Montgomery, Peggy (1917—)

American actress. Name variations: Baby Peggy; Diana Serra Cary. Born Peggy Montgomery in Rock Island, Illinois, in 1917; daughter of a screen extra and stuntman; married Gordon "Freckles" Ayres (a member of the cast of the Our Gang comedies); married Robert Cary (a painter); children: Mark.

Selected filmography:

Peggy Behave (1922); The Darling of New York (1923); Captain January (1924); The Family Secret (1924); The Speed Demon (1925); April Fool (1926); The Hollywood Reporter (1926); Prisoners of the Storm (1926); Sensation Seekers (1927); The Sonora Kid (1927); Arizona Days (1928); Silent Trail (1928); West of Santa Fe (1928); Eight Girls in a Boat (1934); Having a Wonderful Time (1938).

Peggy Montgomery, known as Baby Peggy, was a popular child star throughout the 1920s, a female Jackie Coogan. From ages three to ten, she was featured in many two-reelers and over a dozen films. After childhood, she continued making low-budget Westerns under her real name, retiring from the screen in the mid-1930s. Montgomery went on to become a journalist, contributing to American Heritage, Esquire, and The Saturday Evening Post, as well as a store manager, a greeting-card executive, and a book buyer for the University of California at San Diego. In 1975, under the name Diana Serra Cary, she published a book about cowboy extras and stuntmen entitled The Hollywood Posse: The Story of a Gallant Band of Horsemen Who Made Movie History. She followed that with Hollywood Children (1979), an exposé on the life of child stars.