Dec 17, 2015 - Explore Child Stars Photo Gallery's board "Baby Peggy (Diana Serra Carey)", followed by 287 people on Pinterest. "He was no longer the breadwinner. • Baby Peggy's Own Story Book, Diana Serra Cary, Frederick A. Stokes, 1924 Her father had taught her and her older sister, Jackie-Louise, to obey commands with a snap of his fingers. At one point in late 2015, her son (who lost his job as a mechanic in February 2015 and has been keeping busy as his mother's caretaker while trying to launch a side business selling autographed Baby Peggy pho­tographs) tried to get financial aid for in-home care from the Motion Picture & Television Fund Country Home, but the request was denied. Little consideration appears to have been shown for her safety while shooting. Filming various movies she was accidentally thrown from a speeding truck, hit by a bicycle and nearly drowned while shooting an ocean rescue. Aug 19, 2015 - This Pin was discovered by Child Stars Photo Gallery. In desperation she worked as a film extra for $7 a day, struggling for almost a decade to revive her career. “I don’t have any anger or rancour toward anyone or toward Hollywood. “I had a great work ethic even as a child,” she says. I never had friends or played with other children. She was three when she made her feature-film debut. See today's front and back pages, download the newspaper, This is unsurprising, given the gulf between the infant who was onscreen in the 1920s and the elderly woman who looks back at her from the 21st Century. Excellent Doc by Diana Serra Cary (Baby Peggy). She married her first husband, bartender Gordon Ayres, in 1938 but divorced 10 years later, after she realized he was mostly interested in her past celebrity status. "Child stars were important in those days. This archive dates back to 1907 and up to the late 1930s with most being 1915-1929 Silent film gold is found in many of these pieces of history. Often considered a precursor to Shirley Temple, Baby Peggy's most popular film vehicle was the child classic Captain January (1924), which would be made a decade later as a vehicle for Temple. Interviews,, movie clips, interesting discussion on how child stars of the silent years were left impoverished and jobless by their "doting" parents (Montgomery, Coogan, etc) Read more. Movie title or actors of importance if needed: Sweetie starring Baby Peggy, Jerry Mandy and Louise Lorraine. Her authoritarian father Jack, a cowboy-turned-stunt double for western star Tom Mix, directed Peggy’s performances like an animal trainer, barking commands. She was known as the Million Dollar Baby with three major movie contracts in hand at $1,000,000 a piece! For a dramatic sequence in one film the director placed her in a house and actually set it ablaze. DW. AdChoices Living modestly in a sleepy Californian town 280 miles north of Hollywood, despite two recent minor strokes Peggy is agile with her walker and working on a new Hollywood history. I never expected to live this long or for people to still remember me after almost a century. She died at her home in Gustine, California, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Buy 'Baby Peggy LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD silent movie film fairytale' by Love30smovies as a Sleeveless Top As Baby Peggy, Cary made 150 films by 5 years old – though the vast majority were tragically destroyed in a company fire. It was just a job. Unless you have good connections and start off early.". Baby Piggy frequently longs to be a movie star in Hollywood when she grows up; it was even the main plot of an entire episode. Her contemporary was Jackie Coogan, the well-known child star, … She became a writer, penning books about early Hollywood and her memoir Whatever Happened To Baby Peggy? And Baby Peggy made a pretty good dent in people's lives.". Working conditions for child actors during the 1920s were horrific. Peggy fell into movies in 1920, visiting a Hollywood studio with her mother and spotted by a director seeking an infant to co-star in a comedy with Brownie The Wonder Dog. “It wasn’t fun and it was hard work with its ups and downs. They want the child on the screen, they want money, they want fame, they want reflective glory. "He said, 'God, no, if you had a baby, there would be no Baby Peggy anymore.' I was very outgoing and I could take the discipline without being cowed.”. Inventory: Letterhead Tray #203. Baby Peggy lent her name and image to sweaters, jewelry, handbags and dolls. Baby Peggy was very powerful. See more ideas about silent movie, silent film, old hollywood. Before long, Baby Peggy was headlining in full-length silent features such as Darling of New York, Captain January and Family Secret. “Child stars were important in those days. Nobody knew who I was. "People said my performances changed their lives,” she says. Peggy struggled for years to deal with the aftermath of fame and its loss. Diana Serra Cary, the child silent film star known by the nickname Baby Peggy, died on Monday in Gustine, Calif. She was 101. " In 1924, during production of Captain January, her father got into a salary dispute with the film's Lesser, who retaliated by canceling Peggy's contract with the studio and all but blacklisting her from the industry. My whole childhood I was exploited. Baby Peggy obituary Child film star from the silent movie era who was a millionaire at four and broke by the age of 14 Tuesday February 25 2020, 12.00pm , The Times Baby Peggy, Actress: Captain January. Her career was just as precarious offscreen. It can be very painful and children pay the price. “They said I was fearless, which was not true.”