Edith Marilyn Fellows

 Edith Marilyn Fellows (May 20, 1923 – June 26, 2011

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 (1929). 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, the first such contract offered to a child. Fellows appeared in a series of leading roles for Columbia, including Tugboat Princess (1936), Little Miss Roughneck (1938), and The Little Adventuress (1938). Her performance as the precocious orphan alongside Bing Crosby in Pennies from Heaven (1936) won her critical acclaim. In 1942, she appeared in two Gene Autry films, Heart of the Rio Grande and Stardust on the Sage, which highlighted her fine singing voice. Her acting career was interrupted in the 1940s by serious personal problems, her own life becoming more Dickensian than the characters she portrayed on screen. In the 1980s, she returned to acting with sporadic roles in television series. Between 1929 and 1995, Fellows appeared in over seventy films and television programs. In the late 1940s, Fellows turned to the stage, appearing on Broadway in Louisiana Lady, a short-lived 1947 musical. In 1946, Fellows married talent agent Freddie Fields, with whom she had a daughter, Kathy. She began acting in television dramas in the early 1950s, appearing in Musical Comedy Time (1950), Studio One in Hollywood (1952), Armstrong Circle Theatre (1952), Tales of Tomorrow (1951–1953), and Medallion Theatre (1954). 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. 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. 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 age 88.