Jackie Cooper's Celebrity Deaths

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

The death of former child actor Jackie Cooper ( not to be confused with the , somewhat less fortunate as an adult and , infamously , ripped off by his parents Jackie Coogan ) inspires me to start a " Celebrity Deaths - That , Um , Don't Have The Most Obvious Connectuions To Our Beloved Genre , As Those Folks Will Tend To Get A Solo Thread , Admittedly..." omnibus thread .

  Directly , Cooper played Perry White in the Salkind/Reeve series of Superman movies , and , as per Wikipedia , about the last thing he did in the directing of episodic TV series that occupied much of his later working years were episodes of the Salkind Superboy series...

  Cooper also starred in the CBS series Hennessy ( Probably the subject of a couple Dell FOUR COLOR COMICS issues anyway , wasn't it ????????? ) , enthused over by our Cmdr. Benson , and another B&W-era series , The People's Choice .

  In pre-TV days movies with ____ ____ made them something of a team

[Mark S. Ogilvie]

You wouldn't think that was the same guy who played Andy Hardy.


Richard Willis said:

I was impressed by one of his least-known performances, that of a less-than-nice jockey who should have been careful what he wished for in the Twilight Zone episode "The Last Night of a Jockey."

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...ANN B. DAVIS became the 2nd THE BRADY BUNCH death (Actually , I first thought " the first " - then , remembered Robert Reed's decades-ago youthful one . Oops . :-() ~ Now the covering up of the squares game may begin in earnest !!!!!!!!! .

  A piece I read quoting from VARIETY (but this machine is super-slow and freezing , can't re-check it , so if I'm wrong~) pointed out that Davis actually received higher billing than both Reed and Henderson in the series originally !!!!!!!!! I noticed this when I caught an early episode recently , furthermore , if you think about it , her Alice character is the last person to appear during the title sequence , and everybody turns their eyes to her when she appears !

  WAS she intended to be a much more major character originally, especially when the series was first planned (A ways ago I happened to see the pilot episode and was struck by how little the Brady Kids were ~ Of course , when that first episode was filmed , I suppose there wouldn't have been any more episodes filmed until after the show had been firmly bought and enough scripts written ~ Three months minimum , even if the pilot sold quickly ?) ?

  She had actually won two Emmys , for her supporting role in the 50s Bob Cummings TV series , THE BOB CUMMINGS SHOW (a/k/a LOVE THAT BOB !) , before , perhaps , the chemistry of the kid characters with each other and their growing into teens and pre-teens old enough to be shown as assertive persons having more a life of their own made them the focus of the series ? I recall that she was written about as having primarily left acting in her later years (beyond some quick money-making/perhps TBB nostalgia-focusing gigs , possibly) , taking up residence in a religiously-based " intentional community "/shared housing - She sort of emphasized " It's not a ' commune ' "...But I haven't read enough to find out whether she was still associated with it .

  Well , anyway , now Generation X can really start to feel a chill of mortality over their shoulder...And Sam the butcher is weepinginto his glass over his lost chance !!!!!!!!!

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

Alan "Sam" Melvin had already passed.

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...Not one of The Nine .

  Haaah , next you'll be telling me that Robbie Rist was anything but a Mopee !!!!!!!!!!!

  Ann's character is the CENTER of the box , shining upon/touching all in the title sequence...

  Hey , what if someone in the 70s/80s had attempted a new HAZEL series ???????????

PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod said:

Alan "Sam" Melvin had already passed.

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

You mentioned "Sam, the butcher."

[ClarkKent_DC]

Emerkeith Davyjack said:

  A piece I read quoting from VARIETY (but this machine is super-slow and freezing , can't re-check it , so if I'm wrong~) pointed out that Davis actually received higher billing than both Reed and Henderson in the series originally !!!!!!!!! I noticed this when I caught an early episode recently , furthermore , if you think about it , her Alice character is the last person to appear during the title sequence , and everybody turns their eyes to her when she appears !

Asked ...

Emerkeith Davyjack said:

  She had actually won two Emmys , for her supporting role in the 50s Bob Cummings TV series , THE BOB CUMMINGS SHOW (a/k/a LOVE THAT BOB !) ,

... and answered. With two Emmys, she would have been the most acclaimed person in the cast. 

[Richard Willis]

I vaguely remember the Bob Cummings Show from my pre-teen years. I think I remember Ann B. Davis from the show. I don't remember him in it, but Dwayne Hickman played Bob's nephew Chuck in almost every episode.

[ClarkKent_DC]

Some interesting notes about the life of Ann B. Davis here: "Ann B. Davis: 12 Things You Didn’t Know About the ‘Brady Bunch’ Star"

[Figserello]

They left out the best one.  Kurt Busiek on Facebook pointed out that Ann B Davis was the original inspiration for Pepper Potts!

More here.

[Captain Comics]

From dating Tony Stark to dating Sam the Butcher. O, how the mighty have fallen!

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...Clark: Well , yes , re Ann Emmys ~ But , especially for a supporting role , Emmy don't nessecarily automatically equal " top B. O." /perceived greater fame (Especially for a series , what , over 7 years in the past when TBB began ??) ~ Still , she DID have higher billing , initially...........

  CC: I guess I read somewhere that Alice became engaged to Sam , by the end of ~ some incarnation of ~ the series , though maybe never shown as married in any of the original-cast versions...........

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

Look at Ann here:

and Pepper here: