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Hi Elizabeth, Hi, my name is Elizabeth and yours Aaron.
You can call me Dizzy and LISZ.
How you have to ask you a question?
Sure, I got time, and that.
Question is you know what's ridiculous I do?
And this one is in honor of our recently lost great one, Ozzy Osbourne. Now, a lot of people been sharing different things that Ozzy did over the years, you know, a lot of focus on some of the well known things. Well, I found one from some eyewitnesses who would know some Ozzy. The members of Motley Crue, Oh boy yeah, and they're in the dirt a memoir. The members of Motley Crue shared a bunch of stories from the road and as aka the world's most notorious rock band, which they take
pride in. Nicky six tells the story of Ozzy Osbourne. It dates back to nineteen eighty four and NICKI six, I will just turn it over to him. Quote. I handed Ozzy the straw and he walked over to a crack in the sidewalk and bent over it. I saw a long column of ants marching to a little dugout built where the pavement met the dirt, and I thought
to myself, no, he wouldn't. He did. He put the straw to his nose, and with his bare white peeking out from under the dress he was wearing like a sliced honeydew, he sent the entire line of ants tickling up his nose with a single monstrous snort.
Ozzie didn't they like sequence his jeans?
Oh yeah, the sequences whole genome right. And they found that Ozzie had numerous genes they had never seen before, and they theorized this is how he was able to do all the drugs he did and survived what he did. So he was a literal genetic mutant from Keith Richards totally, and I want one for myself, just to test a couple of things. Yes, No, I think Keith Richards definitely would be interesting. And then I'd like to see his and compare some notes on my own, because I'm like,
how am I still alive? And I'm like, I'm not. I'm not Keith. I'm not saying that, but I just want to see if, like, Okay, here's where it is. Because he he's the hero, he is, He is ridiculous.
Elis that's ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Oh my god, I love ridiculous.
Stealing from your own kid. No, no, this is Ridiculous Crime, A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. Damn right, that's right. You studied film, right, Sarah.
I went to film school technically.
Well, see, you know all about the history of film.
I would say all about it, but I know a lot more than the average bearer.
You're a cinophile, Yes, I think that's fading. And I know you love old Hollywood stories.
I do love old Hollywood stories. I love old Hollywood.
What's the beginning of an industry? This is going to change the world.
Yeah, totally. I mean it's really the synthesis of all of the art forms up to that day.
Yeah, it's going to change how we see things, how we understand things, we see ourselves.
Yeah, it's a think of how many criminals we know about change.
It's going to change crime. It's going to inspire generations of would be bank robbers.
It's good stuff, powerful stuff, powerful magic.
Powerful magic. So if you want to go early early Hollywood. That's the silent film era. Yeah, and so before the talkies roughly eighteen nineties to the late nineteen twenties.
Yes, so they get jazzing.
Yeah. So it was during the twenties they produced about eight hundred feature films each year, and then, like you said, the Jazz Singer comes out in twenty seven, the silent era fades away. The Jazz Singer was the first feature length film was synchronized silog, but until then it was, you know, a sensation. These silent films.
Totally, they're very powerful because as I said, they gave good face. People could really project onto them. You know, it changes obviously with sound, but then it was like myths come alive.
It's very distilled that the dialogue was conveyed through inner titles, text cards. There was live music, so it wasn't totally silent. In the theater. Sometimes there would be full orchestras and like large staters, smaller venues. Ers be like a dude at a piano and like, like you were saying, he had to have this face. So performers they use these exaggerated expressions and the gestures to convey emotion and the plot.
The exaggerated gestures weren't just like a stylistic choices that the early cameras had really poor resolution, very true subtlety didn't register exactly. So it's kind of like an.
A there's no denros, no no.
And it's kind of like an ancient Greek theater where you're up in like the top of the amphitheater, you can't see a face down. And that's why they would wear these giant masks and have outsized.
A lot of the poses to represent things. There's a lot of that in the early films, so.
They would take that theatrical grounding of it, and that help them do this to like convey plot without sound. Sure, so early black and white film stock was really sensitive to red light, and that made red lipstick look black. Yeah, so actresses would wear blue or green lipsticks so that it would look natural on screen. And we think of silent films as being in black and white, but that wasn't always the case.
Have you ever seen the makeup photos they either have been colorized or if at some points they actually are like early color examples where you take like the same picture with three different shots and then you could give blend them into one shot so it's colorized. You'd see these actresses when they're actually painted up with their all green face makeup, and it's like on their cheeks, what's on their lips, It's everywhere you would think red would be, and it looks insane.
Crazy, it looks super crazy. But like, so they would have the film in black and white, right, but sometimes they would hand tint framed by frame, they use stencils, they'd use like the early color processing total. The nineteen fourteen film The Life of Moses had color sequence.
Oh, I can see that fourteen.
So those early films were also shot on nitrate, highly flammable, chemically unstable.
In the Tarantino film, you see that moment where the character they burn the theater, that's the nitrate film that you're using, because she's able to burn the whole theater down to kill everybody.
Glorious.
I forgot to mention the.
Film that, But what it means a lot of the classics have been lost forever through dcom About eighty percent of original silent films have been destroyed.
Yeah, so crazy.
