Baby Peggy

Before there was Shirley Temple, there was Baby Peggy. Debuting at the age of 3 and appearing in more than 150 shorts and films during the silent era.

Baby Peggy was born Peggy-Jean Montgomery on October 29, 1918 in Merced California to Marian and Jack Montgomery.

Her father, Jack Montgomery was a cowboy for several years all over the western states. He ended up in the movies as a stuntman and extra driving stagecoaches. He also served as Tom Mix's stunt double.

Baby Peggy was discovered while visiting the Century Studios lot on Sunset Boulevard with her mother when she was a mere 19 months old. Impressed by Peggy's well-behaved demeanor and willingness to follow directions, director Fred Fishbach hired her to appear in a series of short films with Century's canine star, Brownie the Wonder Dog.

Baby Peggy made her debut in Her Circus Man (1921) at the age of 3.

She went on to appear in nearly 150 shorts between 1920 and 1923 and nine full feature films.

Baby Peggy appeared in such shorts as On With The Show (1921), Playmates (1921), Brownie's Baby Doll (1921), Get Rich Quick Peggy (1921), Circus Clowns (1922), The Kid Reporter (1923), Little Red Riding Hood (1922), Peggy Behave (1922), The Darling of New York (1923), Hansel and Gretel (1923) and Jack and The Beanstalk (1924).



The vast majority of Baby Peggy's films have not survived and records related to their production have been lost.

A handful of Baby Peggy shorts, including Playmates (1921), Miles of Smiles (1923), and Sweetie (1923) have been discovered and preserved in film archives around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Her first full length film was Penrod (1922).



Her full length films The Family Secret, April Fool (1926), Capatin January (1924) and Helen's Babies (1924) have also survived and have been restored.

Many of Baby Peggy's popular comedies were parodies of movies that grown-up stars had made, and she delightfully imitated such legends as Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford, Mae Murray and Pola Negri.




Baby Peggy's film career abruptly ended in 1925 when her father had a falling out with Sol Lesser over her salary and cancelled her contract. From 1925 to 1929, Peggy enjoyed a successful career as a vaudeville performer.

Baby Peggy reportedly made at least two million dollars in her early career but her parents' bad management and free spending left her in poverty. This resulted in several nervous breakdowns in young adulthood.

At the age of seventeen, trying to escape the film industry and her parents' plans for her life, Baby Peggy ran away from home and rented an apartment with her sister Louise. She married actor Gordon Ayres in 1938, but the union was not a happy one. She divorced Ayres in 1948 and married Bob Cary (sometimes listed as Bob Carey) in 1954. They are still married today.

She adopted the name Diana Serra Cary and is now a publisher, historian and author. Her books included "What Ever Happened to Baby Peggy: The Autobiography of Hollywood's Pioneer Child Star" and "Jackie Coogan: The World's Boy King: A Biography of Hollywood's Legendary Child Star."

She has also advocated reforms in child performer protection laws, most recently as a member of the organization A Minor Consideration. As a toddler she worked eight hours a day, six days a week. She was generally required to perform her own stunts, which included being held underwater in the ocean until she fainted in Sea Shores Shapes (1921) and escaping alone from a burning room in The Darling of New York (1923).

Jean Arthur

Jean Arthur was born Gladys Georgianna Greene on October 17, 1900 to Johanna Augusta Nelson and Hubert Sidney Greene.

During World War I, Jean Arthur worked as a stenographer on Bond Street in lower Manhatten.

Discovered by Fox Film Studios while she was doing commercial modeling in New York City in the early 1920s, Jean Arthur debuted in the silent film Cameo Kirby (1923) directed by John Ford.



Between 1923 and 1929 she would appear in more than 40 silent films including Spring Fever (1923), The Drug Store Cowboy (1925), The Mad Racer (1926), Lightening Bill (1926), and The Broken Gate (1927).

In 1929, she would appear in her first talkie The Canary Murder Case starring William Powell as Philo Vance.

From 1929 to 1935, she would appear in such films as The Greene Murder Case (1929), The Lawyer's Secret (1931), The Defense Rests (1934), The Whole Towns Talking (1935) and The Public Menance (1935).



Jean Arthur's big break came in 1936 when she was cast in Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town starring Gary Cooper. Jean was now a household name.

Jean Arthur would go on to star in The Ex Mrs. Bradford (1936), You Can't Take it With You (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Arizona (1940), The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), The Talk of the Town (1942), The More the Merrier (1943) and The Impatient Years (1944).



