The Wolf at the Door: Child Actors in Liminal Legal Spaces

Charlie Chaplin's The Kid (1921) launched little Jackie Coogan into stardom. The chemistry between the boy and the veteran actor was undeniable, but it was in the dramatic scene where policemen wrestled the youngster from Chaplin's "tramp" character that the young actor revealed his thespian prowess. In that scene, tears streamed down the child's cheeks; his face contorted as if in pain. With his little arms outstretched, palms up and fingers grasping, he desperately sought the comfort of his protector—a con-man and ne'er-do-well, but the only daddy the foundling had known. By the time that Chaplin yelled, "Cut!" the boy was nearly inconsolable; for the child, the difference between acting and authenticity was slight. America's movie-going audiences loved the film, and young Coogan became the industry's first major child star.

Over the course of his childhood career, Coogan amassed a fortune—roughly four million dollars—as candy, toy, and even peanut butter merchandising added handsomely to what he earned through acting and public appearances. As his financial worth surged with his rising star, his future seemed secure. Indeed, in 1927, studio teacher Rachel Smith praised the film industry as one in which child actors could gain skills and financial resources to ensure their future stability. To illustrate, she claimed that Jackie Coogan had amassed such a fortune that "he need never fear the wolf at his door."¹ As his twenty-first birthday approached in October 1935, Coogan (and movie-going audiences) anticipated that he would receive a sizable trust fund payout. But he was bitterly disappointed to learn that even upon reaching the age of majority, his mother held legal entitlement to his childhood earnings. After a two-year court battle in which he tried to recoup his millions, Coogan walked away with little more than $100,000, or just 2.5% of his childhood earnings. When questioned as to her claim of entitlement, his mother replied simply: "That is the law."²

My work examines childhood in liminal legal spaces—those places in which children were caught between the intent and practice of the law. I argue that legal liminality supported the perpetuation of the common-law practice of parental entitlement within the motion picture industry even as it declined in other sectors. I also contend that child actors themselves occupied a liminal legal space. Through their performances and public personas, child actors epitomized the modern sentimental childhood ideal that prized children for their emotional worth. This obscured the reality that child actors were employees who contributed to their family's financial wellbeing. Child actors were not classified as child laborers and were in fact exempt from the child labor provisions of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. But they very often were their family's breadwinners. The discord between their legal status as dependents, their non-status as laborers, and their de facto status as family providers made them particularly susceptible to the exploitation that was sanctioned by common-law practices. A focus on children in liminal legal spaces more fully exposes the implications of policies and regulations that ostensibly protected children. Issues concerning parental judgment, legal loopholes, and children's status emerge, revealing assumptions and practices that subordinated minors' rights to adults' interests.

By the twentieth century, the common-law precedent of parental entitlement to children's labor and wages had long been observed in the United States. It was recognized as a system of mutual obligation between parents or guardians and their children or wards. The parent (initially the father) was obliged to provide sustenance, shelter, vocational and religious training, and at least a rudimentary education, and in exchange he was entitled to the child's obedience, labor, and wages. The anti–child labor campaign inadvertently confronted this doctrine when the Keating-Owen Act passed in 1916. This statute placed limitations on child labor involved in production for interstate commerce. However, Roland Dagenhart (backed by opponents of federal child-labor legislation) challenged the new law when he claimed that it violated his right to his minor...