This is big business though, Like it's this sensation, so a good weekly salary for early Hollywood film executives was fifty bucks. Wow, that's like eight hundred dollars. Yeah, so you know, we look at it, eight hundred bucks a week, that's not a lot of money. Extras made about a dollar fifty a day and that's like twenty five dollars today. This is basically the same. But stars stars, that was
a different story. So by the twenties, big stars were earning the equivalent of millions today, So they were raking it in. We hadn't switched it over to where the executives were getting a lot of them. Yes, yeah, there were no stuntmen.
Yeah. A lot of the early stars, like Harold Lloyd, they did their own stuff.
Yeah yeah, so like they would want to do it because the executives didn't want to spend money on an extra person.
That's why you get a lot of old cowboys like Calm, Mixed and Bush and a comedy version obviously Charliechaplan.
No safety nets, no cgi Buster Keaton. Actually, in Steamboat Bill Junior nineteen twenty eight, a full building facade falls around him, missing his body by inches because they had like very precisely measured the open window totally, and then he was like, you know what, if I had stood like an inch off my mark, I'd be dead.
Completely crushed, completely, no chance of Yeah. Film, and also those true of a lot of his stunts. He does ones where the car falls apart underneath him, or he's there's like a ton of stuff with ladders and all sorts of stuff where if anything went wrong, he would probably not walk again or be dead.
Yeah, exactly. There were times when it didn't go so well, so like while filming just a publicity photo not the film itself in nineteen nineteen Harold Lloyd, he picked up what he thought was a fake prop bomb, but it blew up. Yeah, it took off his thumb index finger.
Dear God, and he just continued doing.
His stunts afterwards. He would wear gloves or prosthetics. In the film's lawn cheney. He was known as Man of.
A thousand faces total.
He made like homemade prosthetics to get these crazy, terrifying looks.
They still use a lot of his techniques.
Yah Phantom of the Opera nineteen twenty five, he pulled his nose back with wires and he wore these like crazy dentures, painful to get that phantom's face. And he was so secretive about his techniques that he would lock his dressing room. Yes, he didn't want anyone snooping around because he was like it when it came to that. The first movie fan magazines emerged in this era.
That's right, of course, like the Rudy Valentino.
And Photoplay Motion Picture Magazine. They created Hollywood celebrity culture totally, and they gave fans gossip, behind the scenes stories. Then you got like directors, right d W. Griffith directed Birth of a Nation intolerance, of course, there was Cecil B. De Mille.
Yeah, Fritz Lang, expression is coming.
Over the boundaries right of storytelling, cinematograph. This the industry was wild and it was larger than life, and there were so many publicity stunts, so like for the nineteen twenty film Way Down East, d W. Griffith arranged for airplanes to drop free tickets over Manhattan Wow, and this caused an absolute frenzy and the crowds were like scrambling in the streets the studios, like if they had jungle themed films, they would bring exotic animals down the street.
For the Adventures of Tarzan, in nineteen twenty one, they walked a real elephant down through downtown La Buster Keaton's The General. In nineteen twenty six, a real train engine was sent across a burning bridge and it collapsed dramatically into a river.
It was one of the most amazing things ever done.
Yeah the time, well, it was filmed for the movie. It was also hyped as a live event. So like they've invited all the public to come watch them film this.
Everyone wanted to expensive. They had to get it right.
And the wreckage, Yeah, because you only get one take. The wreckage remained in the river for decades and it became a tourist attraction. Harold Lloyd. As you mentioned safety last oh, nineteen twenty three, Yeah, hang off hanging from the clock high above the street. So in order to promote the film, stunt performers they staged similar but safer hangs from actual buildings to like thrill the onlookers get newspaper inches.
Oh and then there's like Chaplin who would fake it with like mirrors and forced perspective where he's not actually dangling over the edge on his roller skates. He just made it look like.
It looked like it so they were playing with all these these like the technology of it stuff like the Fire Brigade nineteen twenty six MGM staged a controlled fire outside of theaters and so like local fire departments would participate. It turned into this huge spectacle and like everyone's like, I want to see a movie about this. And then
the stars saren give me the star. I've mentioned some of them already, Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford, Oh yeah, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, Lillian Gish, Harold Lloyd, those are like the famous ones. And then the guy who's made an appearance on here before your man, Charlie Chaplin. Oh yes, yeah, there was another star. He's what I want to tell you about today. He wound up changing Hollywood forever, but in an unexpected way, and it was a change that
came from a crime. Trying to guess who could be Well, I'll tell you please, I'm talking about Jackie Cougan. Okay, I'm glad to Cougan, John, because there's some other choices.
It would not be as much fun.
No, No, John Leslie Coogan born October twenty eighth, nineteen fourteen, in Los Angeles.
I was born in La yeah.
It's the son of John Henry Coogan, junior of vaudeville performer.
Okay, a lot of vaudeville performers.
Case, oh yeah, and then Lillian Dolliver Coogan, who was a dancer. So from infancy he was exposed to show business. He was on stage with his dad as a toddler.
It's likely hearrd Lloyd. He was a Bodville kid. He used to get thrown around on stage by his dad. That's what he's so good. It's stune.
They're so comfortable.