Jean quit movies at the height of her career in 1944, she would appear in only two more films for Oscar winning directors Billy Wilder in A Foreign Affair (1948) and George Stevens in Shane (1953).

Jean also had a successful career on Broadway starring in Peter Pan, Foreign Affairs, The Curtain Rises, The Man Who Reclaimed His Head, The Bridge of Torozko, Twenty Five Dollars an Hour, and Count Me In.



In 1954, she was to star as Joan or Arc in George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan but left the play after a nervous breakdown and battles with director Harold Clurman.

In 1966, the extremely reclusive Arthur tentatively returned to show business, playing Patricia Marshall, an attorney in her own television sitcom, The Jean Arthur Show. However, the show was cancelled mid season after only twelve episodes.

In 1967, she was coaxed back to Broadway to appear as a midwestern spinster who falls in with a group of hippies in the play The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake.

Now officially retired from acting, Jean Arthur taught drama first at Vassar College and then the North Carolina School of the Arts. Her students at Vassar included the young Meryl Streep.

While living in North Carolina she made front page news by being arrested and jailed for trespassing on a neighbor's property to console a dog she felt was being mistreated. An animal lover her entire life, Jean Arthur said she trusted them more than people.

During her 30 year film career she would appear in more than 90 movies.

Jean Arthur was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for The More The Merrier (1943) and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for motion pictures.

Jean Arthur was married twice and had no children. Her first marriage to Julian Anker in 1928 was annulled after one day. She next married producer Frank Ross Jr. in 1932 and they divorced in 1949.

Jean Arthur died from heart failure at the age of 90 on June 19, 1991.

Montgomery Clift

Montgomery Clift was born October 17, 1920 in Omaha, Nebraska. The son of William Brooks Clift, a vice-president of Omaha National Bank, and Ethel Fogg. Montgomery had a fraternal twin sister, Roberta (aka Ethel), and a brother, William Brooks Jr.

Montgomery Clift and his siblings were raised as if they were aristocrats. Home-schooled by their mother as well as by private tutors in the United States and Europe, they did not attend a regular school until they were in their teens. Montgomery was educated in French, German, and Italian.

Montgomery Clift began his acting career on Broadway, appearing in Fly Away Home at the age of 13. Montgomery achieved success on the Broadway stage and during the next 10 years appeared in such productions as Jubilee, Dame Nature, There Shall Be No Night, Our Town, and You Touched Me.

In 1947, Montgomery Clift moved to Hollywood and made his film debut in Red River (1948) opposite John Wayne.



From 1947 to 1956, Montgomery Clift starred in such classics as The Search (1948), A Place in the Sun (1951), I Confess (1951), and From Here to Eternity (1953). During this period, he was receiving so many offers of roles that friends had to squeeze past stacks of them in order to walk up the stairs. He turned down roles in Sunset Boulevard, High Noon, and East of Eden.

Montgomery Clift would earn Academy Award nominations for Best Actor for The Search (1948), A Place in the Sun (1951), and From Here to Eternity.



On May 12, 1956. Montgomery's life would take a tragic turn. While filming Raintree Country, he was leaving a party thrown by co-star and close friend Elizabeth Taylor and crashed his car into a telephone pole. Actor and friend Kevin McCarthy witnessed the accident and alerted Taylor. Elizabeth rushed to Clift's side and manually pulled his tongue out of his throat when he began to choke and save his life. Montgomery suffered a broken jaw, broken nose, fractured sinus and several facial lacerations which required plastic surgery.

After a long recovery, he returned to the set to finish the film. However, the pain of the accident led him to rely on alcohol and pills and Clift's health and looks deteriorated considerably.

Montgomery Clift's post-accident career has been referred to as the "longest suicide in Hollywood history" because of his alleged substance abuse. However, Clift continued to work over the next 10 years. His next three films were Lonelyhearts (1958), The Young Lions (1958) and Suddenly Last Summer (1959).

In 1961, he costarred in John Huston's The Misfits which turned out to be Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable's final film. Marilyn Monroe, who was also having emotional problems at the time, once said that Montgomery is "The only person I know who is in worse shape than I am."

In 1962, Montgomery Clift would play Rudolph Petersen in Judgement at Nurmberg and receive his fourth Academy Award nomination.



