John Cooper (1922-2011) was a rare child actor who managed to extend early success into a long and successful life and career. Cooper made his screen debut aged six, though he had been carried around as an extra before that, and appeared for a couple of years as one of Hal Roach’s ‘Little Rascals’.
Under contract to Roach, Cooper was loaned to Paramount to star in Skippy (1931), under the direction of his uncle, Norman Taurog. In the same year he supported Wallace Beery’s Oscar-winning turn in The Champ.
Cooper worked regularly throughout his teenage years, notably as the second male lead in Fritz Lang’s The Return of Frank James (1940), also finding time to have an affair with Joan Crawford. His films as an adult in the 1940s were not of great note, and he took time out to serve in the navy. By 1949 he had started working regularly in television. In 1954 he made his first foray into television direction, going on to work on a wide variety of comedy and drama series, and winning two Primetime Emmys. From 1959, he was also working as a producer.
Cooper continued to act, and is well-known for playing Perry White in the Christopher Reeves Superman pictures. He finally retired in 1989.
Jackie Cooper made appearances in two MGM musicals: as a child in Broadway to Hollywood, and as a teenager in Ziegfeld Girl, as Lana Turner’s brother and Judy Garland’s beau.