They basically yeah, babies raised in suitcases, you.
Know, exactly. So like Jackie Coogan, he had this absolutely cherubic face.
Yes, yeah, big saucer eyes.
Natural expressiveness, and so he was an instant draw baby. Yes, yes, And in the audience was someone important who caught notice of Jackie. The most famous filmmaker of the Silent era Charlie Chaplin.
Oh yeah.
So.
One of Charlie Chaplin's most famous films is The Kid in Chaplain. He began work on The Kid not too long after the death of his infant son, which obviously weakly affected him. So the emotional theme of parental loss and connection is often attributed to that personal tragedy. So he's preparing to make the movie. He needs to cast the kid. He discovered Jackie Coogan at age four, performing on stage in La with his dad. Sure, Chaplin struck
by Cougan's expressive face, his mimicry. He later called him, quote the most wonderful child actor I've ever seen. He had present completely So Cougan he could mimic emotions with like uncanny precision, but he couldn't read yet four years old.
Totally.
Yeah, So Chaplain used live demonstrations and physical acting rather than scripts to show him what he wanted to do in each scene. Oh, he kind of had to act it out. So filming started in nineteen nineteen went through nineteen twenty. Chaplin had a contract with First National Pictures, and that was going to let him produce his films without a set release schedule.
Oh cool, pretty good.
But the production of a Kid ran long. Yeah, yeah, he was very long. He was a perfection, he was exactly, and so First National they start to make a fuss. To avoid First National from interfering with his vision, Chaplin smuggled the original film Negatives from California to a hotel in Salt Lake City.
Oh wow, I love that.
And he edited the film in secret using a makeshift editing setup. Oh yes, and that's how he was able to keep full creative control. You don't even know where I am working. He goes a little movie and he's in Yeah, in a Salt Lake City hotel room. So the movie The Kid comes out January twenty first, nineteen twenty one. It's fifty three minutes long thereabouts, written, directed, produced by Charlie Chaplin. He plays the tramp. Jackie Coogan plays the kid John.
So.
The film tells the story of this vagabond Chaplain who finds an abandoned infant and raises him, and over the years the bond between them deep in the story's humorous and heartbreaking. It represents Chaplain's signature blend of pathos and slapstick the best, absolutely perfect, make.
Them laugh, make them cry, yes's.
And that's that's the most like the Catharsis.
You created, dating back to the Greek theater.
Right, So Chaplain he'd grown up in extreme poverty in Victorian London. He'd been separated from his mother and brother due to her mental illness, and his character's care for this orphan child was drawn from his own experiences in the workhouse and on the streets totally. So the movie had a budget of about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a lot, but it ultimately grossed over five million dollars, making it one of the highest grossing films of the
nineteen twenties. And it was the first feature length film by Chaplain. So before The Kid, he'd only made short.
Fut comedic twenty two minute long reels.
Right, and it was one of the earliest films to effectively mix comedy and drama that influenced decades of filmmaking still I mean yes here like also in that era. It's highlighting the themes of poverty and child welfare, class inequality coming out of World War One. Critics, audiences, everybody loves the film. In fact, nineteen seventy two, Chaplin created a re edited version of it with a new musical
scory termed A Few Sees Really. In twenty eleven, the Library of Congress selected The Kid for the National Film Registry, saying it was culturally, historically, and esthetically significant, definoid and it's on a ton of lists of like the greatest silent films of all oh. I So while this was a huge film for Chaplain, it was mega huge for Jackie Coogan.
I even thought about that suddenly everywhere.
Yeah, of course, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll learn more about Jackie Coogan.
Nice, Okay, al right, here we are Jackie Coogan.
Yes, Jackie, he's the first child star.
I didn't thought about that.
So he had his debut, his breakout hit the Kid, just.
Like before Little Rascals and like you know, Spanky and Alfalfa. I mean, he is the child.
Everyone loves me. He's instantly famous, and with fame came merchandising.
Oh my god, it's the twenties. It's hyper commercialism. At the beginning of that.
Jackie Coogan dolls, whistles, figurines. There was a Jackie Cougan comic strip. And here's my favorite. There was even Jackie Coogan peanut butter what Yeah, like an O G mash. You can buy tens like on eBay and like other you know, uh novelty sites or whatever antiques things they have. You can get there in these metal tins.
Jackie Coogan pet.
So by age seven. He's an international sensation. He starred in films like Oliver, Twist Daddy, Long Live the King. He was commanding salaries of up to twenty two thousand dollars a week. That's the equivalent of over four hundred thousand dollars a week today. Can you imagine as an adult? Can you imagine making four hundred thousand dollars a week?
No?
I cannot.
Like, I know they say, mo money, MO problems, but I think I would have very few problems.
You want to handle those problems with the money you have.
Many of my problems will go far, far away. I would wave them, oh bye and move. Jackie Coogan, though right, he's raking in the dough, adored by the public, But he wasn't a freewheeling kid. So his life off screen was really tightly controlled. His parents, particularly his mother.
Are they doing like Judy Garland level or that he has controlling what he eats and all that kind of everything.
