Educational Media Reviews Online

In her autobiography Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy: The Autobiography of Hollywood’s Pioneer Child Star (St. Martin’s Press, October 1996), Diana Serra Cary, the former child movie star Baby Peggy, mentions a reporter’s question when she was being interviewed for a movie magazine at the age of three. “Honey, do you realize you’re the youngest self-made millionaire in the entire history of the world till now?” At the age of three she had earned enough to purchase an expensive residence in Beverly Hills. But, sadly her life did not turn out to be a fairy tale and Baby Peggy: The Elephant in the Room, the insightful documentary by Vera Iwerebor, provides us with the story of the first child actor in films to achieve great fame and then have her fortune pilfered by her family. Unlike many of the more contemporary child actors living in oblivion and substance abuse, Diana Serra Cary reinvented herself and became a respected author who was among the first to advocate for laws protecting child performers.

Through Diana Serra Cary’s recollections and insights, the documentary traces not only the life of Baby Peggy but the history of Hollywood itself and its treatment of child performers. While she was working as a book buyer in the 1960s Cary did research into her own career and that of other child performers. The result was her ground-breaking book, Hollywood’s Children, published in 1976. It perceptively revealed the tragedy of child performers throughout history including the 1970s.

The bonus features accompanying this documentary would normally not be considered “bonus”: they are important films that star Baby Peggy and more of a treasure than a bonus. They include the feature film, Captain January and three shorts, among them the stunning print of Carmen Jr. from the Danish Film Institute. Milestone’s addition of these films adds enormously to our understanding of Baby Peggy’s star power. The fact that some of these films have been found and rediscovered makes her contribution to the history of Hollywood all the more poignant. Highly recommended for film studies courses and anyone interested in child labor issues.