Freddie Bartholomew | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Bartholomew inLittle Lord Fauntleroy (1936) | |
| Born | (1924-03-28)March 28, 1924 |
| Died | January 23, 1992(1992-01-23) (aged 67) Sarasota, Florida, U.S. |
| Education | Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1930–1951 |
| Spouses |
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| Children | 2 |
Frederick Cecil Bartholomew (March 28, 1924 – January 23, 1992), known for his acting work asFreddie Bartholomew, was an English-Americanchild actor who was very popular in 1930sHollywood films. His most famous starring roles are inCaptains Courageous (1937) andLittle Lord Fauntleroy (1936).
Bartholomew was born inLondon in 1924.[1] In 1934, for the title role ofMGM'sDavid Copperfield (1935), he immigrated to the United States at age 10, living there for the rest of his life.[3] He became anAmerican citizen in 1943, followingWorld War II military service.[4][5]
Despite his great success and acclaim followingDavid Copperfield, his childhood film stardom was marred by nearly constant legal battles and payouts, which eventually took a huge toll on both his finances and his career. In adulthood, after World War II service, his film career dwindled rapidly and he switched from performing to directing and producing in the medium of television.
Bartholomew was born Frederick Cecil Bartholomew[1][2][6] in March 1924, inHarlesden, in the borough ofWillesden,Middlesex,London.[1][6][7] His parents were Cecil Llewellyn Bartholomew, a woundedWorld War I veteran who became a minor civil servant after the war, and Lilian May Clarke Bartholomew.[2][8][9] By age three, Freddie was living inWarminster, a town inWiltshire inSouth West England, in his paternal grandparents' home. He lived under the care of his "Aunt Cissie" (Millicent Mary Bartholomew), who raised him and became his surrogate mother.[6][10] Bartholomew was educated atLord Weymouth's Grammar School in Warminster, and by his Aunt Cissie.[11]
In Warminster, Bartholomew was a precocious actor and was reciting and performing from age three.[12] By age five, he was a popular Warminster celebrity, the "boy wonder elocutionist", reciting poems, prose, and selections from various plays, including Shakespeare.[13] He sang and danced as well.[14] His first film role came at age six, in 1930.
He also pursued acting studies at theItalia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London,[15] and appeared in four minor British films. American filmmakersGeorge Cukor andDavid O. Selznick saw him on a 1934 scouting trip to London and chose him for the young title role in theirMGM film,David Copperfield.[16] Bartholomew and his aunt immigrated to the United States in August 1934, and MGM gave him a seven-year contract.[3][17][18]
David Copperfield, which also featuredBasil Rathbone,Maureen O'Sullivan,W. C. Fields andLionel Barrymore, was a success and made Bartholomew an overnight star.[19] He was subsequently cast in a succession of film productions with some of the most popular stars of the day. Among his successes of the 1930s wereAnna Karenina withGreta Garbo andFredric March;Professional Soldier withVictor McLaglen andGloria Stuart;Little Lord Fauntleroy withDolores Costello andC. Aubrey Smith;Lloyd's of London withMadeleine Carroll andTyrone Power;The Devil is a Sissy withMickey Rooney andJackie Cooper; andCaptains Courageous withSpencer Tracy.
Captains Courageous was the movie on which he most enjoyed working. The film took an entire year to make, and much of it was shot off the coasts ofFlorida andCatalina Island, California. He recalled, "For a kid, it was like one long outing. Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, Mickey Rooney, Melvyn Douglas and I; we all grew very close toward one another in those 12 months. When the shooting was finished, we cried like a bunch of babies as we said our goodbyes."[20]
His acting skills, open and personable presence, emotional range, refined English diction, and angelic looks made him a box-office favorite. He quickly became the second-highest-paid child movie star, afterShirley Temple.Ring Lardner Jr. had high praise for him, saying of his performance as the star ofLittle Lord Fauntleroy, "He is on the screen almost constantly, and his performance is a valid characterization, which is almost unique in a child actor, and, indeed, in three fourths of adult motion-picture stars."[21] Of his role as the protagonist ofCaptains Courageous,Frank Nugent ofThe New York Times wrote, "Young Master Bartholomew ... plays Harvey faultlessly."[22]
By April 1936, following the very popularLittle Lord Fauntleroy, Bartholomew's success and level of fame caused his long-estranged birth parents to attempt to gain custody of him and his fortune.[23][24] A legal battle of nearly seven years ensued, resulting in nearly all the wealth that Bartholomew amassed being spent on attorneys' and court fees, and payouts to his birth parents and two sisters.[2][25][26]
The extreme financial drain of his birth parents' ongoing custody battles prompted Bartholomew's aunt to demand a raise in his salary from MGM in July 1937, leveraged by the huge success ofCaptains Courageous. She threatened to break his MGM contract to find a better-paying studio. The contract battle kept him out of work for a year, causing, among other things, the postponement and eventual loss of his planned lead in a film of Rudyard Kipling'sKim, and the loss of his planned lead inThoroughbreds Don't Cry withJudy Garland and Mickey Rooney.[27]
He resumed acting in 1942, in mostly lesser-quality films and roles, only three of 11 of which were with MGM, and after 1938, he was less popular than in his heyday. The fall in popularity stemmed not only from the quality of the roles and his conflicts with MGM, but also from the fact that, by late 1938, he was a tall, nearly 6-foot teenager, and the fact that the world was focusing on the growing problems of World War II, thus the literary classics and costume dramas at which Bartholomew excelled were less in fashion.