Yeah, And so his mom and then his stepdad, who was also his business manager, Arthur Bernstein, they oversaw his affairs and so his earnings estimated to be around four million dollars through his whole childhood. That's the equivalent of seventy five million dollars today. They held them in accounts that Jackie didn't have access to. But that makes sense. He's a little kid.
Sure.
In public, his life is like storybook perfect. Here's the sweet little kid, and he's doing all.
This stuff, and he's like Shirley Temple. Everyone loves him.
Everyone's and his mom loves talking to the press and like shares all sorts of anecdotes. Yes, in private, though he was worked relentlessly. They didn't care about his education. They didn't care about his you know, emotional development.
Of course does He didn't even get to play with other kids.
No, here's what his mother said once quote. He wasn't a child. He was an actor.
Thanks mom, Thanks Ma.
Like when I was little, maybe round four, a casting agent came up to my mom and tried to picture on the idea of me doing like TV or movie.
Oh wow, yeah good.
We were like at a restaurant. I feel like I was cute as hell. Now I peaked at age five and it's been all downhill since. But my mom told the agent to kick rocks, which I guess it is smart. Is good because like child, stardom messes people up.
Completely when we lived in LA when my sister had a kid, a little blonde haired kid who is like, you know, super cute and he's like five, same thing, and people try to come up and Megan was like, we should take him auditions. I said, absolutely, absolute, kid.
Yes, we like we talk a big game in our society about how much we love and value and protect kids, but it's all talk. We don't So when you have an opportunity to love and value and protect kids, we like to cherish them in theory, in theory exactly. So Jackie Kugan, he's everywhere until he wasn't because he aged as people do if they're like.
Oh it was pubrety hard on.
No, I mean, if you're lucky, you get old. But like his angel faded and then his market a bill, he faded, like a lot of.
The qualities adult teeth grow in you look weird.
Well that's the thing. A lot of the qualities that make someone super cute as a kid just don't translate to an adult face totally.
I mean a lot of the younger the kid stars, even to this day, you look at him and you're like, oh, that's down, that's.
The yeah, And like for child celebrities. We get used to seeing them a certain way, and then when that changes, we don't like it. By the late twenties, he was no longer box office gold and he tried to revive his career. That didn't take, so he enrolled at Santa Clara University, but he didn't stay there long. He went back to Hollywood. He's like, look, I'm going to land adult roles, not like in adult films, but like I'm
going to be a grown up in the movies. The transition was rocky for him, and because the public, they just couldn't see the kid as a grown man totally. So money troubles they start to mount because like, he has all this money, but he doesn't have access to it, not until he's twenty one.
His parents twenty one.
Not even eighteen twenty.
It's the way his parents, his business manager use it. Think it would be good to do with your money.
And he's been he like, there's he's got this on the horizon. He's saying, I just got it when I'm twenty one, you know everything. But he's like all those con artists we have, we're like, look, when I turned twenty one, I come into this and here he really does, but can you spot me? And here's poor Jackie Coogan, can you spot me? And they're like, I don't know. So then in nineteen thirty five, something horrible happened. It
was May fourth, nineteen thirty five, a Sunday afternoon. Jackie's twenty. He's traveling in a car with his close friend Junior Durkin, who was his co star is Huck Finn in the film Tom Sweart totally. Also in the car was Jackie's dad, John Cougan Senior, and then there was Charles Jones, a business associate and he managed the ranch that the Cougan Zone. And then there was a film producer, Robert Horner. So there's five people in the car. They're near Pine Valley
in the Cuyamaca Mountains, southeast of San Diego. And so they're on the San Diego Imperial Valley Highway, this winding mountain pass, narrow road, you know, steep gravel surface. A group of guys on a weekend hunting trip. So they're in a Hudson roadster. They're on their way back to La Jackie's dad's driving. Jackie and Junior Dirk and are riding in the rumble seat.
Those are the way back fold out seat essentially.
Yeah, and so there an oncoming car came at them too tight and they were forced off the road. They swerved, lost traction, plunged over a one hundred foot embankment. Dear god, car rolls multiple times before landing in this rocky ravine. Jackie Cougan, there's.
Like probably no seat belts in that car seat inventedge.
Jackie Cougan was the sole survivor.
The survivor thrown early.
Yeah, well that's the thing. And some of the reports said he was thrown, others said that everyone else was, but that he hung on And there was one interview where he said he kind of curled up and like held onto the bottom of the rumble seat. Tumble three, four tumbles down. But either way he survived with minor injuries, just like cuts and bruises. He broke some ribs. Sure everyone the four other documents were killed instantly or died
shortly after. It was horrific, and it was this huge news story totally, so it's front page news across the United States. Here's Jackie Coogan, who'd been a beloved figure for nearly a decade he's young. Like, the tragedy really shook people, and it must be it must be so hard to be in the public spotlight and experience a tragedy like this and then like see it splashed all
over newspapers and magazines. Never mind today when you also have to contend with all the booger eaters online get their jolly is from like saying crass and hurtful things at a time like that. We're just like, you know, really like distasteful thing.
Yeah, that's horrific, Like do you have a soul?
Comments exactly, And so I can't imagine having your your private tragedies in public like that. So there are headlines like Jackie Coogan orphaned in tragic car wreck, like his mom wasn't in the car, but whatever, And so thousands of telegrams of indolence get sent to the Cougan house.
