If you were a Columbia child star in the 1930s, you were also a part-time shill for Scrappy merchandise. It was true of Cora Sue Collins as well as Edith Fellows and Dickie Walters. And the above photo shows it was also the case with Jackie Moran.

That’s him on the right with Edith, fooling around with Scrappy handkerchiefs. This publicity photo was apparently released in April 1936, in conjunction with a Columbia film in which they both appeared, And So They Were Married. (It’s going to be on TCM in December.)

And So They Were Married was Jackie’s first movie. He also had a small role in Gone With the Wind, and played Huck Finn to Tommy Kelly’s Tom Sawyer. And IMdB says he eventually worked with with exploitation-movie master Russ (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) Meyer, although Wikipedia says that may (or may not) have been a different John Moran.

Moran — the one who posed with Scrappy hankies — died in 1990. Edith Fellows passed away just last year. Dickie Walters, I’m not sure about. And Cora Sue Collins, I’m pleased to report, is still with us. I wonder if she has memories — fond or otherwise — of her time as a Scrappy spokesmodel?

From the Film Daily for May 20, 1931, what must have been one of the first public mentions of Scrappy anywhere — click to read it:

For many of us cartoon fans, the late Jud Hurd was a revered elder statesman — the editor and publisher of the wonderful magazine Cartoonist PROfiles. As a young man, though, he was a Charles Mintz Studio artist, working for $16 a week — not a bad salary for an inexperienced artist during the Great Depression.

But he only did it for six months. Then he decided to leave, and secured this letter of recommendation.

That’s the only piece of Mintz letterhead I’ve seen. (I do, however, have a form letter written on Columbia’s Scrappy Franchise Department stationery.)

Hurd’s book Cartoon Success Stories is available for reading over at Google Books; it includes the tale of his Mintz tenure, a photo of him outside the studio, and all sorts of other entertaining anecdotes. Revisiting it makes me wish that Jud, and Cartoonist PROfiles, were still with us.