Baby Peggy – a Story of a Silent Film Star

Baby Peggy - a Story of a Silent Film Star

The Guardian just posted a wonderful expose about Baby Peggy, a child actor star from the early days of silent movies who worked with Edgar Burroughs on set of Tarzan.

In 1922, when Hollywood was young and anarchic, an actor known as Baby Peggy made a silent film called The Darling Of New York. Her career was booming and this was a major role, the movie pivoting on a scene in which she would be trapped – title-cards illuminating the horror – in a burning bedroom. On the day of the shoot, propmen doused their set in kerosene. Then they positioned Baby Peggy in the middle and lit everything on fire – including, the actor thinks by accident, the door by which she was meant to escape. Forced to improvise, she had to claw a way out across a burning windowsill, her performance later praised for its realism. Baby Peggy was four years old. “They said I was fearless,” she remembers. “Which was not true.”

Read the full story Here!

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