On July 22, 1966, Montgomery Clift spent most of the day in his bedroom at his New York City townhouse. Ironically, The Misfits was on television that night and Montgomery's final words to anyone were "absolutely not" when asked if he wished to watch the movie. The next morning, Montgomery Clift was found deceased, the official cause of death was listed as heart attack brought on by occlusive coronary artery disease. Montgomery Clift was 45 years old.

June Allyson

June Allyson was born Eleanor Geisman on October 7, 1917 in The Bronx, New York. Her parents were Clara Provost and Robert Geisman.

In 1925, when she was eight years old, a dead tree branch fell on her while she was bicycling. Several bones were broken, and doctors said she would never walk again. She underwent months of swimming exercises, however, and ultimately regained her ability to walk. After graduating from a wheelchair to crutches to braces, she was inspired to dance by obsessively watching Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movies.

In 1938, fully recovered, she tried out for a chorus job in the Broadway show Sing Out The News. The choreographer gave her a job and a new name: Allyson, a family name, and June, for the month.



Like other musical performers in New York, the 5'1" (1.55 m) June Allyson found work in movie short subjects that were filmed there. She starred in Swing For The Prisoner of Swing (1938), The Knight is Young (1938), and All Girl Revue (1940).

June Allyson would make her official movie debut in Best Foot Forward (1943).

Some of her most notable movies include Thousands Cheer (1943), The Three Musketeers (1948), Little Women (1949), The Stratton Story (1949), Too Young to Kiss (1951), The Glen Miller Story (1953), Executive Suite (1954), Strategic Air Command (1955), The McConnell Story (1955), and The Opposite Sex (1956).

June won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for To Young to Kiss (1951).

She played James Stewart's wife in three films: The Stratton Story, The Glen Miller Story and Strategic Air Command.

In 1950, June Allyson had been signed to appear opposite her idol Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding, but had to leave the production due to pregnancy.

Like many movie stars of the 1940s and 1950s, June frequently appeared in television shows. Her television credits include Burke's Law, Airwolf, Murder She Wrote, Hart to Hart, The Love Boat, Simon & Simon, and Vega$. She also did Depends commercials throughout the 1990s.



From 1959 to 1961 she hosted and occassionally starred in her own series, The DuPont Show with June Allyson.

On August 14, 1945, June Allyson married actor Dick Powell and would have two children. They remained married until his death on January 2, 1963.

June next married Alfred Glenn Maxwell on October 13, 1963 and they would divorce in 1965, to remarry in 1966 and divorce again in 1970.

June Allyson married David Ashrow on October 30, 1976 and they would be married 29 years until her death.



June Allyson died on July 8, 2006 from pulmonary respiratory failure and acute bronchitis at the age of 88.

Mary Badham

Mary Badham is one of our most loved child actors, capturing our hearts as Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).



Mary Badham was born on October 7, 1952 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her father was was a retired army officer who, by the time of her birth, had become president of Bessemer Steel Co. Her English-born mother had been an actress before her marriage.

She is also the younger sister (by 14 years) of director John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, 1977 & Wargames, 1983).

Mary had no prior acting experience when she was cast to play Scout Finch in 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird. She was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actress category but lost to child actress Patty Duke (The Miracle Worker, 1962).

Mary remained close to fellow To Kill a Mocking Bird co-stars Brock Peters and Gregory Peck, until their deaths in 2003 and 2005. She still keeps in touch with Phillip Alford, who played her brother in the movie (who is now a successful businessman and consultant in Birmingham, Alabama).

Mary is currently married to a school teacher with two children. She is an art restorer and a college testing coordinator. She also travels around the world recalling her wonderful experiences making To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) while expounding on the book's messages of tolerance and compassion.

Mary retired from acting in 1966 at the age of 14.

She came out of retirement in 2005 to play Mrs. Nutbush (in a cameo appearance) in Our Very Own, starring Keith Carradine.

Attended the 2006 "Twilight Zone" Convention at the Hilton Hasbrouck Heights, Hasbrouck Heights, NJ, August 12-13, 2006.



Although she only appeared in two movies (To Kill a Mockingbird & This Property is Condemned, 1966) and appeared in two television shows (The Twilight Zone & Dr. Kildare) she is one of the most loved child actors of all time.

Peter Finch

Peter Finch will best be remembered for his role as Howard Beale and uttering the words "'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" in the 1976 movie Network.




