Junior Coghlan

Coghlan was born in New Haven, Connecticut, but his parents moved to Hollywood when he was still a baby. His father was a doctor, and in "Who's Who on the Screen" for 1932 he hoped to be a doctor, too, when he grew up. Coghlan began appearing in motion pictures in 1920 as an extra and worked his way up to more important roles. He later boasted that he had been gainfully employed since age three. The freckle-faced Coghlan was billed as "Junior Coghlan" and became one of Hollywood's most popular child stars. Film historian Leonard Maltin said, "He was one of the busiest child actors of the late '20s and 1930s. He was a fresh, freckle-faced boy with great All-American-type appeal." By age 11, Coghlan was asking to play grownup roles. A newspaper article at the time reported that Coghlan, "like every other young and red-blooded American, desires to arrive at manhood as soon as possible. Long trousers is what he wants, but the motion picture claims him and demands that he stay in knee breeches." Coghlan's final film on his four-year DeMille-Pathe contract was 1929's military academy drama Square Shoulders. Conceived as a silent film, Square Shoulders was transformed into a "talkie" by the expedient of adding sound to the final reel. Only the silent version is known to survive. A 1929 newspaper story on Coghlan noted that the twelve-year-old actor was "recognized by the motion picture public as the leading juvenile screen player in the world." Talking pictures With the arrival of the talking pictures, Coghlan continued to be one of the most popular juvenile actors. In the classic 1931 gangster film The Public Enemy, Coghlan played the role of James Cagney's character, Tom Powers, as a boy. In the 1931 screen version of Booth Tarkington's Penrod and Sam, Coghlan starred as Sam, with Leon Janney playing Penrod. In 1932, Coghlan appeared in the Bette Davis drama ''Hell's House''. Davis played the girlfriend of Pat O'Brien's bootlegger character. Coghlan played the role of Shorty, a sickly boy who was sent to a state industrial school where children were forced to work at hard labor, ending up in solitary confinement. Coghlan had another starring role in the 1932 film serial The Last of the Mohicans, based on the James Fenimore Cooper novel. Coghlan played the part of Uncas, the sachem of the Mohegan tribe who through an alliance with the English made the Mohegans the leading regional Indian tribe. He helped launch the career of Shirley Temple, appearing in a series of short films with her in 1933 and 1934. In the shorts, Coghlan played Sonny Rogers, a star baseball player and high school class president. Temple played Coghlan's pesky younger sister, Mary Lou. The Coghlan-Temple titles included Merrily Yours, ''What's to Do?, Pardon My Pups, and Managed Money''. Coghlan also had large roles in other features through the mid 1930s, including Kentucky Blue Streak, a 1935 crime drama about a jockey who was wrongfully imprisoned and escapes to ride in the Kentucky Derby; The Little Red Schoolhouse, a 1936 drama in which Coghlan plays the lead role, a 17-year-old who runs away to New York City; and Red Lights Ahead, a 1936 comedy in which he plays the son of an eccentric father who invests in a gold mining scheme. In 1939, Coghlan starred in Blazing Barriers, one of the last roles in which he was billed as Junior Coghlan. He played a young hoodlum from the city who hides out at a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the mountains. A newspaper story described the physical challenges that faced Coghlan in the role: "If you think being a screen star is a lot of fun, just ask Frank 'Junior' Coghlan." For two days, Coghlan had to pick up Milburn Stone, an actor 50 pounds heavier than Coghlan, and run about 200 yards. In another scene, Coghlan had to jump into a creek and rescue Edward Arnold, Jr. Although both could swim, director Aubrey Scotto wanted realism, and each time Coghlan would try to save the Arnold, "both would sink and come up sputtering for breath." In a third scene, Coghlan went into the boxing ring with another actor. The newspaper article noted: ==Gone with the Wind==