LogFAQs > #976118728

While I'm on the subject, Jackie Coogan - Uncle Fester on the Addams Family - is a really interesting person. He was one of the first child stars - if not the actual first child star - in Hollywood, and he got so thoroughly fucked over by his own mother that he took her to court and won.

Like he had a great dad who kept a close eye on the money and made sure nobody would touch it until Jackie's 21th birthday, but he died in a car crash when his son was 20 - Jackie was actually the sole survivor of the crash. In the span of five months, his mother and her new boyfriend spent every last cent - somewhere between four and five million dollars, which would have been close to $51 million in 2021's value. Five months, roughly five million dollars. It was all spent.

He's the reason that California enacted a Child Actor's Bill to make it harder for parents or guardians to access the money that their child was making. And it was only with his role as Uncle Fester that he regained some of the fame he initially had as a kid.