Edith Fellows

Edith Fellows was born on May 20, 1923, in Boston, Massachusetts. When she was a year old, she and her father and grandmother moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. As a toddler, Edith was pigeon-toed and had trouble walking, and one doctor suggested that dance lessons might cure this condition. At age four, Edith entered Henderson's School of Dance, where she was spotted by a man claiming to be a talent scout, who told her grandmother that he could get Edith into show business for a fifty-dollar fee. The dance school raised the money, but when Edith and her grandmother arrived in Hollywood, they discovered that the address the man had given them did not exist, and they realized he was a fraud. Stranded in Hollywood with no means to return to North Carolina, Edith's grandmother began doing housework to earn a living. While she worked, she left Edith with a neighbor and her young son. One day Edith was taken along when the neighbor's son had an audition for the film Movie Night (1929), and she ended up getting the part. Although she never become a child star, Edith appeared in many popular films of the 1930s, most notably Pennies from Heaven (1936). She also proved herself to be a very versatile actress, playing roles ranging from a spoiled rich girl, as in Heart of the Rio Grande (1942), to a poor orphan girl, as in Pennies from Heaven. Edith was even given her own series, The Five Little Peppers, while under contract to Columbia, and she made four of the Pepper films (the first was Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1939)) in two years. Between 1929 and 1954, Edith appeared in some fifty films, mostly in juvenile roles due to her short 4' 10" stature. But her career suddenly slowed down in the mid-1950s. Between 1955 and 1980, she appeared in only one film, Lilith (1964), in which she had a bit part. During this time, Edith chose to focus on her family life; she had married producer Freddie Fields in 1946, and their only child, daughter Kathy, was born in 1947. But Edith and Fields divorced in 1955, and the end of her marriage, coupled with other factors, caused Edith to have a nervous breakdown. She recovered, and in 1981, she returned to acting in numerous supporting roles on television. In 1985, fellow former child actor Jackie Cooper announced plans to make a TV movie based on Edith's life, but this project never happened.

Known For: Acting

Born: Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 1923-05-20

Died: 2011-06-26

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1929	Movie Night	Daughter	60
2	1929	Madame X	Child at Puppet Show (uncredited)	61
3	1930	Shivering Shakespeare	Girls Scared of Elephant	57
4	1931	Cimarron	(uncredited)	56
5	1931	Second Hand Kisses	Orphan girl	0
6	1931	Daddy Long Legs	Orphan (uncredited)	40
7	1931	Huckleberry Finn	Schoolgirl (uncredited)	80
8	1932	Emma	Gypsy as a Child (uncredited)	64
9	1932	The Rider of Death Valley	Betty Joyce	70
10	1932	Divorce In The Family	Little Girl with Kite	60
11	1932	Birthday Blues	Girl with String in Mouth	65
12	1932	Law and Lawless	Betty Kelley	40
13	1932	The Penguin Pool Murder	Little Girl at Aquarium (uncredited)	56
14	1933	Mush and Milk	Edith	68
15	1934	Two Alone	Rogers' Daughter (uncredited)	70
16	1934	This Side of Heaven	Felicia - Minister's Daughter (uncredited)	70
17	1934	Cross Streets	Little Sister	58
18	1934	His Greatest Gamble	Alice (as a child)	50
19	1934	Jane Eyre	Adele Rochester	49
20	1934	Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch	Australia Wiggs	60
21	1934	Kid Millions	Little Girl in Ice Cream Number (uncredited)	65
22	1935	Dinky	Sally	67
23	1935	The Keeper of the Bees	Jean Marie Meredith / Little Scout	60
24	1935	She Married Her Boss	Annabel Barclay	70
25	1935	One Way Ticket	Ellen	50
26	1936	And So They Were Married	Brenda Farnham	58
27	1936	Tugboat Princess	'Princess' Judy	0
28	1936	Pennies from Heaven	Patsy Smith	69
29	1937	Life Begins with Love	Dodie Martin	50
30	1938	Little Miss Roughneck	Foxine LaRue	0
31	1938	City Streets	Winnie Brady	0
32	1939	Five Little Peppers And How They Grew	Polly Pepper	62
33	1939	Pride of the Blue Grass	Midge Griner	60
34	1940	Music in My Heart	Mary O'Malley	62
35	1940	Five Little Peppers at Home	Polly Pepper	63
36	1940	Out West with the Peppers	Polly Pepper	57
37	1940	Five Little Peppers in Trouble	Polly Pepper	67
38	1940	Nobody's Children	Pat	0
39	1940	Her First Romance	Linda Strong	65
40	1941	Her First Beau	Milly Lou	50
41	1942	Hedda Hopper's Hollywood No. 4	Self	0
42	1942	Girls' Town	Sue Norman	0
43	1942	Heart of the Rio Grande	Connie Lane	80
44	1942	Stardust on the Sage	Judy Drew	50
45	1942	Criminal Investigator	Ellen	40
46	1964	Lilith	Patient (uncredited)	65
47	1968	The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell	Self (clip from "Pennies from Heaven")	61
48	1982	Hollywood’s Children	Self	0
49	1982	Between Two Brothers	Victim's Wife	0
50	1983	Grace Kelly	Edith Head	63
51	1985	The Hills Have Eyes Part 2	Mrs. Wilson	43
52	1987	In the Mood	Mrs. Long, Judy's Mother	55
53	1999	Alan Ladd: The True Quiet Man	Self	70

No.

Year

Title

Role

Vote Average

1929