they don't like to be talked about. When you're playing on the floor with some little toy cars or something, it's always been a wonder to me--it's one of the reasons I wanted a lot of children, to treat them differently--it's always been a wonder to me why two people will sit there and talk about you while you're on the floor playing with this little toy car. You can be 8 or 9 years old and they talk about you as though you were a monkey and didn't really understand the language--"Isn't he cute? He did this today, did that today. He was a bad boy, did this and that"--as though you're not listening, as though you have no ears at all. |
I remember Mr. Mayer very well. He sort of liked to be the father--no, he liked to be treated like you thought he was Daddy, but he didn't treat you like Daddy at all. Number one, he was a very busy man, and number two--of course, I've read a lot more about him than I really know about him, but let's say this: I learned, at the age of 8, when Mr. Mayer came in the room, to pay a lot of respect. You learned a certain amount of fear, and that you damned well better say something nice today to Mr. Mayer, and thank him if he gave you so-and-so--and if you didn't, he let you know about it, too, even though you were 8 years old. |
Everybody on the lot--well, let's say there was a sort of thought-control process around there. There was great fear installed in the adults as well by the regime there. |
Q: Did you know Shirley Temple? |
Cooper: Well, of course I'm eight or nine years older. I was already in my teens by the time Shirley started to make it. Bonita Granville? Yes, of course. I didn't work with Bonita until I was 13--Bonita was in White Banners with me. I worked with Freddie Bartholomew also when I was 13. He's a year younger than I am. |
That was an interesting thing. At Metro they had a certain policy with all actors, not just child actors. For instance, they made The Champ with Wallace Beery in '31. They knew they had a hit on their hands. As soon as they released it, they saw it would make a lot of money; so then they'd turn around and put you in a very cheap picture, trying to reap the same rewards with a much smaller investment. Then before a lot of that was on people's tongues, and word of mouth could hurt you, they'd come out with a big picture again. |
For the child actor, it was difficult. It was for me, because in The Champ we had King Vidor, who had time and a big budget and money and great talent. Then they put me in a very inexpensive little picture, with a director who didn't know how to work with me, didn't have the time. Everybody was adequate, but nobody was of the caliber, artistically, of Mr. Vidor and the people connected with The Champ, even the cutters and everything. |
So whatever I might have started to learn at that age was all undone by the next director and next crew in the next cheap picture, because I was allowed to get away with murder. Then all of that would have to be undone when you worked with the good director again. |
Freddie Bartholomew did David Copperfield about 1934, and the studio used to threaten my mother with him, and even me. They'd say, "Now, if you're not better in this today, we're going to get Freddie Bartholomew." They set up this kind of competition, which isn't nice. Mickey Rooney they just sort of had hanging around, doing telegraph boys and one-line bits, at a minimum salary under contract. They put Freddie and Mickey and myself in a picture, and my contract was up, and they wanted me to resign at a very small salary. |
The play with the three of us was The Devil Is a Sissie--Freddie Bartholomew, Jackie Cooper and Mickey Rooney. The billing was in that order. They had big hopes for Freddie, and my contract was expiring. We were ending the sixth year, going into the seventh, and they figured at the end of the seventh, if I did anything, well, naturally they'd be over a barrel and have to give us what we asked for if they wanted me to stay. This picture hadn't been released. Mr. Mayer actually didn't want the picture made (the producer talked him into it), because it was about teenagers, early teenagers. We all played kids 13 years old, and Mr. Mayer felt that teenage was nothing but vulgarity and the public wouldn't look at it. There was nothing real about teenagers--nobody talked about them in those days, nobody did anything about them. |
So they asked my mother for me to resign. I was getting $2,000 a week then, and they wanted to start me at $250 a week, the following week, and have me stay there till I was 21--a little more than seven years--and then they would groom me for stardom, they said. I was to do all kinds of small parts, any little part. My mother said no, she thought there was a place for me in the business and some work. So we left there--and found immediately that nobody would hire me anyplace else. This was the thing they called in those days blackballing, and nobody would hire me, except Monogram Studios, who didn't care. They had nothing to do with the major studios, and they had about 11 studios around the country that they exhibited in, I guess. They took me. Their distribution must have amounted to about one-twentieth of that of Loew's Inc. |
So they used me in a picture. In this little picture I played a teenager who was starting to be a bad boy. It was true to life--getting mixed up with gangsters and so forth--and this picture that cost about $30 or something to make went out and made a fortune. Monogram of course wanted to sign me to a contract, and then that started a rash of things, such as Mickey Rooney in Andy Hardy and teenage pictures, pictures about teenage problems and so on. Of course, I could work then. The studios couldn't keep up the blackball. I guess it was rather lifted by the powers that be, because next thing I knew I was in a Deanna Durbin picture, and in White Banners and things like that. The teenager had been finally recognized by motion pictures. |
The picture I did with Monogram was Boy of the Streets. Actually, as I remember, it cost about $105,000 and made over three-quarters of a million dollars. They'd never done anything like this kind of business. |
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