Marilyn Knowlden, the wildly popular child actress of the 1930s and ’40s who worked alongside icons like Katharine Hepburn, has died.
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Knowlden passed away peacefully on Monday at 99, due to natural causes, at an assisted living facility in Eagle, Idaho. Her son, Kevin Goates, confirmed her death to The Hollywood Reporter.
During her Hollywood career from 1931 to 1944, which included over three dozen films, Knowlden worked alongside Claudette Colbert, Hepburn, Irene Dunne, and Norma Shearer, portraying their onscreen mothers in Imitation of Life (1934), A Woman Rebels (1936), Show Boat (1936), and Marie Antoinette (1938), respectively.
According to THR, Knowlden also played a younger Ann Sheridan in Michael Curtiz’s Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), which starred James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart.
She also appeared in some best picture nominees, including George Cukor’s David Copperfield (1935), where she played Lewis Stone’s piano-playing daughter alongside Freddie Bartholomew; Mervyn LeRoy’s Anthony Adverse (1936), starring Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland; and Anatole Litvak’s All This, and Heaven Too (1940), with Bette Davis and Charles Boyer. However, none of these films won the top Oscar.
Marilyn Knowlden was in a Car Accident the Day She Landed Her First Big Role
Born May 12, 1926, in Oakland, California, Knowlden, an only child, accompanied her parents, attorney Robert Knowlden Jr. and Bertha, on a 1931 business trip to Hollywood. Her father secured an interview with Paramount’s Fred Datig. Although Datig initially considered her too young for the role of Paul Lukas’ and Eleanor Boardman’s daughter in Women Love Once (1931), Knowlden demonstrated her ability to handle extensive dialogue, nabbing the part.
Hours after being hired for Women Love Once, Knowlden was in a car crash in Los Feliz. Actress Dolores Costello, wife of John Barrymore, assisted Knowlden, who was only bruised. Her mother, however, sustained three broken ribs and a broken collarbone.
She also appeared in two Shirley Temple films, As the Earth Turns (1934) and Just Around the Corner (1938). Her other credits include The World Changes (1933), Rainbow on the River (1936), The Way of All Flesh (1940), and Broadway Rhythm (1944), her final feature.
Per THR, at the height of her popularity, Knowlden even had a doll based on her.
Knowlden graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1943. She then received a scholarship to Mills College in Oakland. In 1946, she married serviceman Richard Goates and accompanied him to China and Japan, where she worked for the Armed Forces Radio Service.
She went on to write music, lyrics, and scripts for several musicals, returned to acting in San Diego County productions such as Arsenic and Old Lace, Sorry, Wrong Number, and My Fair Lady, and published her autobiography, Little Girl in Big Pictures, in 2011.
She is survived by her daughter, Carolyn; her sons, Kevin and Brian; three grandchildren, Jessica, Maureen, and Shelisa; and 12 great-grandchildren. A private funeral will be held on Sept. 27 in Idaho.