Actor Jackie Cooper dies at 88

Jackie Cooper, the legendary child actor and a major force on TV for over half a century, has died. He was 88.

Cooper died from an undisclosed illness Tuesday at a Los Angeles hospital, agent Ronnie Leif said.

Cooper had an indelible impact on movies, first as a prominent child actor in the “Our Gang” movie shorts (known to modern-day TV viewers as “The Little Rascals”), then on TV, primarily as an esteemed director of “M*A*S*H” and as one of the most powerful people in Hollywood during the 1960s, when he ran Columbia’s TV production arm, Screen Gems.

He was a superstar in early Hollywood, earning a best actor Oscar nomination at age 9 for the 1931 film “Skippy,” the youngest nominee ever.

He also served in the Navy in the South Pacific during World War II — following a wild ride as a kid actor when he was romantically linked to Joan Crawford at age 17 and seemingly washed up by his 20s. He had a distinguished military career after his wartime service, serving in the Navy Reserve and appearing in a number of training films.

Like so many other screen actors and directors, Cooper stumbled into the new medium of television, appearing in dozens of series before landing a starring role in “The People’s Choice,” a late 1950s NBC comedy about an ex-Marine and his talking basset hound, Cleo.

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His next series was CBS’ “Hennesey” (1959-62), about a Navy doctor, which drew on his wartime experiences. 

Though both were well-regarded, they were also lightly viewed, and Cooper moved behind the screen as Screen Gems’ studio boss, later becoming a prolific director of dozens of series, including “The Rockford Files,” “The White Shadow” and “Cagney & Lacey.” 

One of his last big screen roles was Perry White, editor of the Daily Planet in four of the Christopher Reeve "Superman" films starting in 1978. 

But it was his childhood years that so completely established Cooper in the popular imagination.

Skippy, for example, was the kid who saved his beloved dog from a dogcatcher, but cried so bitterly in one scene that he later had to explain that the director (and his uncle) Norman Taurog had told him his own dog would be killed if he didn’t.

He played opposite Wallace Beery in 1931’s “The Champ,” as Dink Purcell, son of ex-champ Andy Purcell.

But as Cooper explained in an essay he wrote for the 2007 book, “80: Our Most Famous Eighty-Year-Olds Explain Why they Never Felt So Young,” “Beery was mean to me if I was on his lap, the minute the director said cut, he'd push me right off, even if it made me fall on the floor , ‘get the hell off of me.’ ”