Diana Serra Cary in 2012 (Image by Matthew Rettenmund)
Great Hollywood Reporter profile of Diana Serra Cary, formerly Baby Peggy. Correctly described by THR as the last living silent star (the last adult silent actor who'd appeared in starring roles was Barbara Kent), Cary, an avid chronicler of the Hollywood experience via her vividly written books, speaks poignantly of how her parents squandered the fortune she made as a child star:
For the next few years, Peggy supported her family by touring with vaudeville acts, even then a dying art form. Much of the $1.5 million already had been spent—on a 14-room house in Laurel Canyon, a $30,000 Duisenberg car, golf memberships for her father—although she says she doesn't blame her parents. “They did some silly things,” she says, “but they didn't do them viciously.” The last seriously silly thing her father did was buy a ranch in Wyoming, where he moved the family in 1929—right before the Great Depression. “He thought it was a solid investment, but it was six months before the stock market crash, and we lost everything,” she remembers. “The only place we could go was back to Hollywood. It was the only place that was still functioning.”
Her story in Hollywood is nearly singular, but her fate financially is all too familiar; down on her luck and having had the fortune of living so long, she's now dependent on the Motion Picture & Television Fund, which absurdly denied her request for aid.
Baby Peggy (Image from here)
Wouldn't it be nice if someone who earned the modern equivalent of $14 million per picture had a nice, fast nest egg?
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