Child star a millionaire by age 4, broke by 14
Diana Serra Cary child film star
b October 29, 1918
d February 24, 2020
Diana Serra Cary was discovered by Hollywood when she was 19. Months, not years. By the time she was 2, she was a star, a loveable toddler who went by the name Baby Peggy. By the age of 4, she was making US$1.5 million a year, the equivalent of tens of millions today.
Known as ‘‘the million-dollar baby’’, she was the most popular female child star of the time – and was probably the last living genuine star of the silent era. There was Baby Peggy jewellery, Baby Peggy milk, and the young Judy Garland owned a Baby Peggy doll.
‘‘By 1923 I was getting 1,700,000 letters a year,’’ the former Baby Peggy, who has died aged 101, recalled. ‘‘We had five women fulltime working on the fan mail.’’
In a punishing schedule that took its toll on her health, Baby Peggy worked eight hours a day for six days a week, and was required to do her own stunts. At 5, she was the mascot of the Democrats’ national convention, appearing on stage with Franklin D Roosevelt. Then, when she was only 6, her film career came to an abrupt halt after a row over her salary.
Within a few years the money was gone, a result of her parents’ lavish spending, financial mismanagement, skulduggery by a business manager and the stock market crash.
At 4, Baby Peggy had been a self-made millionaire; at 14 she was broke. She returned to Hollywood, looking for work. No-one wanted to hire her, except maybe as an extra, although everyone still recognised her.
‘‘People would come up to me and say, ‘Oh, you were so cute. My, how you’ve changed’, and things like that,’’ she said in 1999.
She suffered an identity crisis and came close to a nervous breakdown after the collapse of an early marriage to which she committed largely to break free from her parents and from the image and baggage of Baby Peggy.
After the collapse of her film career she decided – at the age of 8 – to be a writer. She worked as a freelance journalist and cemented her credentials as an author and serious film historian with the publication in 1975, under the name Diana Serra Cary, of The Hollywood Posse: The Story of a Gallant Band of Horsemen Who Made Movie History.
It was followed by other well-respected books including Hollywood’s Children: An Inside Account of the Child Star Era (1978), which became the basis of a television documentary, What Ever Happened to Baby Peggy: The Autobiography of Hollywood’s Pioneer Child Star (1996).
She was born Peggy-Jean Montgomery in San Diego. Her father, Jack, moved to Los Angeles, where he found work as a stunt double. One day her mother, Marian, went with a friend to the Century film lot because the friend had to collect some wages. Marian took Peggy-Jean and her elder sister, Louise, with her.
Director Fred Fishback was looking for an infant to cast alongside Century’s canine star, Brownie the Wonder Dog. He spotted Peggy-Jean and decided she would be just right. Her first short was Playmates, which came out in 1921.
As well as finding favour with audiences, she was equally popular with film-makers. Her strict father applied the same rules to training his children as he did to training horses. She said: ‘‘My father would snap his fingers and say, ‘Cry’, and I would cry, ‘Laugh’, and I would laugh . . .’’ Among her many nicknames was One-Take Peggy.
Most of Baby Peggy’s films have been lost, largely through neglect. No-one is even sure how many she made, and some reference works have confused her with Peggy Montgomery, an adult silent star.
In 1938 she married Gordon Ayres, an actor she met while working as an extra. That ended in divorce and in the early 1950s she married Bob Cary, a commercial artist, who died in 2001. They had one son, Mark, who survives her.
‘‘In my 20s, I felt murderous toward Baby Peggy,’’ she said in 2012. ‘‘But later I made peace with her. That’s what every child actor should do. I’m so grateful I made that choice.’’