Jackie Condon’s Career Before “Our Gang”

Jackie Condon was the youngest player in the first Our Gang movie ever shot in early 1922, establishing the role of the tagalong little brother. Born in March 1918, he was going on four years old.

Among the kid actors in “Our Gang,” however, Jackie was probably second only to Ernie Morrison in filmmaking experience. He’d been appearing on camera since he was a babe in arms.

IMDB and the Lucky Corner list seven movies Jackie appeared in before “Our Gang” was filmed:

• Jinx, a Mabel Normand feature in 1919—as shown by press reports.
• “Italian Love,” a Billy West short directed by Charley Chase in 1920—a viewing on YouTube confirms Jackie appeared in it, in the flesh. 
• “A Convict’s Happy Bride,” an Alice Howell short—also on YouTube, with Jackie quite active. 
• “The Morning After,” a Snub Pollard one-reeler released in 1921, now lost—apparently Jackie’s work was confirmed by Robert Demoss through Rolin/Hal Roach Studio records. (In this period Ernie Morrison was Pollard’s regular sidekick, so this was the first movie Ernie and Jackie both appeared in before Our Gang.)
• Little Lord Fauntleroy, the Mary Pickford feature—in the opening scene, Jackie gets undressed to play in a sprinkler.
• “At Your Service,” a Hallroom Boys short—only one reel survives, and Jackie doesn’t appear in that footage; I don’t know the basis for listing him in the cast.
• Penrod, a Wesley Barry feature made in 1921 and released in 1922, adapted from Booth Tarkington’s novel—I don’t think this movie survives, but the press material includes Jackie in the long list of young cast members.

In fact, Penrod was a precursor to the Our Gang series launched a few months later. Hal Roach lent Ernie Morrison to be a featured player in it, and its cast also included Peggy Cartwright, who became the “leading lady” in several of the earliest Our Gang shorts.

Wesley Barry’s stardom in the early 1920s probably also influenced Roach’s thinking about the Our Gang series. For Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), producer-director Marshall Neilan had young Wesley act for the first time without greasepaint covering his freckles. The young actor caught the eye of moviegoers. He rose quickly to be a featured player, then a star in Dinty (1920). Wesley Barry established the archetype of the freckle-faced “reg’lar” American boy that Mickey Daniels, Jay R. Smith, Harry Spear, and Donald Haines would play in the Our Gang movies.

Dinty also showed its young white hero having an African-American kid and a Chinese-American kid as his playmates. Many reviewers mentioned that favorably. Of course, that movie, and that press coverage, played up the racial stereotypes of the day. But at least those characters were friends.

COMING UP: New additions to Jackie Condon’s filmography.