This obituary first caught my attention because I grew up watching old, old reruns of the "Our Gang" movies and shorts (both because our local station alternate them with the Three Stooges and because my father pressed me to watch them, in his never-ending quest for his children to understand his own Depression-era childhood). Unlike Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat, or even the pre-murderous Robert Blake, little Shirley Jean never made a huge impact on me. I wouldn't have remembered her face (that's her on the far right), much less her name.
But reading her obit provides a fresh glimpse into how little the lives of Hollywood's child stars have really changed. Discovered in a "beautiful baby" contest at 18 months, Rickert was pushed into show business by her mother, eventually landing a role in the "Our Gang" crew at age four. She acted in five of the Hal Roach-produced comedies in 1931, before the big stars joined the troupe (her fellow rascals included Wheezer, Chubby, and Stymie). She went on to star with Mickey Rooney in the Mickey McGuire series, playing a character named Tomboy Taylor.
When the movies fizzled for her, she found work as a burlesque dancer, billed as Gilda and Her Crowning Glory for her long blonde hair. She told fans that she "would appear on a kiddie TV show on Saturday morning as Shirley Jean
of the Our Gang/Little Rascals and disrobe on stage at night for the
little kiddies' parents."
Today's former child stars, when they flame out, end up on one of VH1's celebreality shows, or perhaps on the Sober Living House. In the 1950s, options were more limited. After stripping, Rickert worked as a bartender and a hardware salesperson. Of her life in show business, she told a 1999 interviewer, it was never her idea.
"We had fun," she said. "The mothers on the other hand, were awful. Stage mothers are just vile women, including my own."
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