. Privacy Policy | Baby Peggy demonstrated her precocious comic talents in a still from the 1920s. But I have no regrets.”. "We lived in a very autocratic home. Yet by the age of seven she was washed up, her fortune squandered by her family and she slipped into anonymity – until now. Express. Famed as Baby Peggy she was the most acclaimed child star of the Roaring Twenties. Fans bought her signature dolls, jewellery, canned peaches, sheet music and even her own brand of milk. Born on October 29, 1918 as Peggy … Comment Report abuse. She was born Peggy-Jean Montgomery in 1918 in San Diego, California, of acting stock. In another, she was thrown from the back of … Baby Piggy, along with Kermit and Gonzo, made a special appearance in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Diana Serra Cary (born Peggy-Jean Montgomery, October 29, 1918 – February 24, 2020), known as Baby Peggy, was an American child film actress, vaudevillian, author and silent film historian. Baby Peggy was not welcomed back with open arms. Terms of Use | We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Baby Peggy.' It was the only place that was still functioning.". After Universal gave her that seven-figure payday — her reward for shooting more than 150 shorts over three years, starting when she was 20 months old — she became even more famous, dubbed Hollywood's "Million Dollar Baby." "She wasn't the first child star," notes film historian David Robinson (that would be the infant in Louis Lumiere's 1895 film Baby's Dinner). And here in Hollywood — in 1924, the silent-movie capital of the world — a 4-year-old child star nicknamed Baby Peggy (real name: Peggy-Jean Montgomery) was presented with a film contract worth $1 million a picture (that's the equivalent of about $14 million today). She was just 20 months old. At the age of four she graduated to full-length silent feature films including The Darling Of New York, Captain January and Family Secret. "My doctor has a daughter who wants to be an actress," she goes on, taking a sip of water with a straw, a framed vintage Baby Peggy poster hanging on the wall over her shoulder. She saw co-star Jack Earle blinded by falling scenery and watched a trained elephant break its chains and kill a studio employee before it was shot. I mean me, I could not be me as long as I was carrying her. And she urges parents not to put their children in movies. But the 97-year-old decided to stay put. But, as if to foreshadow the fate of countless other future Hollywood child stars, she faced the inevitable crash that followed her meteoric rise. Peggy did the best she could, working as an extra through her teen years. Discover (and save!) At the time of her death, she was the last living film star of the Silent Era of Hollywood. Certainly it was an identity crisis. "They thought it was endless. Peggy fled to vaudeville performing four shows daily for $2,000 a week until 1928. To her, Baby Peggy is another human being, a role she performed, to be spoken about in the third person. For the next few years, Peggy supported her family by touring with vaudeville acts, even then a dying art form. The last seriously silly thing her father did was buy a ranch in Wyoming, where he moved the family in 1929 — right before the Great Depression. Choisir vos préférences en matière de cookies. Like Peggy-Jean (as her parents called her), Hollywood was in its infancy, but even then, the town had a knack for spotting talent. Diana Serra Cary, once known as silent film star Baby Peggy, has died at 101. The Mail notes how she “was held under water until she passed out in one movie. During 1924's presidential race, the Democrats went so far as to name her the party's official "mascot" at their nominating convention (they lost the election anyway). Yet the studios made her life seem glamorous. “It was hurtful and I found it extremely difficult to survive the horror of being shunted aside.”. “They got into the habit of spending more than was earned,” she says. The last place she wanted to go was back to Hollywood. She wed Gordon Ayers in 1938, divorcing after 10 years, and in 1954 married artist Bob Cary, her husband until his death in 2001. “I had identity problems from the time I was growing up and suffered depression. And Peggy had a particular skill set that movie directors still prize in actors of every age — she took orders. © 2021 The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. There is no future in it. The talkies had arrived, and new child stars had been born (like Shirley Temple, who later would take Peggy's part in a 1936 remake of Captain January). 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