20 Child Stars From History Who Became National Sensations

When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was seven, his father Leopold took him on an extended European tour to display his prowess at the piano. Over three and a half years, he played for Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna and King George III in London, even doing so behind a sheet covering the keys. There were no recording devices or movies, so his talent as a child was enough to draw kings.

By age 3, Shirley Temple was already spotted in a dance studio and then quickly became a box office sensation. She made movies like Bright Eyes that were full of cheery musical numbers during the darkest times of the Depression. By 1938, a leading box-office poll ranked her the biggest movie star in America over actual grown-ups such as Clark Gable. President Roosevelt even praised her for lifting the nation’s spirits for only 15 cents a ticket. Even her studio cut her birth year by one to make her seem younger.

Bobby Fischer learned how to play chess when he was 6 and joined a Manhattan chess club at the age of 12, well before he became known to the world as a child prodigy. Then in January 1958, 14-year-old Fischer finished the US Chess Championship unbeaten, never losing a game to any of the adult grandmasters. He was the youngest US champion in history. Months later, at the age of 15, he became the youngest international grandmaster in history. To this day, his record from 1958 has yet to be matched.

Josef Hofmann, a pianist, made his debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House at the age of 11. His promoter immediately put him into a grueling schedule of concerts throughout the US. It was at his 52nd concert that public outcry at the treatment of the exhausted boy got so loud that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children intervened and legally stopped the tour. A wealthy benefactor gave his family a large sum of money, on the condition that Hofmann give up his career and stay in school until he reached the age of 18.

When Jackie Coogan was six, Charlie Chaplin, a silent-film star, gave him a role opposite himself in The Kid. The movie turned Coogan into an international celebrity, pulling in thousands of dollars each week as well as profits from related merchandise. He spent his early years in front of cameras on movie lots, where there was hardly any oversight. But once Coogan reached adulthood, he discovered that his mother and her new husband had squandered most of it. A lawsuit against them paved the way for California legislation mandating that film studios place a portion of a minor’s earnings into a restricted savings account. Coogan got back a fraction of his money.

Known affectionately as “Master Betty,” William Henry West Betty was an English boy actor who performed the lead roles in Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, among others, as a young teenager. When he made his first appearance in December 1804 at a London theater, the resulting frenzy became known as “Bettymania” and was so violent that the military were needed to restore order. Legend has it that the British prime minister William Pitt the Younger adjourned a sitting of the House of Commons to allow members to attend a performance of Hamlet.

An 11-year-old Westfield, New York, schoolgirl named Grace Bedell wrote to Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for President, in October of 1860 to tell him that whiskers would help him win votes. He wrote back politely and later grew a full beard, citing her letter as one of his reasons. In February 1861, his inaugural train stopped in Westfield, where he called Miss Bedell up onto the platform, kissed her cheek, and showed off the beard to the crowd, making national headlines.

Reshevsky had been playing chess since the age of four; by the time he was eight, he was traveling throughout Europe, playing simultaneous exhibitions against grown men. On May 15, 1920, in a Paris cafe, the 8-year-old in a sailor suit played off 20 adult members of the club at once, winning every one of the games. Later that year, Reshevsky brought his prodigious fame to America, where he was greeted by crowds numbering in the thousands and received headlines on the front page in major cities such as New York and Chicago.

At the age of 11, Yehudi Menuhin played the Beethoven violin concerto at Carnegie Hall in November 1927 and won the audience’s standing ovation. Following a performance in Berlin a little over a year later, the 13-year-old Menuhin was greeted backstage by the scientist Albert Einstein, who allegedly remarked: “Now I know there is a God in heaven.” That accolade from one of the world’s most celebrated scientists was to follow him throughout his life.

At age five, Baby Peggy, born Peggy-Jean Montgomery, had already been discovered at 19 months and had been in more than 150 films. Studios were run on relatively loose rules at that point, and she’d signed a contract for $1.5 million a year. Dolls, sheet music and clothing were sold in her likeness. She even stood on stage as the official mascot of a national political convention next to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Her parents squandered her money, but she went on to live to the age of 101, becoming a respected historian of early film.

