02-05-2025
Cora Sue Collins obituary: child actor in 1930s Hollywood
A large part of Cora Sue Collins's success lay in her uncanny ability to cry on demand. Yet being a child actor in the golden age of Hollywood had its challenges. On the set of The Strange Case of Clara Deane — the 1932 film in which she made her name, in which she played Frances Dee's younger self, a girl left in an orphanage after her mother is arrested — the director ordered two large henchmen to drag her real mother off set while the cameras were rolling. 'Aren't you going to cry?' the director asked. The dimple-cheeked four-year-old replied that if he wanted her to cry, all he had to do was ask politely.
If Collins acted with surprising maturity, it was because
