Edith Fellows

Edith Marilyn Fellows (May 20, 1923 – June 26, 2011) was an American actress who became a child star in the 1930s. Best known for playing orphans and street urchins, Fellows was an expressive actress with a good singing voice. She made her screen debut at the age of five in Charley Chase's film short Movie Night. Her first credited role in a feature film was The Rider of Death Valley (1932). By 1935, she had appeared in over twenty films. Her performance opposite Claudette Colbert and Melvyn Douglas in She Married Her Boss (1935) won her a seven-year contract with Columbia Pictures,

Columbia continued to cast Edith Fellows in juvenile leads, including Tugboat Princess (1936), Little Miss Roughneck (1938), and The Little Adventuress (1938). She also was the senior member of The Five Little Peppers (1939-40) in Columbia's series of homespun family stories. Toward the end of her tenure at Columbia she wrote an original story for what became her last Columbia picture, Her First Beau, and included a sidekick role for her offscreen friend Millie Lou. The script went into production, but Fellows received an unsettling surprise: Jane Withers was loaned out by 20th Century-Fox to play the lead, replacing Fellows as the star, and Fellows was reduced to playing "Millie Lou."

Fellows continued to make films through the early 1940s, but she was no longer a child, and demand for diminutive film actresses (she was 4 feet, 10.5 inches tall) was negligible. She also appeared in Uncle Willie, a stage comedy starring Menasha Skulnik that ran for several months in 1956 and 1957. The breakdown of her marriage in the mid 1950s led to a serious psychological crisis. While performing in a charity show in New York in 1958, she became paralyzed with fear and could not go on stage. A psychiatrist diagnosed stage fright and prescribed Librium. Fellows became dependent on the drug, along with Valium and alcohol.

The diagnosis marked the beginning of a downward spiral into dependence, interrupted briefly by a second failed marriage that ended when her husband tried to persuade her to return to acting. Penniless, Fellows took a series of jobs as an operator for telephone answering services while sinking deeper into alcoholism and depression. Apart from two minor uncredited roles in films, Fellows did not act again until 1979.

Recovery In the late 1970s, Fellows met Rudy Venz, a playwright and director at a Los Angeles community theatre. Venz learned of her story from his girlfriend, who worked with the former child star, and proposed the idea of turning her story into a play, inviting her to star in it. In 1979, Fellows returned to the stage for the first time in decades and appeared in Venz's stage production of Dreams Deferred, overcoming her stage fright. The experience inspired her to make guest appearances on the television series The Brady Brides (1981), Simon & Simon (1982) (as a telephone operator, ironically), Father Murphy (1982), Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983), Cagney & Lacey (1982–1986), ER (1995), and The Pursuit of Happiness (1995), which was her final performance. She retired from acting in 1995.

In her later years, Fellows lived in a courtyard apartment in Hollywood with her three cats. She died of natural causes on June 26, 2011, at the Motion Picture Country Home at the age of 88.

Selected filmography

Movie Night (1929, Short) - The Chase Daughter Madame X (1929) - Child at Puppet Show (uncredited) Shivering Shakespeare (1930, Short) - Girls Scared of Elephant Cimarron (1931) - (uncredited) Daddy Long Legs (1931) - Orphan (uncredited) Huckleberry Finn (1931) - Schoolgirl (uncredited) Wicked (1931) - Child (uncredited) Emma (1932) - Gypsy as a Child (uncredited) The Rider of Death Valley (1932) - Betty Joyce Divorce in the Family (1932) - Little Girl with Kite (uncredited) Once in a Lifetime (1932) - Flower Girl in Movie Wedding Scene (uncredited) Birthday Blues (1932, Short) - Girl with string in mouth Law and Lawless (1932) - Betty Kelley The Penguin Pool Murder (1932) - Little Girl at Aquarium (uncredited) The Devil's Brother (1933) - Girl (uncredited) Mush and Milk (1933, Short) - Orphan The Power and the Glory (1933) - Student (uncredited) Girl Without a Room (1933) - Child (uncredited) Two Alone (1934) - Rogers' Daughter (uncredited) This Side of Heaven (1934) - Felicia - Minister's Daughter (uncredited) The Life of Vergie Winters (1934) - Child Extra in 1910 Sequence (uncredited Cross Streets (1934) - Little Sister His Greatest Gamble (1934) - Alice - as a Child Jane Eyre (1934) - Adele Rochester She Was a Lady (1934) - Child (uncredited) Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934) - Australia Wiggs Kid Millions (1934) - Little Girl in Ice Cream Number (uncredited) Black Fury (1935) - Agnes Shemanski (uncredited) Dinky (1935) - Sally Keeper of the Bees (1935) - Jean Marie Meredith / Little Scout She Married Her Boss (1935) - Annabel Barclay One Way Ticket (1935) - Ellen And So They Were Married (1936) - Brenda Farnham Tugboat Princess (1936) - 'Princess' Judy Pennies From Heaven (1936) - Patsy Smith Life Begins with Love (1937) - Dodie Martin Little Miss Roughneck (1938) - Foxine LaRue City Streets (1938) - Winnie Brady The Little Adventuress (1938) - Pinky Horton Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1939) - Polly Pepper Pride of the Blue Grass (1939) - Midge Griner Music in My Heart (1940) - Mary Five Little Peppers at Home (1940) - Polly Pepper Out West with the Peppers (1940) - Polly Pepper Five Little Peppers in Trouble (1940) - Polly Pepper Nobody's Children (1940) - Pat Her First Romance (1940) - Linda Strong Her First Beau (1941) - Millie Lou Girls' Town (1942) - Sue Norman Heart of the Rio Grande (1942) - Connie Lane Stardust on the Sage (1942) - Judy Drew Criminal Investigator (1942) - Ellen Grey Lilith (1964) - Patient (uncredited) Mirage (1965) - Minor Role (uncredited) Between Two Brothers (1982, TV Movie) - Victim's Wife Grace Kelly (1983, TV Movie) - Edith Head Happy Endings (1983, TV Movie) The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1984) - Mrs. Wilson Riptide (1984) - Helen Howell In the Mood (1987) - Dorothy Long, Judy's Mother