Cora Sue Collins: Former children’s star died

Cora Sue Collins (1927-2025), once one of the most famous children’s actresses in Hollywood, is dead. Like her daughter Susie Krieser, she died in Beverly Hills on April 27 in Beverly Hills. Shortly before, on April 19, Collins had turned 98.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Cora Sue Collins was a sought -after face for Hollywood films. In addition to legends such as Greta Garbo, William Powell, Bette Davis, Myrna Loy and Lana Turner stood in front of the camera. “I have to have the most common face in the world,” she said in an interview in 2019. “As a child, I either played the most famous actresses of the 1930s as a young version or their child. They made up me so that I look like everyone.”

Collins, for example, embodied the younger version of Frances Dee in “The strange case of Clara Deane” (1932) and “Keep ‘Em Rolling” (1934), Loretta Young in “Caravan” (1934) and Lynn Bari in “King of Toreros” (1941). The MGM contract actress was also the daughter of William Powell and Myrna Loy in “I fight for you” (1934) and embodied Amy Lawrence in “The adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1938).

She combined a particularly warm relationship with Greta Garbo: she personally chose Collins for the role of her younger I in “Queen Christina” (1933), in “Anna Karenina” (1935) the two performed together again. The recovering, who lives withdrawn, often invited the girl to her luxurious suite on the MGM site for the afternoon tea, where Collins always drank milk. They both remained friends until Garbo’s death in 1990.

At the age of 18, Cora Sue Collins ended her acting career. “I wanted to enjoy the luxury of anonymity,” she said in retrospect. But she had “a great time” in Hollywood. She “got to know so many wonderful people, but to be honest, in my opinion children should be cogs in the gearbox and are not the focus”. She later enjoyed “being an anonymous housewife”.

Collins was born on April 19, 1927 in Beckley, West Virginia. Her mother moved to Los Angeles with her and her older sister shortly before Collins’ fourth birthday. Shortly afterwards she was discovered for the film industry: “On the third day, when we were here, I started with my mother to register my older sister at school,” she recalled in an interview in 2015. Shortly before the entrance, “this huge car with squeaky tires” stopped. “A woman jumped out of the car and asked: ‘Sorry, do you want to have your little girl photographed?'” She was then driven directly to a big casting at Universal. The rest is history: In the comedy “The Unexpected Father” from 1932 with Zasu Pitts and Slim Summerville, she played her first role in the tender age of four years.

Two years later, she signed a contract with MGM over 250 dollars a week and performed in ten films this year, including “Black Moon” with Fay Wray, “The scarlet letter” with Colleen Moore, “The world complains” with Dickie Moore and “The Treasure Island” with Jackie Cooper.

Collins also experienced moving times privately: from 1943 until divorce in 1947, she was married to Ivan Stauffer, the operator of the “Clover Club” in Hollywood. With her second husband James McKay, she got three children. He died of pneumonia in 1962 during a hunting trip. Afterwards she was married to cinema owner Harry Nace for more than 33 years, who died in 2002.