Jean Darling

Jean Darling, born Dorothy Jean LeVake on August 23, 1922, in Santa Monica, California, was an American actress whose career spanned silent film, stage, radio, and television across nearly nine decades. Her name was legally changed to Jean Darling when she was five months old, shortly after her parents separated. She died on September 4, 2015, in Rödermark, Germany, at the age of 93.

Darling entered the film industry at six months old as a freelance baby performer. In 1926, she passed a screen test for Hal Roach's Our Gang comedy series, launching a run that lasted from 1927 to 1929. During that period she appeared in 46 silent films and five sound pictures with the series before departing in the fall of 1929 alongside cast members Joe Cobb and Harry Spear. At the time of her death, she was among the last surviving performers from the silent film era, a distinction she shared with actress Baby Peggy.

Following her departure from Our Gang, Darling continued working in film, appearing uncredited in the Laurel and Hardy production Babes in Toyland and in the role of young Jane in Jane Eyre, both released in 1934. She subsequently moved into stage and radio work, performing in stage shows that sometimes required as many as seven performances per day. In 1940, the New York Municipal Opera Association awarded her a singing scholarship. She declined an offer to appear with Mickey Rooney in an MGM Andy Hardy film and redirected her focus toward the stage.

Darling made her Broadway debut in 1942 in the musical Count Me In. Her most significant stage credit came in 1945, when she was cast as Carrie Pipperidge in the original Broadway production of Carousel, a role in which she appeared for 850 consecutive performances. Her Broadway career spanned the years 1942 to 1945.

The visibility she gained from Carousel contributed to work in radio and television throughout the 1950s. She hosted a television program for NBC in New York City titled A Date with Jean Darling and also hosted a daily program for women called The Singing Knit-Witch, which aired on KHJ-TV in Hollywood.

In 1974, Darling relocated to Dublin, Ireland, where she pursued a writing career. She published more than 50 short stories in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Whispers. Under the name Aunty Poppy, she wrote and read stories on RTÉ radio and television, and she also wrote radio plays and worked as a journalist. Her final screen appearance was in a 2013 silent comedy short titled The Butler's Tale, written and directed by Dutch actor and singer René Riva.

Darling married Reuben Bowen, with whom she had a son, Roy. Reuben Bowen died of cancer on August 22, 1980, and Darling did not remarry. She later lived with her son in Rodgau, Germany, before her death at a nursing home in Rödermark following a sudden illness.