Jackie Cooper, 88, child star

LOS ANGELES - Jackie Cooper, 88, whose tousled blond hair, pouty lower lip, and ability to cry on camera helped make him one of the top child stars of the 1930s in films such as Skippy and The Champ, died Tuesday at a nursing facility in Santa Monica, Calif., after a brief illness.

Mr. Cooper grew up to become a successful TV star in the 1950s, a television studio executive in the '60s, and an Emmy Award-winning director in the '70s.

A former Our Gang cast member who began his Hollywood career as an extra in silent movies at age 3, Mr. Cooper shot to stardom at 8 playing the title role in Skippy, the 1931 film based on a popular comic strip about a health inspector's son and his ragamuffin pal, Sooky.

The film, in which Mr. Cooper had three signature crying scenes, earned him an Academy Award nomination for best actor in a leading role. Lionel Barrymore won the Oscar that year and Mr. Cooper had only a vague memory of the ceremony: He fell asleep on actress Marie Dressler's lap.

Cast four times with crusty Wallace Beery, Mr. Cooper most memorably played the loyal son of fallen boxer Beery in The Champ (1931) and young Jim Hawkins opposite Beery's Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934).

Known as "America's Boy" during his MGM heyday, Mr. Cooper received the full star treatment.

He chronicled the highs and lows of his career in his candid 1981 autobiography, Please Don't Shoot My Dog, written with Dick Kleiner.

The book's title refers to a traumatic incident on the set of Skippy, which was directed by Mr. Cooper's uncle, Norman Taurog.

When young Jackie was unable to summon tears for a big crying scene, Taurog threatened to remove the boy's small dog from the set and take it to the pound. The incident ended with Cooper believing his dog had been shot by a security guard.

"I could visualize my dog, bloody from that one awful shot," Cooper wrote. "I began sobbing, so hysterically that it was almost too much for the scene. [Taurog] had to quiet me down by saying perhaps my dog had survived the shot, that if I hurried and calmed down a little and did the scene the way he wanted, we would go see if my dog was still alive."

Only after doing the scene as best he could did Mr. Cooper learn that his dog was unharmed. He also saw Taurog, the guard, and Mr. Cooper's grandmother grinning over their successful deception.

John Cooper Jr. was born in Los Angeles on Sept. 15, 1922. His mother, Mabel, was a piano accompanist who had worked in vaudeville. His father, himself a piano player and a songwriter, was running a music store when they met; he walked out on his wife and son before Jackie was 2.

After his father's departure from the family, Mr. Cooper's financially strapped mother went on the road in vaudeville and Jackie lived with his maternal grandmother.

To supplement the money Mabel sent home, Jackie's grandmother joined other people standing at the gates of the movie studios hoping to get jobs as extras.

After auditioning for Hal Roach, the producer of the Our Gang comedies, Mr. Cooper was signed to a $50-a-week contract. Between 1929 and 1931, he appeared in 15 Our Gang comedies.

After his role in Skippy in 1931, Mr. Cooper was signed to a contract with MGM.

Mr. Cooper's career was on a downswing when he joined the Navy in World War II. Having become an adept drummer as a teenager, he spent part of the war playing drums in a band formed by former civilian bandleader Claude Thornhill that played bases in the South Pacific.

Returning home after the war, Mr. Cooper was a virtual Hollywood has-been at 23.

He decided to move to New York in 1948 and begin all over again in the theater.

A year later, he made his Broadway debut in the drama Magnolia Alley. The play closed after only a few performances but helped establish him as a stage actor.

The same year, he was signed to play Ensign Pulver in the road company of the hit Broadway play Mr. Roberts, followed by playing Pulver in the London company.

By 1954, Mr. Cooper also had become a successful amateur race-car driver and had been married and divorced twice: to onetime movie bit player June Horne, with whom he had a son, John Anthony, and to New York actress Hildy Parks. Shortly after he and Parks were divorced in 1954, Mr. Cooper married Barbara Kraus, with whom he had three children, Russell, Julie and Cristina.

In 1964, he became vice president in charge of West Coast operations of Screen Gems.

He devoted his professional life to directing in the '70s and '80s. He won his first Emmy in 1974 for directing an episode of M*A*S*H and his second Emmy in 1979 for directing the pilot of The White Shadow.