Cora Sue Collins, a Busy Child Actress in the 1930s, Dies at 98

[ad_1] Cora Sue Collins, who as a dimpled, chubby-cheeked little one actress within the early Thirties appeared reverse A-list stars like Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy and Merle Oberon, however who reduce her profession quick after being sexually harassed by a screenwriter, died on April 27 at her house in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 98.

Her daughter, Susie McKay Krieser, stated the trigger was problems of a stroke.

Miss Collins made about 50 photos over 13 years, together with 11 in 1934 and one other 11 in 1935. She was one of many period’s galaxy of kid stars, an inventory that included Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, however she didn't develop into as well-known as they did.

In her first film, the 1932 comedy “The Sudden Father,” she performed a waif whose newly rich adoptive father (Slim Summerville) hires a nurse (ZaSu Pitts) to look after her. Reward for 4-year-old Cora Sue got here rapidly.

A critic for The Richmond Information Chief in Virginia labeled her a “child star” with “wonderful appearing skill and an attraction that walks proper into your coronary heart.” The Kansas Metropolis Journal wrote, “The little Collins woman walks away with the image.”

Miss Collins performed Garbo as a baby in “Queen Christina,” the acclaimed 1933 film concerning the Swedish monarch. On the time, she advised one newspaper that Garbo “ was so pleasant and favored my new enamel lots.”

Her many different roles embody the daughter of Claudette Colbert in “Torch Tune” (1933); Myrna Loy and William Powell’s daughter in “Evelyn Prentice” (1934); and the youthful selves of Norma Shearer in “Smilin’ Via” (1932), Frances Dee in “The Unusual Case of Clara Deane” (1932) and Ms. Oberon in “The Darkish Angel” (1935).

“I will need to have had a quite common face,” Miss Collins stated in a 2014 interview with the web journal Movie Discuss. She added: “I performed everyone as a baby. I assume they might make me as much as appear like anybody. But I hope they weren’t paying me for nothing. Films have been extremely magical to me again then.”

She developed a friendship with Garbo, which started on the set of “Queen Christina,” continued when Miss Collins was solid as her niece in “Anna Karenina” (1935), and lasted by her visits as an grownup to Garbo’s properties in New York and Paris.

“Till she handed away, I known as her Miss Garbo and he or she known as me Cora Sue, which was right,” Miss Collins advised Movie Discuss.

Cora Sue Collins was born on April 19, 1927, in Beckley, W.Va. Her father, Younger Commodore Collins, and her mom, Clyde (Richardson) Collins, separated when Cora Sue was 3 (after her mom found that her father had given his secretary a mink coat for Christmas) and later divorced. Her mom took Cora Sue and her older sister, Madge, to Hollywood by prepare.

In a narrative that Miss Collins known as “the honest-to-God reality,” she stated that her mom and sister have been heading to register her sister at school when an enormous automotive pulled as much as them.

“A lady jumped out of the automotive and stated, ‘Excuse me, would you wish to put your little woman in photos?’” she stated in an interview with the web site Cinephiled in 2015. “In fact, my mom stated, ‘Sure!’ The girl stated, ‘Get within the automotive with me, there’s an enormous casting occurring proper now at Common.’”

They delayed going to the studio for a couple of hours till Madge had been enrolled. Miss Collins was solid in “The Sudden Father.”

A 1935 profile of Miss Collins in The Oakland Tribune reported that she had a 151 I.Q. and that she had been voted the preferred Hollywood little one actor by her friends. The writer of the profile, Marion Simms, was with the Collinses one morning when the actor Pat O’Brien, who had develop into Cora Sue’s good friend and whom she known as “Uncle Pat,” stopped by to take her to high school.

Miss Collins additionally labored with James Cagney in “Image Snatcher” (1933), Bette Davis in “All This, and Heaven Too” (1940), Colleen Moore in “The Scarlet Letter” (1934) and Sylvia Sidney in “Jennie Gerhardt” (1933).

As Miss Collins aged, her roles dwindled. Earlier than her seventeenth birthday, she stated, she was a sufferer of harassment when Harry Ruskin, a screenwriter at MGM whom she considered as a father determine, provided her an enormous position if she would sleep with him. She turned him down, began to cry and left his workplace.

“I might have given my proper arm to play that position,” she advised Movie Masters, a consortium of cinema historians and lovers, in 2024.

She reported Mr. Ruskin’s habits to Louis B. Mayer, the highly effective chief of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, the place she was a contract participant on the time. However, as she recalled, he stated, “You’ll get used to it, sweetie.” Quickly after, he threatened to maintain her from ever working in motion pictures once more.

“Mr. Mayer, that’s my heartfelt need,” she stated she advised him, including, “It was one of the best determination of my life.”

At Mr. Mayer’s request, she appeared in yet another movie, “Week-Finish on the Waldorf” (1945), whose solid additionally included Ginger Rogers and Lana Turner.

Miss Collins’s marriages to Ivan Stauffer, James McKay and Jim Cox resulted in divorce. Her marriage to Harry Nace Jr., who owned film theaters in Arizona, lasted 33 years and ended together with his dying in 2002. She grew to become often called Susie Nace throughout and after their marriage.

“It’s enjoyable to be a housewife in Phoenix,” she advised Movie Discuss. “I prefer it.”

Along with Ms. Krieser, whose father was Mr. McKay, she is survived by a son, Harry Nace III; a stepdaughter, Teresa Nace Cabebe; 5 grandchildren; and 6 great-grandchildren.

Seven many years after making “The Sudden Father,” Miss Collins remembered a scene from that film that concerned a bootlegger.

“I used to be being pushed round in a child carriage with all of those bottles of booze below me,” she advised Movie Discuss. “They put precise bottles there; I believe they have been stuffed with bathtub gin or one thing, and it harm like hell, however I used to be a really obedient little one and I didn’t inform them how damned uncomfortable I used to be!”