Edith Fellows
Actor/Actriz
53
Movies
4
TV Shows
Edith Fellows was born on May 20, 1923, in Boston, Massachusetts. When she was a year old, she and her father and grandmother moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. As a toddler, Edith was pigeon-toed and had trouble walking, and one doctor suggested that dance lessons might cure this condition. At age four, Edith entered Henderson's School of Dance, where she was spotted by a man claiming to be a talent scout, who told her grandmother that he could get Edith into show business for a fifty-dollar fee. The dance school raised the money, but when Edith and her grandmother arrived in Hollywood, they discovered that the address the man had given them did not exist, and they realized he was a fraud. Stranded in Hollywood with no means to return to North Carolina, Edith's grandmother began doing housework to earn a living. While she worked, she left Edith with a neighbor and her young son. One day Edith was taken along when the neighbor's son had an audition for the film Movie Night (1929), and she ended up getting the part. Although she never become a child star, Edith appeared in many popular films of the 1930s, most notably Pennies from Heaven (1936). She also proved herself to be a very versatile actress, playing roles ranging from a spoiled rich girl, as in Heart of the Rio Grande (1942), to a poor orphan girl, as in Pennies from Heaven. Edith was even given her own series, The Five Little Peppers, while under contract to Columbia, and she made four of the Pepper films (the first was Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1939)) in two years. Between 1929 and 1954, Edith appeared in some fifty films, mostly in juvenile roles due to her short 4' 10" stature. But her career suddenly slowed down in the mid-1950s. Between 1955 and 1980, she appeared in only one film, Lilith (1964), in which she had a bit part. During this time, Edith chose to focus on her family life; she had married producer Freddie Fields in 1946, and their only child, daughter Kathy, was born in 1947. But Edith and Fields divorced in 1955, and the end of her marriage, coupled with other factors, caused Edith to have a nervous breakdown. She recovered, and in 1981, she returned to acting in numerous supporting roles on television. In 1985, fellow former child actor Jackie Cooper announced plans to make a TV movie based on Edith's life, but this project never happened.
As Actor/Actress
Sala de urgencias
Sadie Hubbell
St. Elsewhere
Mrs. Sabin
Cagney & Lacey
Mrs. Isbecki
The Brady Brides
La colina de los ojos malditos II
Mrs. Wilson
Madame X
Child at Puppet Show (uncredited)
Lilith
Patient (uncredited)
Grace Kelly
Edith Head
Cimarron
(uncredited)
City Streets
Winnie Brady
Life Begins with Love
Dodie Martin
Pennies from Heaven
Patsy Smith
Emma
Gypsy as a Child (uncredited)
Hollywood’s Children
Self
In the Mood
Mrs. Long, Judy's Mother
Shivering Shakespeare
Girls Scared of Elephant
Heart of the Rio Grande
Connie Lane
Huckleberry Finn
Schoolgirl (uncredited)
Dinky
Sally
Jane Eyre
Adele Rochester
Her First Beau
Milly Lou
Out West with the Peppers
Polly Pepper
She Married Her Boss
Annabel Barclay
Criminal Investigator
Ellen
Alan Ladd: The True Quiet Man
Self
Five Little Peppers And How They Grew
Polly Pepper
The Penguin Pool Murder
Little Girl at Aquarium (uncredited)
This Side of Heaven
Felicia - Minister's Daughter (uncredited)
The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell
Self (clip from "Pennies from Heaven")
Kid Millions
Little Girl in Ice Cream Number (uncredited)