So they had parasocial relationships then.
Too, very much so, And like the thing is is that Jackie's dad was his greatest advocate, He managed his early career, he protected him from like the worst of the exploitations, and so his sudden death left Jackie really vulnerable emotionally, financially, Cougan would later say that the crash marked the end of his childhood. That's it. So afterwards, like his relationship with his mom and his stepfather becomes strained. And it was in that same year.
Wait, the mother was already divorced and had the stepfather.
Okay, Yeah, mother was already divorced, had the stepfather. Same year of the crash, nineteen thirty five, Jackie was going to turn twenty one, okay, and that was when he was scheduled to take full control of the fortune. So there are all these newspaper articles marking the approach of this major milestone. Wow, there was speculation as to the magnitude of his fortune, like.
Oh, yeah, because they don't know, they don't know his.
Money had servedved the stock market of nineteen twenty nine because apparently, like his dad was a really smart investor in crafty showfolk.
I don't think they trust things like the stock market like that, right.
And there were guesses about like real estate holdings at that time. So here's this young man who at the time was dating Betty Grable, what actress and famous pin up mode. Yeah, the legs platonic ideal of Hubba Hubbo he'd go on to marry her.
By the way, I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, Betty Grabl's pin up photo is like in every cockpit of a plane on.
The wane, literally painted on the side of the plane.
She motivated men in World War Two, nobody else.
By the way, I have that poster like where she's she's looking over her shoulder. I have that somewhere from like my Hollywood at times.
Look at that. Look here we are full circle. I get it, you get it. So he's got Betty Grabil on his arm. He's about to come into a massive fortune. He just got through an absolutely unspeakable tragedy. He's a survivor. The public loves this, so they love all the stories of speculation and oh my gosh, what's going to happen when he turns twenty one. So when he turned twenty one, he asked for access to this fortune he'd earned as a child, and then he found out that it was gone.
What do you mean gone?
Virtually all of it was gone. They'd spent it on fur coats, diamonds.
Cars, something million, seventy five million essentially in our money on our fur coats.
His mother and stepfather refused to relinquish any remaining money. They said that Jackie had been well cared for and that the money was quote ours, not his.
What the absolute after going on? I would dad, I was Jackie.
Coo stepdad made the argument that Jackie was just a performer in a family business as their stepdad, and therefore had no exclusive rights to the earnings.
Oh my god.
So Jackie, he's betrayed and he's infuriated as this, he filed suit. He sued his mother and his stepfather May twelfth, nineteen thirty eight. Jackie Coogan, he's twenty three years old, filed a civil lawsuit against his mom and his stepfather.
He alleged scum back.
He alleged a bunch of things. Number one, breach of fiduciary duty that's obvious, theft of personal property, constructive trust violation, violation of verbal and implied contracts. He wanted a full accounting of his earnings and return of any remaining assets or property.
I want to everything.
He tabulated up they should give him around three million dollars three, which is the equivalent of more than sixty eight million dollars too. So three millions, yeah, so it's like if today he's like, you owe me sixty eight million dollars, I gotcha, yes, he said, quote I dread going to court, but I see no alternative. If my father were alive, I wouldn't have to sue. He intended that the money I earned would be kept in trust for me until I was of age. He often told
me so. And it is a bond, this fact that I am basing my suit. Oh yeah, so Lilian the mom, she's quoted as saying that her son was suffering from a hallucination. What yeah? And then she like, she just holed up in her mansion and van eyes and she only had that because Jackie the house, the Jackie Bill. She tried to keep the process servers locked outside, but they finally broke down the gate, rushed into the house
and handed her the service papers. She didn't say anything to them, and then she made this now infamous public statement to the press, quote, Jackie will not get a cent of his earnings. Every dollar a kid earns before he's twenty one belongs to his parents.
Oh my head is boiling.
I know so the trust me. So the assertion was legally true at the time, though I know protections the.
Children, children were working in factories and losing their fingers. Nobody gave no.
One gave a damn. Arthur Burnstein. He echoed the sentiment Stepdad. He said that any money they'd spent was to maintain Jackie's lifestyle and that no trust fund had ever existed. So you guys keep talking about this trust fund.
I know.
His dearly departed father said there was no there's not. So they said that most of his earnings were used to buy a large house in la and that was put in Lilian's name. It had to cover travel, private tutoring, and servants. That they invested in bad stock market ventures, and then the depression wiped it out. But that contradicted the evidence that his late father had done well by him. So investigations later revealed that Coogan's contracts were signed by
his parents and not him. His earning yeah, yeah, he's a minor, His earnings had been deposited into accounts held solely in his parents' names, and that no structured trust or fiduciary safeguards had been created. So at the time, California law did not require parents to preserve a child's earnings. Legally, parents owned any income earned by their minor children unless otherwise specified those regulations requiring trust accounts oversight of the earnings.
So it means that Jackie's lawsuit had to argue not just on legal precedent, but on moral grounds and implied contracts. So the case got underway. Jackie's lawyers they were able to show that his film contracts reported multi million dollar earnings. There were all those endorsement deals for the themed products, and then tax records showed these huge incomes for a decade.
