Dickie Moore

Dickie Moore was a child actor, who later became a public relations executive at his own company, Dick Moore & Associates. He was best known for his title role in the first adaptation of Oliver Twist to have sound, in 1933. He also gave Shirley Temple her first on-screen kiss in 1942’s Miss Annie Rooney.

Moore made his film debut as an infant in the 1927 silent movie The Beloved Rogue, starring John Barrymore. He went on to appear in dozens of short films and features, many before he was 12 years old, including Blonde Venus, with Marlene Dietrich; The Story of Louis Pasteur; Little Men; So Big!, with Barbara Stanwyck; Million Dollar Legs, with W.C. Fields; Winner Take All, with James Cagney; Man’s Castle, with Spencer Tracy; and the Robert Mitchum film noir Out of the Past.

He also appeared regularly in Our Gang shorts, known as The Little Rascals on television, including the shorts “Hook and Ladder,” “Free Wheeling,” “Birthday Blues” and “A Lad an' a Lamp,” among others. His other television appearances included Captain Video and His Video Rangers, Sure as Fate, Starlight Theatre, Lux Video Theatre, The Man Behind the Badge, The Web and Omnibus.

Moore also served in the Army for two years at the end of World War II and briefly studied journalism at Los Angeles City College. In 1949 he produced and starred in the Academy Award-nominated short film, The Boy and the Eagle, about a disabled young man who nurses a wounded eagle back to health. Moore later became the public relations director for Actors’ Equity Association, the stage actors union, as well as editor of its magazine. He eventually started his own PR firm in 1966.

Moore wrote about child acting in his 1984 book Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (But Don’t Have Sex or Take the Car), in which he interviewed other child actors, including Mickey Rooney, Natalie Wood and Jackie Coogan.

He died September 10, 2015, in Connecticut. He was 89.