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Confronted in Los Angeles Superior Court last week with all this niggardly evidence, the Bernsteins put on a great show. Weeping wetly, Jackie's mother squalled: "I love my boy. . . . I've always tried to do the best I knew how for him." Without disputing the point, Jackie's lawyer pressed on to the real issue. "Is it your position," asked he, "that Jackie's fortune belongs to you?" Mrs. Bernstein hastily dried her eyes. "I believe that is the law," she snapped.
At week's end, with Mrs. Bernstein heartily protesting "I'd go through fire and water for that boy!", old friends, new friends and thousands of admirers were rallying to Jackie's cause. Veteran Actor Wallace Beery, an old friend of the Coogans, rubbed his chin reflectively and recalled that "not once, but many times, Jack [Coogan Sr.] told me that he had never used or intended to use a cent the boy earned. Every penny . . . was being put away and saved for him." In a caustic drawing deftly slugged The House That Jack Built, Cartoonist Rollin Kirby put the Scripps-Howard newspapers on record in Jackie's behalf.
To allow time for an accounting of the Coogan earnings, Superior Judge Emmett H. Wilson at week's end adjourned the case until May 2. But before he did so he outlined a sure-fire plan by which future child stars will be spared Jackie Coogan's plight. Since all contracts involving child players must be approved by the Superior Court, Judge Wilson announced that henceforth he will approve only those contracts that provide for placing at least one half of the earnings in trust funds payable to the children at or after majority.
Of Hollywood's current crop of cine-moppets, only one, curly-haired, British Freddie Bartholomew, stands in immediate danger of trouble like Jackie Coogan's. A pawn in the brisk and recurrent squabble between his parents and the aunt who has steered his cinema course, Freddie's anticipated $100,000 1938 salary is already more than 95% pledged for legal fees, taxes, agents' claims. Shirley Temple's money is being invested by her parents in annuities payable to her at intervals until she is 50. For plump, brattish Jane Withers her parents deposit $1,000 weekly in annuities and trust funds. Ripening Songstress Deanna Durbin has a $50,000 home held in trust for her, invests her earnings in special ten-year annuities.