In 1938,Twentieth Century Fox hired Bartholomew for the lead in its film of Robert Louis Stevenson'sKidnapped. MGM teamed him for the fourth and fifth times with Mickey Rooney inLord Jeff andA Yank at Eton, and he co-starred with Judy Garland in the lightweight MGM musical,Listen, Darling in 1938.
In 1939,Universal teamed him for the third and fourth times with Jackie Cooper inThe Spirit of Culver andTwo Bright Boys. ForRKO distribution, he performed inSwiss Family Robinson andTom Brown's School Days in 1940. As World War II deepened,Columbia had him star in three military-related films:Naval Academy,Cadets on Parade andJunior Army.
World War II military service interrupted Bartholomew's career even further. He enlisted in theU.S. Army Air Forces January 13, 1943, at age 18, and worked in aircraft maintenance. During training, he fell and injured his back, was hospitalized for seven months, and was discharged January 12, 1944.[28]
He had one film role in 1944, in the low-budget comedy,The Town Went Wild. The film reunited him withJimmy Lydon, with whom he had starred inTom Brown's School Days,Naval Academy andCadets on Parade. This ended up being Bartholomew's penultimate film performance, and his last for seven years. His efforts to revive his film career were unsuccessful; and efforts performing in regional theaters and vaudeville did not spark a comeback either.
In 1946, after distressing experiences, including a devastating auto accident and performing unsuccessfully in a play in Los Angeles, Bartholomew married publicist Maely Daniele. Daniele, six years his senior, was a twice-divorced woman, and his marriage to her caused a serious and permanent rift with his aunt, who moved back to England. The marriage was not a happy one.[29]
Also in 1946, he was in a radio play, in an episode ofInner Sanctum Mystery.[30] In 1947, he appeared as himself in a five-minute cameo in the otherwise all-Black musical film,Sepia Cinderella, relating his post-war efforts to have a successful vaudeville routine and telling a few gags onscreen. He spent most of 1948 touring small American theaters, and in November 1948, left without his wife for anAustralian tour as a nightclub singing, patter and piano act.[31]
On his return to the United States in 1949, and in rather desperate circumstances,[29] he switched to the new and burgeoning medium oftelevision. He shifted from performer to television host and director to television producer and executive. Preferring to be known as Fred C. Bartholomew, he became thetelevision director of independent television stationWPIX inNew York City from 1949 through 1954.[32] His final acting role was as a priest in the 1951 filmSt. Benny the Dip.
He divorced his first wife in 1953, and in December of that year, he married television chef and author Aileen Paul, who he had met at WPIX.[33] With her, he had a daughter, Kathleen Millicent Bartholomew, born in March 1956,[34] and a son, Frederick R. Bartholomew, born in 1958. The family, including stepdaughter, Celia Ann Paul, lived inLeonia, New Jersey.[32]
This was an era in whichadvertising firms created and produced radio and television shows. In 1954, Bartholomew began working forBenton & Bowles, a New York advertising agency, as a television producer and director.[32] At Benton & Bowles, he produced shows, such asThe Andy Griffith Show,[32] and produced or directed several televisionsoap operas, includingAs the World Turns,The Edge of Night andSearch for Tomorrow.[35][36][37] In 1964, he became vice president of radio and television at the company.[32]
Bartholomew and his second wife divorced by early 1977.[38] He remarried in February 1976, and remained married to his third wife, Elizabeth Grabill, for the rest of his life.[39]
Suffering fromemphysema, he retired from television by the late 1980s.[40] He moved with his family toBradenton, Florida. In 1991, he was filmed in several interview segments for thedocumentary film,MGM: When the Lion Roars. He died ofheart failure in Sarasota, Florida, in January 1992, at age 67.
The seven-minuteWarner Bros.cartoonThe Major Lied 'Til Dawn (1938) includes a caricature of Bartholomew as his Little Lord Fauntleroy role.[43][44]
He was also caricatured, along with many other Hollywood celebrities, in the eight-minute 1938 Disney cartoonMother Goose Goes Hollywood – in this case as his character from the filmCaptains Courageous.[45] As in the film, Freddie falls into the sea and is saved bySpencer Tracy's character.
Anon-alcoholic cocktail – a parallel of theShirley Temple – which combines ginger ale with lime juice, known as a "Freddie Bartholomew cocktail", is named for him.
Although his name is not mentioned, he is referred to in J. D. Salinger'sThe Catcher in the Rye, as a figure whom Holden Caulfield looks like – specifically, Bartholomew's most iconic role as Harvey Cheyne inCaptains Courageous (1937), referred to by the character Sunny as the kid in the movie "who falls off [a] boat".[46]
