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John Leslie "Jackie" Coogan (October 26, 1914 – March 1, 1984) died 40 years ago today, at the age of 69. Known as Uncle Fester on the 1960s sitcom The Addams Family. In the interim, he sued his mother and stepfather over his squandered film earnings and provoked California to enact the first known legal protection for the earnings of child performers, widely known as the Coogan Act. As a child star, Coogan earned an estimated $3 to $4 million ($48 million to $65 million adjusted for 2012 dollars), but the money was spent by his mother and stepfather, Arthur Bernstein, on such extravagances as fur coats, diamonds, and expensive cars. Coogan's mother and stepfather claimed Jackie was having fun and thought he was playing. She stated, "No promises were ever made to give Jackie anything. Every dollar a kid earns before he is 21 belongs to his parents. Jackie will not get a cent of his earnings",[5] and claimed that "Jackie was a bad boy." Coogan sued them in 1938, but, after legal expenses, received only $126,000 ($2,111,000 in 2015) of the approximately $250,000 remaining of his earnings. When Coogan fell on hard times and asked Charlie Chaplin for assistance, Chaplin gave him $1,000 without hesitation. The legal battle brought attention to child actors and resulted in the enactment in 1939 of the California Child Actor's Bill, often called the Coogan Law or the Coogan Act. This requires that a child actor's employer set aside 15% of the earnings in a trust (often called a Coogan Account), and codifies such issues as schooling, work hours and time-off. After the war, Coogan returned to acting, taking mostly character roles and appearing on television. From 1952 to 1953, he played Stoney Crockett on the syndicated series Cowboy G-Men. He guest starred on NBC's The Martha Raye Show. He appeared too, as Corbett, in two episodes of NBC's The Outlaws with Barton MacLane, which aired from 1960–1962. In the 1960–1961 season, he guest starred in the episode "The Damaged Dolls" of the syndicated crime drama The Brothers Brannagan. In 1961, he guest starred in an episode of The Americans, an NBC series about family divisions stemming from the American Civil War. He also appeared in episode 37, titled Barney on the Rebound, of The Andy Griffith Show, which aired October 31, 1961. He had a regular role in a 1962–63 NBC series, McKeever and the Colonel. He finally found his most famous television role as Uncle Fester in ABC's The Addams Family (1964–1966). He appeared as a police officer in the Elvis Presley comedy Girl Happy in 1965. He appeared four times on the Perry Mason series, including the role of political activist Gus Sawyer in the 1963 episode, "The Case of the Witless Witness," and TV prop man Pete Desmond in the final episode, "The Case of the Final Fadeout," in 1966. He was a guest several times on The Red Skelton Show, appeared twice on the The Brady Bunch ("The Fender Benders" and "Double Parked"), I Dream of Jeannie (as Jeannie's uncle, Suleiman – Maharaja of Basenji), Family Affair, Here's Lucy and The Brian Keith Show, and continued to guest star on television (including multiple appearances on The Partridge Family, The Wild Wild West and Hawaii Five-O) until his retirement in the middle 1970s. On March 1, 1984, Jackie Coogan died of cardiac arrest at age 69 at Santa Monica Medical Center in Santa Monica, California