Early Life and Early Career
Coogan was born in 1914 in Los Angeles, California, to John Henry Coogan, Jr., and Lillian Rita (Dolliver) Coogan, as John Leslie Coogan. He began performing as an infant in both vaudeville and film, with an uncredited role in the 1917 film Skinner's Baby. Charlie Chaplin discovered him in the Orpheum Theatre, Los Angeles, a vaudeville house, doing the shimmy, a popular dance at the time, on the stage. Coogan's father was also an actor. Jackie Coogan was a natural mimic and delighted Chaplin with his abilities. Chaplin subsequently cast him in a brief role in his short film A Day's Pleasure, made in 1919.
He is best remembered as a child actor for his role as Chaplin's irascible sidekick in the film classic The Kid (1921) and for the title role in Oliver Twist, directed by Frank Lloyd, the following year. He was one of the first stars to be heavily merchandised, with peanut butter, stationery, whistles, dolls, records, and figurines as some of Coogan merchandise offered. He traveled internationally, being greeted by huge crowds. Many of his early films are lost or unavailable.
Coogan was tutored until the age of ten, when he entered Urban Military Academy and other prep schools. He attended several colleges, as well as the University of Southern California. In 1932 he dropped out of Santa Clara University because of poor grades.
In November 1933, Brooke Hart, a close friend of Coogan's from Santa Clara University, was kidnapped from his family-owned department store in San Jose and brought to the San Francisco area San Mateo - Hayward Bridge. After several demands for a $40,000 ransom, police arrested Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes in San Jose. Thurmond admitted that Hart had been murdered on the night he was kidnapped. Both men were then transferred to a prison in San Jose, California. Later a mob broke into the building; Thurmond and Holmes were then hanged in an adjacent park. Coogan was reported to be among the mob that prepared and held the lynching rope.
On May 4, 1935, at age 20, Coogan was the sole survivor of a car crash in San Diego County that took the life of his father and his best friend Junior Durkin, a child actor who appeared as Huckleberry Finn in two early 1930s films.
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