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Cora Susan Collins (born April 19, 1927) is an American former child actress who appeared in films during the Golden Years of Hollywood. Although she did not make the transition to adult star, she appeared in 47 films in total.
Early life and career
Cora Susan Collins was born on April 19, 1927, in Beckley, West Virginia. She later moved to Los Angeles, California, along with her mother and older sister. Collins made her acting debut in The Unexpected Father in 1932 at the age of five. She starred opposite Slim Summerville and ZaSu Pitts, playing Summerville's adoptive daughter. She appeared in the American romantic drama Smilin' Through (1932), starred Norma Shearer, Fredric March, and Leslie Howard. It was a remake of a silent film of the same name made a decade earlier, and Collins had a minor role as Shearer's character Kathleen Wayne as a young girl. Smilin' Through was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture for 1932, but did not win. In total, Collins appeared in five motion pictures in 1932, mainly as a supporting cast member. The films were made by different studios, such as MGM, Paramount, and Universal.
In 1933, Collins' career continued to consist mostly of playing either the leading lady's daughter, or the leading lady herself in a flashback scene. For instance inTorch Singer, she played Claudette Colbert's daughter Sally Trent, age five. (Because both mother and daughter had the same name in the film, she is often mistakenly identified as playing Colbert as a child, but Colbert’s character never appears as a child in the film.) Another example is when she was cast as Queen Christina as a child in the MGM biographical film of the same name starring Greta Garbo. Queen Christina was well-received by film critics at the time. She had a small part as the daughter of a farmer in The Prizefighter and the Lady, for which its main writer Frances Marion was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Story.
In 1934, Collins had a supporting role in the horror film Black Moon. She featured in Colleen Moore's last film, The Scarlet Letter. She was cast as William Powell and Myrna Loy's characters' daughter Dorothy in Evelyn Prentice, which despite its leads was not part of The Thin Man franchise. In The World Accuses she had a rare billing in the movie poster. Produced by the small studio Chesterfield Pictures, the film also features fellow child actor Dickie Moore, whom she would appear with later that year in Little Men. In the 1980s, Moore interviewed her among many other child actors for his book Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star: But Don't Have Sex Or Take the Car. She played a princess in John Farrow's 21-minute MGM short The Spectacle Maker. It was Farrow's directorial debut and was filmed in full three-strip Technicolor. Collins' reported salary in 1934 was $250 per week (equivalent to $5,694 in 2023).
Collins was initially cast as Becky Thatcher in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), but her role was changed to Amy Lawrence because she was considered to be too tall for Tommy Kelly. She said that writer Harry Ruskin, 33 years her senior, tried to force her to have sex with him in exchange for a good role at age 15. She refused and told Louis B. Mayer about what had happened, who was nonchalant and dismissive about it. One of her rare leading roles was in the 1945 drama film Youth on Trial, in which she played the juvenile delinquent daughter of a court judge. Her last movie appearance was in 1945, after which she retired from show business at the age of 18.
Personal life
Around 1944, Collins married Ivan Stauffer, a wealthy rancher from Nevada. In 1960, robbers stole two mink coats from her home while she was on vacation. Around 1961, she married James Morgan Cox. In a 1996 article, Collins was referred to as Susie Nace and lived in Phoenix, Arizona. Her husband at the time was theatre owner Harry Nace, who died in June 2002 at the age of 87. Having appeared with Greta Garbo in two films, Collins and Garbo remained in contact until Garbo's death in 1990.
Filmography
References
Further reading
Dye, David (1988). Child and Youth Actors: Filmography of Their Entire Careers, 1914-1985. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., p. 35.
Best, Marc (1971). Those Endearing Young Charms: Child Performers of the Screen. South Brunswick and New York: Barnes & Co., p. 35-39.
Willson, Dixie (1935). Little Hollywood Stars. Akron, OH, and New York: Saalfield Pub. Co.
External links
Cora Sue Collins at IMDb
Cora Sue Collins at Rotten Tomatoes
Cora Sue Collins at AllMovie
Cora Sue Collins at the TCM Movie Database
