Happy Birthday baby Peggy Montgomery!

Born October 29, 1818, Baby Peggy turns 92 years old today.%0D\ %0D\ Baby Peggy is one of the last surviving Silent Film stars. Discovered at 19 months, she was a genuine STAR, and for a few years, a potent force at the box office.%0D\ %0D\ It is reported that at the height of her fame, she was earning $1 million per year. While this is probably hyperbole, she earned a lot of cash.%0D\ %0D\ By 1924, her career was essentially over, and over the next few years, her parents squandered ther fortune. By the early 1930''s, Baby Peggy was reduced to doing uncredited walk-on parts in minor movies.%0D\ %0D\ However, this movie story has a happy ending. In a surprising turn of events, Peggy established herself as a respected writer and publisher!%0D\ %0D\ Happy Birthday Baby Peggy!

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0045133/


Enid Nelson
• You meant to type 1918. She may be old but she wasn''t born the same year as Mary Todd Lincoln. %0D\ %0D\ Poor Baby Peggy was a huge star whose career was essentially over by the time she was old enough to be aware that she was a film star.

• As an adult-

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• TCM ran an excellent documentary last night about her life, [italic]Baby Peggy: The Elephant in the Room.[/italic] She's sharp as a tack at 94 and has been enjoying something of a resurgence, with renewed interest in her work among European film buffs. (Only about a dozen of her movies survive.) I love that she made a conscious decision not to be bitter about her past and set out to reinvent herself as a writer and film historian. One of her contemporaries, Baby Marie Osborne, had a similar story. Washed-up at 8 and screwed over by adoptive parents who pissed away her fortune, she created a successful adult career as a movie costumer, most notably managing Elizabeth Taylor's wardrobe for [italic]Cleopatra.[/italic] She died a couple of years ago at 99.

• About ten years ago I sent her a movie magazine from her era with a piece on her in it, since I knew she had lost all her own memorabilia, and I got a nice letter back. Sweet lady.

• Rose Marie (of Hollywood Squares and the Dink Van Dyke Show) also started out as a Hollywood "baby" and filmed a few Vitaphone shorts as Baby Rose Marie. I think pedos must have run Hollywood back in the day.

• Poor Peggy was screwed over by her relatives twice. She made them a couple of fortunes and the family used it all up or stole it from her and she was left with practically nothing. I was struck by how much she resembled Jane Withers as a kid. Peggy's older sister really got the short end of the stick once Peggy hit it big. I felt sorry for Peggy as she was talking about how they grew apart as they got older, but then that letter from her sister seemed like a nice reconciliation bid.

• [quote]Peggy's older sister really got the short end of the stick once Peggy hit it big. Yeah, I immediately thought of Baby Jane and Blanche when she was discussing that. I got the feeling that her immediate family wasn't really willfully greedy and selfish so much as they were just hopeless about managing money.