Edith Fellows

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Edith Marilyn Fellows (born May 20, 1923 in Boston , Massachusetts , † June 26, 2011 in Woodland Hills , California ) was an American actress who began her career as a child star.

Life

Edith Fellows was born in Boston in 1923, the only child of Willis and Harriet Fellows. The mother left the family only a few months later. When Fellows was two years old, she moved to Charlotte , North Carolina with her father and grandmother, Elizabeth Fellows . At the age of four she attended a dance school, where she was discovered by an alleged talent scout. He assured her grandmother that he could turn the little girl into a child star in Hollywood . As Edith Fellows, however, with her grandmother in Los Angelesarrived, it turned out that the man was an impostor. Since her grandmother had no money for the return trip to North Carolina, they stayed in Los Angeles, where Fellows' grandmother worked as a cleaning lady and housemaid while her granddaughter was looked after by neighbors.

Through the neighbors' son, who was employed as an extra in the film, Fellows finally got into show business and played her first film role in 1929. Her grandmother took Fellows 'career into her own hands and from then on forbade her granddaughter to have any contacts that could stand in the way of her career, including Fellows' father, who had since moved to California. When Fellow's mother suddenly appeared on the scene in the mid-1930s and wanted to gain access to her daughter's income, a custody battle erupted that made headlines in the US newspapers in the summer of 1936. Fellows' mother alleged that her daughter was abducted by her mother-in-law and that the father wanted to sell the girl to a dance school for $ 5,000. However, the court granted custody of the grandmother. The money Fellows made filming was invested.

Although Fellows never became a big child star like Shirley Temple or Mickey Rooney , she was still able to prove herself in various roles, such as B. as a spoiled girl in Heart of the Rio Grande (1942) or as a poor orphan in Pennies from Heaven (1936) alongside Bing Crosby . The latter role finally brought her a contract with Columbia Pictures , whereupon she played the first or second female leading role in a number of B-films , including 1940 in Music in My Heart on the side of Tony Martin and Rita Hayworth . Between 1929 and 1942, the actress, who is only 1.47 meters tall, appeared in more than 50 films. When Fellows came of age and wanted to use her invested money, probably more than $ 100,000, she got only $ 900 and 60 cents. Where the rest of the money was left could not be found out, especially since Fellow's grandmother had died a few years earlier. She then largely withdrew into private life and was seen three times on New York Broadway from 1943 to 1957 and in a few American television shows. She suffered from severe stage fright and ended up taking medication on which, like alcohol, she quickly became addicted. She now earned her living as a telephone operator .

In the late 1970s, a friend of Fellows 'wrote the play Dreams Deferred , which was based on Fellows' life and in which Fellows was to play the lead role at his request. After performing in a Los Angeles theater, Fellows received new role offers. In the 1980s she finally stood in front of the camera again, mostly playing supporting roles in television series, such as in Cagney & Lacey (1982–1986), Agentin mit Herz (1983), Trio mit vier Fäusten (1984) and Mr. Belvedere ( 1987). In 1985, actor and director Jackie Cooper , who had also started his career as a child star, announced that he would make a television movie based on Edith Fellows' life. However, the project has not yet been implemented.

From 1946 she was married to the producer Freddie Fields . This connection resulted in daughter Kathy in 1947. When the relationship ended in divorce in 1955, Fellows suffered a nervous breakdown. After she recovered from this, she married her second husband, Hal Lee, in 1962, from whom she later divorced. In 1995 Edith Fellows retired from show business for good and lived in Woodland Hills, California until her death in 2011.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Margalit Fox: Edith Fellows, a 1930s Child Star Trailed by Dickensian Woes, Dies at 88 . In: The New York Times , July 2, 2011.
  2. ↑ Carmel Dagan: Child star Edith Fellows dies at 88 ( Memento of November 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). In: Variety , June 29, 2011.
  3. ↑ a b Edith Fellows in the All Movie Guide (English)
personal data
SURNAME Fellows, Edith
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fellows, Edith Marilyn
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH June 26, 2011
Place of death Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) , California