From an early age, Freddie Bartholomew delighted audiences with his natural charm and emotional accessibility, becoming one of the top child stars of the 1930s. His precise British diction and patrician air were a big part of his appeal as a youngster, and his popularity as a child performer was exceeded, for a time, only by Shirley Temple's. But as he grew older the qualities of "lordliness and preciousness," as a fan magazine of the day disdainfully described them, became somewhat off-putting to American audiences, and Bartholomew's career languished.

Born Frederick Cecil Bartholomew in 1924 in a modest London neighborhood, he was raised by his grandparents and an aunt in Wiltshire, where he recited and performed onstage from the age of three. The aunt became his "manager," and he made appearances in a handful of British films beginning with the short Toyland (1930). Freddie and his aunt traveled to the U.S. in 1934, just as producer David O. Selznick and director George Cukor were attempting to cast the title role of MGM's David Copperfield (1935) with someone other than Jackie Cooper, who was the choice of studio head Louis B. Mayer.

Screen tests landed Bartholomew the part of the boy David in the film version of the Charles Dickens novel, and he was signed to a seven-year contract with MGM. Copperfield, with W.C. Fields as the irascible Micaber, was a success that brought overnight acclaim and success to Bartholomew. MGM cast him next as the son of Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina (1935).

Bartholomew was lent to 20th Century Fox for three films in the mid-1930s. In Professional Soldier (1935) he is a young European king kidnapped by a mercenary military man (Victor McLaglen). In Lloyd's of London (1936), he is top-billed over Tyrone Power as the younger version of the character Power plays as an adult -- a man who was instrumental in the formation of the fabled insurance business. In Kidnapped (1938), a version of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, Bartholomew is David Balfour to Warner Baxter's Breck.

At his home studio Bartholomew starred in Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936) and The Devil Is a Sissy (1936), with Mickey Rooney cast in both films as a young rogue whose rowdy manner pointed up Bartholomew's gentility. Bartholomew gave one of his best performances in Captains Courageous (1937), which brought Spencer Tracy a Best Actor Oscar® as the Portuguese fisherman who teaches a snotty young Freddie how to become a man. Rooney, again in the supporting cast and by now a friend and supporter of Bartholomew, wrote later that he thought his young pal should have had an Oscar®, too.

Lord Jeff (1938) teamed Bartholomew and Rooney again in a story of student/inmates in a naval academy/reform school. This film marked a tipping of the scales as Bartholomew's star began to dim just as Rooney's was taking on new sparkle. Then, in his first teenage role, Freddie was outshone by another rising MGM star, Judy Garland, in Listen, Darling (1938), a comedy-with-music in which he helps Judy secure a suitable husband for her widowed mother (Mary Astor).

Failing to find other suitable roles for their fading star, MGM again lent him to other studios including Columbia, where he made three military films as World War II was casting its shadow: Naval Academy (1941), Cadets on Parade (1942) and Junior Army (1942). Rooney was billed first and Bartholomew fourth in MGM's A Yank at Eton (1942), in which Mickey is an American forced to attend a British prep school and Freddie, now a tall, skinny 18-year-old, is one of his classmates.

Plagued through much of his career by legal and financial problems involving his family, Bartholomew joined the U.S. Air Force for service in WWII. When he returned to Hollywood, the best he could manage was a cameo appearance in Sepia Cinderella (1947), a "race" film for black audiences featuring singer Billy Daniels. Bartholomew's final film was the low-budget St. Benny the Dip (1951), starring Dick Haymes.

In the meantime Bartholomew had begun a career as a television host, producer and director. From 1949 through 1954 he was director of an independent station in New York City. He eventually aligned himself with the New York advertising agency Benton & Bowles, where he produced the series The Andy Griffith Show and several successful network soap operas. He retired in the late 1980s.

Bartholomew was married twice and had a son and daughter with his second wife, TV chef and author Aileen Paul. He died in 1992 at the age of 67.

by Roger Fristoe

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