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 Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 9:15 am |
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Frank Coghlan Jr., Child Actor of Silent Era, Dies at 93
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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy DENNIS HEVESI
Published: October 3, 2009
Frank Coghlan Jr., a freckle-faced child actor of silent movies who in
the sound era thrilled Saturday matinee audiences by shouting
“Shazam!” and mutating into the superhero Captain Marvel, died on
Sept. 7 at his home in Saugus, Calif. He was 93.
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He died of natural causes, his son, Patrick, said.
Junior Coghlan, as he was usually billed, did not actually become
Captain Marvel in the 12-part serial “Adventures of Captain Marvel,”
which Republic Pictures released in 1941. He played Billy Batson, the
boy who meets a shaman in Siam who teaches him to transform himself
into the superhero.
It was actually Tom Tyler who emerged as Captain Marvel, after Billy’s
“Shazam!” moment, a giant flash and a billow of white smoke. (Although
Mr. Coghlan was 25 at the time, his youthful looks and rather high-
pitched voice allowed him to play the younger character.) Billy the
boy and Captain Marvel, in a tight red costume with a yellow lightning
bolt on the chest, would morph back and forth during the episodes,
each 15 to 20 minutes long.
“It’s considered by many aficionados as the best cliffhanger serial of
all time,” Bruce Goldstein, the director of repertory programming at
Film Forum, the movie house in the South Village, said in an
interview. “What a great fantasy for kids: a kid who turns into a
superhero.”
Junior Coghlan had already made his name in movies when he was really
a child. Starting at 3 as a crawl-on in a Western serial called
“Daredevil Jack,” he had been an extra, played bit parts or had
significant roles in more than two dozen silent movies.
“If you went to the movies in those days, you couldn’t help but know
him, even though he was never a major star,” the film critic and
historian Leonard Maltin said in an interview.
In 1925 the director Cecil B. DeMille signed little Frank to a five-
year contract. “When DeMille saw Junior’s publicity stills, he stated,
‘Junior Coghlan is the perfect example of a homeless waif,’ ”
according to the Web site Goldensilents.com.
“He had a spunk and an innocence,” Mr. Maltin said. “He would not be
the one playing a juvenile delinquent.”
Yet in one of his first talkies, Mr. Coghlan played James Cagney’s
hoodlum as a boy in “The Public Enemy” (1931), about a criminal’s rise
in the Prohibition era.
Frank Edward Coghlan Jr. was born in New Haven on March 15, 1916, the
only child of Frank and Katherine Coyle Coghlan. The family moved to
California when Frank Jr. was a baby and, soon after, all three were
working as extras in silent films.
Mr. Coghlan’s wife of 31 years, the former Betty Corrigan, died in
1974. His second wife, Letha Schwarzrocks, died in 2001. Besides his
son, Patrick, of Saugus, Calif., he is survived by three daughters,
Cathy Farley of Gold Hill, Ore.; Judy Coghlan of Seal Beach, Calif.;
and Libbey Gagnon of Long Beach, Calif.; and six grandchildren.
Mr. Coghlan served as a naval aviator in World War II. He later headed
the Navy’s motion picture cooperation program, acting as a liaison
with Hollywood studios. After 23 years in the Navy, he returned to
acting in bit parts in movies, on television and in television
commercials.
Mr. Coghlan often appeared at conventions and seminars for movie buffs
in his later years and was pleased that many people remembered his
role in the Captain Marvel series.
His license plate said “Shazam,” Mr. Maltin said. |
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