JACKIE COOGAN

Hokitika Guardian, 21 January 1929, Page 7

JACKIE COOGAN

A VERY HUMAN SMALL BOY. Jackie Coogan is the best-known boy in the world. At fourteen he is known to millions of people and lie has earned hundreds of thousands of pounds. And he remains a small buy despite everything. He is uncommonly intelligent but holms those strange beliefs about various things which all boys collect anti believe in firmly. We are talking about trains—you cannot be long with Jackie Coogan before you start to talk about trains. “Jll America some trains have wheels made of paper made hard with chemicals,” lie said. This may lie so—they do some wonderful tilings in America—and not being certain 1 did not completely contradict him. But when he adoled that these paper wheels cost “only four cents each” he was being that average small boy whom we know so well. Every school lias boys who insist upon tilings like that—because “someone” lias told them or they have “read it somewhere.” Another characteristic thing about Jackie Coogan is his dislike of talking about his lessons. He lias been to school and at present lie has a tutor, but you have to drug put of him what he is doing in the way of ,W°rk. He is not interested in such talk. About the most I have been able to extract from him is that “mathematics are a kind of hard, 1 and that he does French and German every day and pre fers them to algebra and trigonometry. This is rather odd, because he undoubtedly has a mechanical bent. Trains fascinate him and so do flying machines. He talks more freely about them than about anything else and there is no pretence to “publicity stunt” in it. The other day I spent half an hour with him and his newest engine. His mother is nervous of the matches which have to be struck and the methylated spirit and the flames which spurt out, -but her son is wrapped up in getting the water to boil and his train to go. When it did at last start to go he did an obvious small boy thing—put his head across the line in an invented game of seeing how long lie could keep it there in front of the approaching tram. Jackie Coogan looks bigger on the stage than he really is, and far more sophisticated than I have found him to be away from it. I was with him and his father just after their turn the other day. His father was trying to hurry him up and get him out of the dessingroom. The hoy wanted to talk and to dawdle and dream instead of getting on with his dressing in that exasperating way that buys have when you particularly want them to hurry up. Jackie must be the most highly paid star on the London stage at the moment, but although neither his father nor I can ever hope to earn as much in a month as Jackie earns in a week we joined forces to make him wash his face and find his shoes and get his shirt on. . He pi avs golf, and he told me that his handicap is 24. But Mrs Coogan added the information: “Yes Jackie, but you know they give you a stroke a hole as well.”