Edith Fellows

Edith Fellows was born on May 20, 1923, in Boston, Massachusetts, and when she was just a year old, she, her father, and grandmother relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina. As a toddler, Edith struggled with walking due to her pigeon-toed condition, and a doctor recommended dance lessons to help her overcome this issue. At the tender age of four, Edith enrolled in Henderson's School of Dance, where she was discovered by a self-proclaimed talent scout who promised to get her into show business for a fifty-dollar fee. The dance school raised the necessary funds, but when Edith and her grandmother arrived in Hollywood, they found that the address provided by the scout did not exist, and they realized they had been duped by a fraud. Stranded in Hollywood with no means to return to North Carolina, Edith's grandmother began working as a housekeeper to support them, leaving Edith with a neighbor and her young son. One day, Edith was taken along to an audition for the film Movie Night (1929) and managed to secure a part. Although she never achieved child star status, Edith went on to appear in numerous popular films of the 1930s, including Pennies from Heaven (1936),showcasing her versatility as an actress by taking on roles ranging from a spoiled rich girl in Heart of the Rio Grande (1942) to a poor orphan girl in Pennies from Heaven. Edith was even given her own series, The Five Little Peppers, while under contract to Columbia, and she starred in four of the Pepper films (the first being Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1939)) over the course of two years. Between 1929 and 1954, Edith appeared in around fifty films, mostly in juvenile roles due to her short stature of 4' 10". However, her career slowed down significantly in the mid-1950s. Between 1955 and 1980, Edith only appeared in one film, Lilith (1964),in which she had a minor role. During this period, Edith chose to focus on her family life, marrying producer Freddie Fields in 1946 and having their only child, daughter Kathy, in 1947. However, the couple divorced in 1955, and the end of her marriage, combined with other factors, led to Edith experiencing a nervous breakdown. She recovered and returned to acting in various supporting roles on television in 1981. In 1985, fellow former child actor Jackie Cooper announced plans to create a TV movie based on Edith's life, but this project never came to fruition.