Like one of the few times that like studio math is on your side, right.
Exactly, And so Jackie was like, look, I earned this money through my labor and performance. The funds had been mismanaged, depleted without my consent. I didn't know about any of this kind of spending like his parents, like I said, luxury items, furs, you know, gems, and they denied him financial independence. And then he testified, and this he had
all these witnesses. It seemed like a solid case. But his mom and stepdad's defense went back to common law that parents had a legal right to control the minor child's earning. They said that they provided for him, they owed him nothing now absolutely nothing, and that it was all a family enterprise.
Had wanted free work.
They're like, you know what, Jackie really enjoyed himself. He didn't think of it as work. He thought it was play, of course, and his mom said, quote no promises were ever made to give Jackie anything, and then she said he was quote a bad boy on top of it all. So the lawsuit used up all the money that Jackie did have, and in fact, he pretty much went broke
during the trial paying lawyers and whatnot. He needed cash badly, so he reached out to the only person he really felt he could trust, the person who saw the talent in him in the first place, Charlie cha Oh. Yes, Charlie Chaplin immediately spotted him one thousand dollars, no questions asked.
Because the one person is going to relate.
Yes, that's twenty three thousand dollars a day like here, Yes, but.
It has the power to actually do something.
It kept Jackie going, both financially and in spirits like you can do that.
And in the press that's an important place still that But.
This wasn't made public. It was all later in like a book about Chaplain's life that that came out so Chaplain wasn't like blowing his trumpet about it, like look at me.
Yeah no, I didn't think that, But I mean it would be like I'm going to help fight go into or whatever.
This is wrong, this take care of yourself. Yeah good, let's stop here. When we get back from these ads, I'm going to tell you how the lawsuit went.
Oh my god, it's finally the first breath of fresh air I had.
Jackie Coogan.
Oh my god, Jackie his story. Man, it's a heartbreaker, and thank you for that Charlie Chaplin moment, because we needed to put the fire out on my skin that he build it.
We needed that that Catharsis, Yes, is what we needed. So Jaggie Coogan sues his parents because they stole his money that he made as a child star. He wants millions, but there weren't millions left. He figured there should have been at least three million left of his earnings and that would be more than sixty eight million today. Remember, But it turns out that his parents, mom and stepdad, had burned through everything except for two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars I know. So they wound up settling out of court. With him for one hundred and twenty six thousand dollars.
They split what they had isn't yeah.
Which is the equivalent of like two point eight million today, And that was all that was left of what he'd earned, So basically he gets half. He also got some personal property like cars and jewelry, but like and some of the money was tied up in real estate. But either way, it was only part.
Of his own. He got the thousand van eye I hope so too. Kick her out of it. Come on, and that stepfather, Oh my goodness, you weren't even there.
And you weren't there, dude. It was only part of his earnings, but it was the best result possible given the legal framework.
Sure, I understand that, I mean yeah.
Unfortunately, so Lillian Coogan and Arthur Bernstein they never admitted wrongdoing. They kept ownership of the Coogan family home and other assets, and they were never criminally charged. So that was it. The public appalled. They were as disgusted as we were. Hollywood was sold the image of this lovable, precocious boy only to have this reveal that he's been like drained by these vampas.
And they were familiar with her because she was always doing the press.
She was all over the place. She was like, you know, when he was hanging around with Betty Grable at first she would say, Oh, he's too young to get married, and making all these comments like it was really weird anyway, So they're supposed to be protecting him. Instead they're taking everything. The public was like, someone has to do something about this,
Someone has to make this right now. They couldn't go back in time and change things, but they could make it better for the next batch of child actors.
Did the mafia come in? Gosh?
California State Assemblyman Charles H. Reel to faction. He introduced a piece of legislation in nineteen thirty nine, the California Child Actor's Bill, and that became known as Cougan's Law.
Oh yes, So.
The law requires a few things. One, a portion of a child actor's earnings originally fifteen percent but now higher has to be placed in a court administered trust called a Cougan account.
Totally.
I was familiar with the Cougan's Law. They mentioned it in Hollywood. You often hear it mentioned about the child actors. I always thought it was the studios who had screwed him, I didn't realize it was his own parents.
Yeah, so then it also requires a judge's oversight on contracts that involve miners in entertainment. A parent or guardian has to manage funds transparently and in the child's interest. And they've updated the law multiple times, like nine in twenty twenty twelve to tighten requirements and close any loopholes. That of course, like these these bad parents are going to figure out a loophole exploit it, then they have
to like rewrite a part of the law. That so, while it didn't retroactively restore Cougan's millions, it became a foundational legal protection for child performers across the United.
States protect a Hirley Temple.
Yes, this wouldn't save other child stars completely from being exploited by their parents. Like Shirley Temple right she did. She also saw most of her earnings go to her parents. It while not as publicly acrimonious as Cougan's case, she acknowledged that poor financial management left her with a very small fraction of her wealth. So like it kept by the Cougan's low stuff, but the much getting right right. Gary Coleman, the star of the TV show Different Strokes.
He sued his parents, then a former business advisor in nineteen eighty nine for misappropriating He.
