R.I.P. Baby Peggy: Last Silent Movie Star/ Longest-Lived Child Star

Thanks, Donna Hill, for passing along the sad news. The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Baby Peggy (Peggy-Jean Montgomery, born 1918) has passed on at the age of 101.

Peggy began her career as a child star in silent movies at the age of three (her father had been a stunt man and stand-in for Tom Mix). She was one of the top stars of the silent era, earning huge sums of money, and was one of the major fads of the 1920s. In 1925, due to a salary dispute, her father broke her contract with Universal, and she was out of pictures. For the next four years she was a big time vaudeville star in a turn that featured a comedy sketch and a dramatic monologue. When vaudeville died, she and her family struggled along as Hollywood extras until Peggy reached adulthood, married and quit the business in 1938. She later changed her name to Diana Serra Cary. Her most recent film was Broncho Billy and the Bandit’s Secret (2015), made by my friends at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum! 

Now, here she is with her co-star Brownie the Wonder Dog in A Star for Baby Peggy (1921):

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