At what age did you find out? Jackie Coganthe actor of The child, the film by Carlitos Chaplin, was Uncle Lucas? Now that Merlina, the sensational new series from Netflix, takes us (retro) to the black and white of The Addams Locos, which we think of Longin the unclassifiable beauty of Morticain Fingers and, above all, in Tío Lucas.
Impossible to miss the character of Jackie Coogan. Tío Lucas, as a child, one meter six years old, was The child from Chaplin, the first child star in the history of cinema. Star regardless of age: a boy who made us think, for the first time, of scripts written exclusively for child actors. The big studios were desperate for a Coogan.
We think of its transcendence, al 100 years that have been fulfilled by the cinematic icon that he is The child. Let’s think for a moment about the importance of peeling when entering the filming set the Addams family.
Jackie Coogan had it in her CV a unique privilege: to have starred with Chaplin’s egomaniac in a film that is certainly among the best films ever made.
Let’s think for a minute, then, of that man with a smile similar to Pato Bullrich’s, who enters the plate from the Addams family and in what he imagined, for example, the actor he played Homer Addams (long before Homer father of simpsons). The boy should have said: “Faaaa… I’m working with this beast, with this living myth…!”
Some teaching, some bullying, occasional shyness. Something had to provoke the experienced Coogan, then almost 50 years old.
what did they say about him
“Jack was one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met”, said John Astin, playing the Addamses’ father. “A very talented and incredible actor. He could fall asleep anywhere at any time, wake up suddenly and play him brilliantly.”
It’s the width of swords: Uncle Lucas’ the Addams family it was neither more nor less than The child by Chaplin (1925). Yes, it was him. Kind of like remembering that Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Grant’s little associate About a boy (2002) when he grows up he plays the boy who blows Tom Hardy’s balls Mad Max Road Fury (2015).
On October 26, 1914 he was born. I was six years inside The child. He died far from fame, in 1984. Only one book has been written about him.
The alleged exploitation by the parents led to Coogan’s law which protects the child prodigies so that they are not exploited. In his case, after his parents squandered most of his fortune.
On February 6, 1921, it was presented for the first time The child in US theaters. Forty-three years laterchain abc would start broadcasting sitcoms unrepeatable: Crazy Addams.
Hollywood’s meat grinder turned the data into a discovery: not even the most sagacious of mortals could imagine it grotesque subjectUncle Lucas, came from the tenderness consecrated many years before by Chaplin.
A law just for him
Coogan was an outgoing four-year-old when Chaplin saw him performing in a vaudeville show run by his father. “Jackie was charming and the audience enjoyed it beyond words”wrote the genius in My autobiography.
The year after his brilliant break-in, Coogan did Oliver Twist. People didn’t give a damn about Dickens’s orphan. He wanted his face, the face that appeared in peanut commercials, on magazine covers, in newspapers.
Over the years he would have been Chaplin’s actor and the discovery in the Addams family. Even a skilled declarer: “What makes me proudest is that I’ve never been beaten at Scrabble.” declared.
Before I turned 18, I had already filmed 20 movies. At that point in his career, his mother was “protecting” him for about five million dollars. They slipped over it. The boy (not like this) sensed that something was wrong if the older ones changed cars from time to time, bought jewels and ate only in five-star restaurants.
The problem came to light when Coogan decided to sue his mother. She won, but only $126,000 made it into his pocket.
Coogan’s law since 1939 it has been stipulated that any employer of a child actor must file the 15% of your earnings into a fund that no one can touch or manage until the actor comes of age.
In Jackie Coogan: the boy king of the world, a 2003 book describes how far the child was from typical childhood games and learning.
an eminence
long before beatlemaniaJackie toured the world where he received eminent treatment. “The mayor of Boston gave him the key to the city” in 1924. In Rome he was received by Pope Pius XI. In New York, 100,000 kids were waiting for him… and Coogan signed 100,000 autographs.
Her fame has been replaced by the blond curls of Shirley Temple. He has never won an award and still has his Hollywood Star of Fame.
“Mr. Chaplin took me to see the Barnum & Bailey circus right after he finished. The child. I didn’t see him much after that” Coogan said.
“I stopped by his studio once, when I was 21. When I said I’d never seen him The child, left the set he was in, took me to lunch and then to a projection room where he himself played the organ to accompany the images. I had never seen the movie. I went to the premiere, but fell asleep”.
He was also a soldier
And yes, how to Macaulay Culkin Be that as it may, Jackie, a former child prodigy, had her phase where she found refuge in alcohol. Also fought in World War II.
He returned to his first love in the movies Class B and was only in the news for “drug abuse” until television, a burgeoning new industry, offered him – after minor appearances – the second biggest role of his life: playing Uncle Lucas, a role he held between 1964 and 1966, first at the casting (!!).
“I used to be the most beautiful boy in the world and now I’m a hideous monster”.
He died on March 1, 1984 at 69 years old, after several hits.
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Source: Clarin
