Jackie COOGAN

"The most famous child in the world."

Americans love that the name of every being, every thing "at home" is embellished with a superlative, a Homeric epithet revised and corrected for use in advertising placards. But it is not only because they have this mania that they insist on telling us that Jackie Coogan is "the most famous child in the world."

The Americans here appear to be fierce followers of the truth: "Jackie Coogan is indeed the most famous child in the world" and this, not because his compatriots have endeavored to hammer this idea into our heads, nor because he is "worth" twenty million at an age when "little men" are commonly worth what their months of wet-nursing cost, the seat of their pants and what the hopes their parents placed in them represent, but because he has at his service the greatest popularity maker of our time: Cinema!

Can we still doubt the power of cinema, when we have seen Jackie Coogan received with the same eagerness, a miracle worthy of being noted and which would not have been greater for a benefactor of humanity at the Gare du Nord and at Notre-Dame? Discovered in the street by Charlie Chaplin, who was seduced by his face, both painful and mischievous, Jackie Coogan, from his first film, was famous, a miracle again! of a celebrity to which no frontiers stood in the way and which was perhaps more denied in our country than anywhere else, because in this "kid" we saw, a charming type of working-class childhood, a younger brother of Victor Hugo's immortal Gavroche.

Gavroche, Jackie Coogan is despite the receptions, the ovations, despite the glory! When he is in front of a crowd waiting for "the most famous child in the world", he is serious... but I saw him the other day between two receptions, he was at the edge of a sidewalk waiting for a car... the passers-by ignored him and he did not know that I was looking at him... Alert, lively, nimble, he was skipping and, with a bound, he jumped, laughing, onto the running board of the car before it had stopped...
A child! a real child! And perhaps that is the real miracle.

René JEANNE.