Mentioned that to me while he was cooking Korean barbecue. I once worked with him. Okay, yeah, so when I was in Hollywood and I was doing cartoons, and uh, he was a star of one of the cartoons we were working on. There was this pilot and we went out to dinner and he was I always remember this. He's like on the table cooking the Korean barbecue. You know, Korean barbecue they have like the yeah, like the whatever the fires on the barbecue was at the table, like
on the tabletop. So he's like standing on his chair and like putting the mcmeat on my plate. And I was like, I love this guy. This is one of the craziest moments in my life. And he mentioned the Cougins law. That's why I thought it was the studio.
He won a one point three million dollar judgment against his parents and former business advisor, but he still struggled totally, you know, throughout his oa.
That's why he was doing cartoons for us. I mean like he needed to work. He always had to work.
There's Macaulay Culkin.
Oh, yeah, he got screw by s.
Yeah.
In the nineties, he was the highest paid child actor in HollyHood. He wanted emancipation from his parents during their divorce because he said that they were mismanaging the seventeen million dollar fortune he had. Corey Feldman, he has spoken openly about the financial and emotional abuse during his youth. He said that when he was fifth, by the time he was fifteen, he had quote virtually no money left
due to parental exploitation. And you know, he was also shoveled off to Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, as was Macaulay Culkin, which is a whole other crime scenario that we don't touch with a ten foot pole around these parts. That's zero percent, but it's just a pattern of exploitation. Drew Barrymore. She became legally emancipated from her parents when she was fourteen after she had this like chaotic upbringing.
With all the drugs and.
Her mismanagement, Like you know, her mom blew through it, and yeah, she was like carted around a nightclub studio fifty four. She did coke as a tween. If you read Little Girl Lost Her book wild anyway, So what of Jackie Coogan?
What happened to Jackie Cook'll tell you Saron.
World War two off him a second act of sorts. He enlisted in the US Army in nineteen forty one. He had had some pre war training as a pilot, and so he joined the Air Force. Served as a glider pilot in the China Burma, India theater.
Interesting.
Wow, his service was like courageous. He got respected, he got a medal. Everyone loved him for this. And then after the war he came back and he returned to acting as a character actor, and he worked steadily in films and on television throughout the fifties and the sixties. But he never regained a list status like he'd had.
Yeah, but he was able to work.
But he had a strong work ethics, really well liked in the industry.
Oh yeah. And then one day, I imagine.
One day something special happened. Sarin, close your eyes.
Oh my god, I told him. He stuck that one on me, Elizabeth, right, like sliding into home.
Here, I want you to picture it. It's spring of nineteen sixty four. You are a young production assistant at film Ways Incorporated. It's a studio that makes a lot of hit sitcoms. You've been assigned as a driver and sort of assistant for a new show that's filming at General Services Studios in Hollywood. This is exciting. You've only been on the job for a couple of months, but you've met so many stars. George Burns has an office at General Service Studios and you walk by it every day.
He kind of recognizes you now and greets you with hey kid when you pass each other on the lot. You've been sent out to pick up one of the actors on this new show. It's sort of an ensemble cast. He's a really nice guy. You weren't familiar with him, but he's just so pleasant and happy. You're driving down Santa Monica Boulevard. It's very early in the morning and traff of his light. You pass Highland Avenue and then
you turn right onto north West Palmas. As you glide the nineteen sixty two Fairlane five hundred into the studio lot, you nod at the security guard at the gate. You park the car and walk to the soundstage with this actor, Jackie Coogan. That's the guy. It seems a little nervous. His friendly face and big smile are contradicted by the
sweat beating on his balding head. His eyes dart around, taking in the last minute set construction and scatter of conversations and people walking quickly around you finishing up last minute tasks. He sees that you've clocked this. He turns to you and says, quietly, the first day of a shoot always makes me a little anxious. I never know what people will think of me, what they'll remember of me, what they expect of me. You tell him you're sure he'll knock him dead. He laughs, pats your back, his
eyes sparkle. You point the way to costume and makeup. Then you head over to the production manager to see if there's any other projects for you to complete. They call for the cast to come to the soundstage. A bell rings. You're looking at the set with its weird baroque piano, giant taxidermy, bear oddities, knickknacks, lush oriental rugs or taxidermy, and for some reason, a noose hanging from the ceiling. It's all reds and pinks and yellows. You know it'll be filmed in black and white, and you
wonder how that's gonna look. You feel a tap on your shoulder. You turn and it looks like death himself is standing there. It's a man, completely bald, sunken, almost bruised eyes. He wears a heavy black tunic with some sort of fur mock turtleneck to it. He looms over you and gives you a manic grin. Wait, you know that smile, mister Coogan. You ask, what do you think? Kid? He responds, you are blown away. You can't believe the transformation. He heads to the stage and takes his mark. The
director calls action. You hear Jackie Coogan deliver his lines and it doesn't even sound like him. He's so deadpan. He's fantastic, he's hilarious. He's Uncle Fester, and this is the new show that will debut in the fall, The Adams Family. You may be new to the biz, but you know a hit when you see one.
Oh my god, I love this so much made. Oh my god, I love that.
So Jackie is back to accolades a whole new generation of fans. Uncle Fester became an icon, and kids who had never heard of the kid now absolutely adored his like eccentric, bald headed uncle can character.