Peter Finch was born Frederick George Peter Ingle-Finch on September 28, 1912 in London, England to George Ingle-Finch, an Australian born mountaineer and Alicia Ingle-Finch. Later it was learned that Peter's biological father was Wentworth Edward Dallas "Jock" Campbell, a Scottish Military officer. The adultery was the cause of his parent's divorce. George gained custody of Peter and he was raised by his grandmother Laura Finch. Peter was raised in France, India and Australia. Peter Finch was 45 years old before met his biological father.

Peter Finch made his film debut in Dad and Dave Come to Town (1938). He made his stage debut in 1939 in Australia and was spotted by Laurence Olivier and Olivier persuaded Finch to return to Britain to perform classic roles on the stage. Peter Finch spent the next 25 years alternating his time between the stage and movies.

Peter Finch's movies include The Power and the Glory (1941), A Son is Born (1946), The Miniver Story (1950), The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan (1953), The Dark Avenger (1955), Robbery Under Arms (1957), The Nun's Story (1959), The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961), The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), The Greatest Mother of Them All (1969), Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), Lost Horizon (1973) and Network (1976).

Peter Finch received both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for playing a homosexual Jewish doctor in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971).

Peter Finch won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Actor for the mad prophet of the airwaves Harold Beale in Network (1976).

Peter Finch died January 14, 1977, and received the Oscar posthumously. He and Heath Ledger are the only two people to receive an Academy Award in an acting category, posthumously.

Peter Finch's final appearance was on January 13, 1977, the day before his death. He appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson entertaining the audience and Carson with tales of his youth and his psychic grandmother.

Peter Finch died January 14, 1977 from a heart attack.

Lauren Bacall

Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924 in New York, New York. The daughter of middle class parents, her father worked as a salesman and her mother as a secretary.



When Lauren was young, she aspired to be a dancer but later became interest in acting. She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.

Lauren Bacall began her career as a model and appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. The wife of director Howard Hawks spotted the picture and arranged with her husband to have Lauren take a screen test.

Lauren was then cast as Marie Browning in Hawk's To Have and Have Not (1944) opposite Humphrey Bogart. This film not only set the stage for Bacall's career but also was the beginning of one of Hollywood's greatest love stories.



Humphery Bogart and Lauren Bacall were married on May 21, 1945 and remained married until his death in 1957.

During the 1940s, Lauren Bacall appeared in such classics as The Confidential Agent (1945), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948). She starred opposite Humphrey Bogart in all but The Confidential Agent in which she starred opposite Charles Boyer.

The 1950s brought Lauren Bacall roles in such films Young Man With A Horn (1950), How To Marry A Millionaire (1953), Designing Women (1957), and The Gift of Love (1958).

On January 14, 1957, Humphrey Bogart died of throat cancer. A grief stricked Bacall moved back to New York City and appeared in several Broadway plays.

In 1964, she returned to the silver screen to appear in Shock Treatment and Sex and The Single Girl. During the 1960s she also appeared in Harper (1966), opposite Paul Newman and Julie Harris.



During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lauren alternated her time between the stage and television appearances. She appeared in such television classics as Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre and Applause (1973). Her role in television's Applause would earn her an emmy nomination for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role.

She would win the Tony Award for the Broadway production of Applause.

In 1974, Lauren returned once again to the silver screen in Murder on the Orient Express. Two years later she co-starred opposite John Wayne in The Shootist (1976).

During the 1980s, she would earn her second emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for The Rockford Files. In 1988, she would earn her third emmy nomination for Outstanding Informational Special for Bacall on Bogart.

Her film credits of the 1980s include The Fan (1981), Mr. North (1988) and Tree of Hands (1989).

In 1981, she would earn her second Tony Award for the Broadway production of Woman of the Year.

During the 1990s, Lauren Bacall would receive her one and only Academy Award nomination. This was for her role in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996). Although she did not win the Oscar, she did win the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild award for this performance.

Lauren's film credits of the 1990s include such films as Misery (1990), The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), My Fellow Americans (1996), and Presence of Mind (1999).

Lauren Bacall is still active in the entertainment industry. She has appeared in such recent ventures as Birth (2004), Manderlay (2005), These Foolish Things (2006) and Eve (2008).

In 2010, three more productions featuring Lauren Bacall are scheduled to be released. She will provide the voice of Porsche in Firedog, play May in Wild Blue Yonder, and provide the voice of The Grand Witch in Scooby Doo and the Globin King.