William James Sidis, who was put through an accelerated learning program designed by his father, a psychologist, entered Harvard at the age of 11, becoming its youngest-ever student. He soon gave a two-hour talk on four-dimensional mathematics to Harvard’s mathematics club, attracting professors and reporters who called him “the smartest boy in the world.” The story that he scored between 250 and 300 on IQ tests appears only in a biography published posthumously, and there is no independent verification. This childhood fame would drive the young prodigy away from public view as an adult.

At age 2, Laura Bridgman contracted scarlet fever, which robbed her of her sight, hearing, smell, and taste. She then entered a school for the blind in Boston, where the school’s director taught her language through raised-letter signs and finger-spelling, making her the first deafblind person in the world to be formally educated in English. Charles Dickens, the great British author, visited her and wrote about her, and she became something of an international celebrity. On certain days set aside to “exhibit” her, large crowds would come to Boston just to watch her read. Decades later, Helen Keller’s mother read Dickens’s account of Bridgman and decided she wanted someone to teach Helen too.

At age 11, Sonja Henie was last in her first competition at the 1924 inaugural Winter Olympics, but the audience still cheered for her. She persisted, introducing elements of dance and ballet, shorter skirts, and athletic leaps to the world of figure skating, winning her first world title at age 14 and going on to win ten straight world titles and three Olympic gold medals before relocating to Hollywood in 1936.

Tom Morris Jr. was born into a family of golfers on the links of St Andrews in Scotland; his father was a pro greenkeeper, and the young Tom developed an aggressive approach to the game, hitting the ball hard with spin, so it stopped on the green. At 17, in September 1868, he beat his own father by three shots to win the Open, becoming the youngest-ever major champion, a record that has never been beaten. He won the Open three more times in a row, then died, aged just 24.

Jackie Cooper was already acting in comedy shorts before being cast in the drama Skippy (1931) at the age of eight. His uncle directed the film and reportedly brought him to tears during shooting to get the desired effect. Skippy was a massive hit across the country. Nine-year-old Cooper became the youngest-ever Best Actor nominee, though he didn’t win. He would continue working.

Universal Pictures, which was nearly bankrupt, signed Deanna Durbin, a Canadian-American teen with a trained operatic voice. She was just 14. Her musical comedy, Three Smart Girls, took in more than $1.6 million, and according to studio records as well as most film historians, it single-handedly saved Universal from financial ruin. Durbin would go on to become Hollywood’s highest-paid actress before retiring in her twenties.

Maureen “Little Mo” Connolly started playing tennis at age 10 in San Diego, and at age 16, she became the US National Champion, the youngest woman to do so at that point. She then won nine consecutive Grand Slam singles tournaments, winning all four major titles in 1953 at the age of 18. In July 1954, when she was 19, a riding accident badly injured her leg and ended her playing career for good.

Jimmy Boyd, a child singer, began his career early in life. When Boyd was 13, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart. It sold more than 2 million copies in ten weeks. In some areas, including Boston, radio stations temporarily banned the song because church leaders claimed it portrayed Santa Claus as a philanderer. Boyd went to Boston to clarify that the Santa in the song was simply a child’s father dressed up for Christmas. The bans were removed.

Bob Mathias was a good football player and hurdler in Tulare, California, when his coach convinced him to try the decathlon, a grueling ten-event track and field contest. It was springtime. Mathias had never thrown a javelin or pole-vaulted. In less than half a year, however, he would be standing atop the podium at the London Olympics as the youngest male track and field Olympic champion ever, a record he still holds.

Sabu Rose was the orphaned son of an elephant driver at the Maharaja of Mysore’s palace in British India. A British documentary filmmaker came across him at 11, working in the royal stables. He spoke little English but learned quickly, coached through his early lines phonetically. Cast in Elephant Boy, Sabu became the first South Asian actor to get top billing in mainstream Western cinema, before becoming a decorated tail gunner in World War Two.

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