As a hollow, chubby child actress in the early 1930s, appearing on the other side of A-list stars like Greta Garbo, Milna Roy and Merle Oberon, Kora Sue Collins shortened her career after being sexually harassed by the screenwriter and died at her home in Beverly Hills on April 27th.
Her daughter, Susie McKay Creether, said the cause was a complication of stroke.
Miss Collins took about 50 photos over 13 years, including 11 people in 1934 and 11 others in 1935. She was one of the galaxies of children's stars, including Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney and Judi Garland, but she wasn't as famous as they were.
In her first film, the 1932 comedy The Expersed Farther, she plays waif, whose new and wealthy adoptive father (Slim Summerville) hires a nurse (Zasu Pitts) to take care of her. I praised 4-year-old Cora Sue.
Critics from the Richmond Newsreader in Virginia named her “Baby Star” with “an incredible acting abilities and a walking appeal in your heart.” The Kansas City Journal writes, “A little Collins girl leaves the photo.”
Miss Collins played Garbo as a child in Queen Christina, a 1933 film about the Swedish monarch. At the time, she told a newspaper that Garbo was “very friendly and very much liked my new teeth.”
Many other roles include Claudet Colbert's daughter in “The Torch Song” (1933). Milna Roy and William Powell's daughter Evelyn Prentiss (1934). and Frances Dee in Smilin'Strol (1932), The Strange Case of Clara Deane (1932), and the younger self of Norma Shearer in Ms. Oberon in Dark Angel (1935).
“I must have had a very general look,” Miss Collins said in an interview with an online journal film talk in 2014. She added: “I played everyone as a kid. I think they made me look like who they are. But I hope they didn't pay me anything. The film was incredibly magical for me at the time.”
She has formed a friendship Starting with the set of “Queen Christina,” Garbo continued when Miss Collins was cast as her nie in “Anna Karenina” (1935), and through her adult visit to Garbo's house in New York and Paris.
“Until she passed away, I called her Miss Garbo and she called me Kora Sue.
Cora Sue Collins was born on April 19, 1927 in W. Va. Beckley. Her father, the young Commodore Collins, and her mother, Clyde (Richardson) Collins, were separated when Cora Sue was three years old (after her mother discovered that her father gave her a mink coat for Christmas). Her mother took Kora Sue and her sister Madge by train to Hollywood.
In what Miss Collins called “the truth,” she said Her mother and sister said they were heading to register her sister at school when the giant car rose to them.
“The woman ran out of the car and said, 'Sorry, do you want to put your little girl in the picture?” “She said in a 2015 interview with the Cinephiled website. “Of course, my mother said, 'Yes!' The woman said, “I'm in the car with me and there's a big casting going on at Universal right now.” ”
They delayed going to the studio for a few hours before Madge was registered. Miss Collins was cast in “The Unexpected Father.”
Miss Collins' 1935 profile of the Oakland Tribune reported that she had 151 IQ and that she was selected by her peers as the most popular Hollywood child actor. Marion Sims, author of the profile, was with Collins one morning when Pat O'Brien of Collins became a friend of Cora Sue and Pat O'Brien, whom she called “Uncle,” stopped by to take her to school.
Miss Collins also worked with James Cagney in Photo Snatcher (1933), and worked with All All All All of All Of All Of The Scarlet Letter (1940), Colleen Moore in The Scarlet Letter (1934), and Sylvia Sidney in Jenny Gerhardt (1933).
As Miss Collins ages, her role diminished. Before her 17th birthday, she said that when MGM screenwriter Harry Ruskin, whom she considered her father figure, offered her a big role if she would sleep with him, she was a victim of harassment. She refused him, began to cry and left his office.
“I would have given my right arm to play that role,” she told Film Masters in 2024, a consortium of film historians and enthusiasts.
She reported Mr. Ruskin's actions to Louis B. Mayer, the powerful chief of Metro Goldwynmeyer Studios, who was a contract player at the time. But as she recalled, he said, “You get used to it, sweet.” Soon after that, he threatened to make sure she wasn't working in the film again.
“Mr. Mayer, that's my heartfelt desire,” she told him, adding, “It was the best decision of my life.”
At Mayer's request, she appeared in another film, Week End at the Waldorf (1945).
Miss Collins' marriage to Ivan Stauffer, James McKay and Jim Cox ended with divorce. Her marriage to Harry Nurse Jr., who owned a cinema in Arizona, lasted for 33 years, ending with his death in 2002.
“It's fun to be a housewife in Phoenix,” she told the film. “I like that.”
In addition to Mr. Creaser, whose father was Mr. McKay, she was survived by her son, Harry Nurse III. stepdaughter, Teresa Nurse Kabebe; Five grandchildren. and six great grandchildren.
Seven decades after making “The Unexpected Father,” Miss Collins recalls a scene involving the film's bootlegger.
“I was pushed away by a baby carriage underneath every bottle of these liquor,” she told FilmTalk. “They put the actual bottles there. I think they were filled with bathtub gin or something and it hurts like hell, but I'm a very submissive kid and I didn't tell them how uncomfortable I was!”
