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Jackie Condon: Peaked Early

The movie career of Jackie Condon (1918-1977) was over by the time he was 11 years old, but by that point he had appeared in 88 movies! Most of those credits were with Hal Roach’s Our Gang series from 1922 through 1929, but he also appeared in Jinx (1919) with Mabel Normand, A Convict’s Happy Bride (1920) with Alice Howell, Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921) with Mary Pickford, At Your Service (1921) with Sidney Smith, Penrod (1922) with Wesley Barry, and Dr. Jack (1922) and Girl Shy (1924) with Harold Lloyd. His last film was the Our Gang short Election Day (1929). Jackie is normally spottable amongst the gang by his unruly, long, matted mop of hair, rare for boys at the time.

Jackie was a tween by the time sound came to Our Gang, so he was dropped from the roster of urchins. He apparently tried to return to acting in later years without success. In 1953 he appeared on the TV show You Asked for It. For a time he worked in a defense plant alongside fellow Rascal Joe Cobb. 

Condon’s siblings Billy and Geraldine also worked as child performers, but much less extensively — they only have three film credits between them.

For more on silent film comedy, please read Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.