Child Actress at MGM in the 1930s Was 98

Cora Sue Collins, the charming child actress of the 1930s and ’40s who worked alongside such legends as Greta Garbo, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Irene Dunne and Merle Oberon during her brief but sensational career, has died. She was 98.

Collins died Sunday at her home in Beverly Hills of complications from a stroke, her daughter, Susie Krieser, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Collins played younger versions of Colbert in Torch Singer (1933), Frances Dee in The Strange Case of Clara Deane (1932) and Keep ‘Em Rolling (1934), Loretta Young in Caravan (1934), Oberon in The Dark Angel (1935) and Lynn Bari in Blood and Sand (1941).

“I must have the most common face in the world,” she said in a 2019 interview. “I played either the most famous actresses of the ’30s as a child or their child. They made me up to look like everybody.”

The MGM contract player also was William Powell and Myrna Loy’s daughter in Evelyn Prentice (1934); portrayed Amy Lawrence in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938); appeared in the original Magnificent Obsession (1935), starring Dunne and her personal crush, Robert Taylor; and was one of Davis’ students at an American girls school in All This, and Heaven Too (1940).

Garbo personally selected Collins to play her younger self in Queen Christina (1933), and the two appeared together again in Anna Karenina (1935). The reclusive star often invited Collins into her lavish suite on the MGM lot for afternoon tea — Collins drank milk — and they remained friends until Garbo’s death in 1990.

Collins also called Pat O’Brien “Uncle Pat,” went roller skating with Cesar Romero and was babysat by Lana Turner. After making about four dozen movies from 1932 through 1945, she called it a career.

Collins was born on April 19, 1927, in Beckley, West Virginia. Her mom brought her and her older sister to Los Angeles just before Collins turned 4.

“On the third day we were here, I went with my mother to enroll my older sister in school,” she told Danny Miller in a wonderful 2015 interview. “We were walking up to the entrance of the school, my sister and I each holding one of my mother’s hands, when this huge car came screeching up.

“A woman jumped out of the car and said, ‘Excuse me, would you like to put your little girl in pictures?’ Of course my mother said, ‘Yes!’ The woman said, ‘Get in the car with me, there’s a big casting going on right now at Universal.’”

They made it on their own to the studio, where Collins was quickly tapped to play Pudge in the 1932 comedy The Unexpected Father, starring ZaSu Pitts and Slim Summerville. “Wait till you see Cora Sue,” wrote one reviewer of her performance. “Just four, she walks away with everything.”

(Collins said producers were all set to hire Judy Garland but reworked the part for a younger actress after seeing her).

On the set of The Strange Case of Clara Deane (1932), she recalled, “I was supposed to cry in this one scene we were about to shoot. My mother was on set with me, of course, I was still very young, and all of a sudden, these two great big men came up behind her and literally dragged her off the set. She had no idea what was happening.

“I looked at the director and he said, ‘Well, aren’t you going to cry?’ And I said, ‘If you want me to cry, why don’t you just tell me to and give me a minute to think of something sad.’ That’s a true story.”

The next year, Collins portrayed Sylvia Sidney’s daughter in Jennie Gerhardt and was the main attraction at the premiere of Queen Christina at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, where she was accompanied by MGM chief Louis B. Mayer after arriving in a miniature coach pulled by Shetland ponies. (Garbo refused to do any publicity for her films.)

Collins signed a contract with MGM in 1934 for $250 a week — about $5,900 in today’s dollars — and appeared in 10 features that year, including Black Moon with Fay Wray, The Scarlet Letter with Colleen Moore, The World Accuses with Dickie Moore and Treasure Island with Jackie Cooper.

Signifying her value to the studio, she appeared as a harp-playing princess in The Spectacle Maker (1934), directed by John Farrow as the first Technicolor short ever made in the U.S.

In 1935, when she made another 11 pictures, Mayer threw her and veteran actress May Robson a birthday party — both were born on April 19 — and just about everyone on the MGM lot came by, from Joan Crawford and Jean Harlow to youngsters Cooper, Mickey Rooney and Freddie Bartholomew.

Collins was initially cast as Becky Thatcher in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer but had a growth spurt as MGM spent months searching for an actor to play Tom. She wound up taller than Tommy Kelly so was given the part of Becky’s rival, Amy.

In 1942, Collins got to portray a teenager — and a nasty one at that — in Get Hep to Love, starring Donald O’Connor and Gloria Jean, and she also starred on Broadway in Junior Miss.

She played the juvenile delinquent daughter of a court judge in Youth on Trial (1945) and appeared in Week-End at the Waldorf (1945), then retired from acting at age 18. “I wanted to enjoy the luxury of anonymity,” she said.

After being married to Ivan Stauffer, operator of the Clover Club in Hollywood, from 1943 until their 1947 divorce, Collins had three children with husband James McKay, owner of the Cal-Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe, before he died of pneumonia while on a hunting trip in 1962.

She then was married for more than 33 years to Phoenix movie theater owner Harry Nace until his 2002 death.

In addition to her daughter, survivors include her son, Trey, and her grandchildren, James, Kevin and Keith.

Talking about her heyday in Hollywood, Collins said: “I had a great time and met so many wonderful people but, to be honest, as far as I’m concerned, children should be cogs in a wheel, they should not be at the center.

“When an entire family revolves around a small child, it puts that child in a very odd position and gives her responsibilities that she really should not have at that age. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed being an anonymous housewife later on in my life!”