Oh my god, I've never known that's who it was.
That's who it is.
Too happy right now.
He kept acting into the seventies. He was on Like the Brady Bunch Hawaii five. Oh. He played Genie's uncle, Suleiman Maharaja of Basenjia on My Dream of Genie. In true Hollywood fashion, Jackie was married four times. He had three shorty marriages, all the actresses. Betty Grable in nineteen thirty seven. They divorced in thirty nine. In nineteen forty one, he married a woman named Flower Perry. They divorced in forty three. Then he married his third wife, Anne McCormick
in forty six. They divorced in fifty one. And then there was Dorothea Odetta Hanson also known as Dorothea Lamfir but best known as Dodie. Was a dancer.
Okay.
They married in nineteen fifty two and they were together for more than thirty years.
Yeah. So.
His grandson, Keith Coogan started acting in nineteen seventy five. His roles include the Oldest Son in Adventures in Babysitting and Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead.
Oh wow.
Yeah, so Jackie Coogan. He lived to be sixty nine years old. He died in March of nineteen eighty four. He wanted his funeral to be open to the public, and so a bunch of fans showed up and John Aston, who played.
Gomez but his son Sean Aston was a child actor and imagine that.
Yeah, John Aston delivered the eulogy at the funeral.
Great guy, what a class act.
Right.
His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is at sixteen fifty four Vine just south of Hollywood Boulevard.
Yeah right.
So though Coogan's Law, like as I said, it had been updated and expanded, exploitation in the entertainment industry remains a concern. But you know, his name indoors not just in the credits for the Kid or Adam's family, but in every miner's paycheck safeguarded by a trust fund.
Totally wow.
So he lost his fortune, but he protected generations of performers to come and he like nailed a legacy on that one. So Zarin, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
I don't know how you made me feel so good after being literally like blood boiling angry. You are quite a good storyteller. That's my ridiculous takeaway on this one.
What yours, Elizabeth, Well, I'm just I'm relieved that I didn't have to do the car crashes the picture. Yeah, totally, but you know, I really my takeaway is that, you know, we enjoy watching kids perform, and you know, we think about, oh, some of them are so fantastic. Others, you know, there's like you see a kid kind of pushed out there to play a part on a TV show and they're
so wooden, and then everyone criticized them. It's a kid, you know, but the the notion that they're like our little performing monkeys that the parents then a lot of times they don't have. That's their job is raking in the kids money.
And there's a lot of lesser than not quite stars out there where you have these parents, like if you just see them like working their children, it's not quite extras, but you know, like mid commercials and mid tier players. Yeah, and those stage parents are pretty horrendous to this day.
I mean I used to not like seeing them. I won't get into another story by the time in Hollywood, but I've known a couple who've gone on to be like big stars, and I saw them before they were big stars, and I always remember this one one they became Disney kids. They're twins. You could probably figure out who I'm talking about if you know the Disney kids. And their stepfather was a stunt man and he made sure to look out for them, and I was so
happy that they had them. And you can see the difference in their careers versus some of the other kids.
When you have to have such a sick skin to be in Hollywood in the first place, and to like put that on a kid, Yeah, to have that tough up and like, you know what it does to them and everything.
They're barely able to make sense to the world of adults and you throw and all the people are lying to them, trying to take advantage of them.
Yeah, so that's what it was a relief to find that Jackie Coogan made it out okay.
Totally and he got a hook up and look out for Wednesday Adams, you know. And I love this, that's.
Right, h you know what, I think I need a talk hell.
Yeah, oh god, I went cheap.
Good Morning, Elizabeth and Zaron just finished listening to the Sea Monkey episode and it brought back wonderful memories of six year old me who really wanted a joy buzzer. Mom wouldn't support that, so I snuck some dimes and nickels out of my allowance, put them in an envelope, snuck a stamp, put it in the mail, send it off. Never got my joy buzzer.
What a shock.
Mom felt bad that I was so disappointed in a victim of ridiculous crime. So she wrote an actual, real check, put it in envelope, send it off, and I got my joy buzzer. Life is wonderful. Thanks for them A great day.
Yes, I love that story. I had a joy buzzer. Those are the best as being a kid, being able to do the handshakes and you're like waiting for the look of surprise. Helly, you got robbed by them.
That's good for sharing that. That's it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky Instagram. We're on YouTube a Ridiculous Crime pod. You can email us Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, leave a talk back on the iHeart app. Oh zerin I don't know if you did. You see the message on the board outside that we won another.
Award what we did in the website. One for what it's.
Pipe Smoker of the Year, which is given out by the British Pipe Smoker's Council.
Heck, yeah, I know you are so.
Anyway, I thought you would enjoy that. I'm just taking care of little housekeeping over here. Pipe Smoker of a Year. Whatever you do, just reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Hollywood's First Child director Dave Cousten, starring Annals Rutger as Judith. Research is by America's Sweetheart Mursa Brown. The theme song is by Silent Film legends Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton.
Host wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred guests hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and Mister Andre. Executive producers are financial advisors for the Famous and Under ten set, Ben Boleen and Noel.
Brown Disquime Say It One More Times Crime.
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