Actress From Several Classic Movies Dies at 99: RIP to Marilyn Knowlden

Marilyn Knowlden – a former child actress who starred in films like Little Women, Imitation of Life, Les Misérables, David Copperfield, Anthony Adverse and All This, and Heaven Too – has died. She was 99 years old.

Three of the films she starred in garnered Oscar nominations. She died of natural causes while staying at an assisted living facility in Eagle, Idaho, her son Kevin Goates told The Hollywood Reporter.

Her career spanned from 1931 to 1944. She appeared in over 30 films.  “A special relationship can develop with the actress who plays a child’s mother, even if that bond is temporary,” she told Nick Thomas in 2016.

She was never contracted to a studio during her career, setting a different standard for her time. “Well, my father was very much in control of my career, and he didn’t want me to be under contract,” she told Danny Miller in a 2018 interview for Cinephiled. “I think one of the reasons is that if you’re a child under contract, you have to go to the studio school, and there goes your normal life. I think he was very happy to have things the way they were.”

As an only child, she traveled with her dad, an attorney, and her mother on a business trip to California. While there, her career began.

“On the second day there, just for fun, my father decided to call some of the studios,” she recalled in an interview. “I had been doing some little acting things in Oakland, and my teacher there had told my father that she thought I should be in the movies, so he thought he’d give it a try.”

Her dad eventually reached Paramount head of casting Fred Datig, who arranged for an interview that day. Studio executives were impressed with her ability to memorize pages of dialogue.

She acted alongside Audrey Hepburn for the first time in 1933 in Morning Glory and Cukor’s Little Women, and in A Woman Rebels, she got to use a bow and arrow. “Miss Hepburn promised me a dollar if I could hit a bull’s-eye,” she told Miller. “At the end of the film, she signed an autograph for me that says, ‘To Marilyn — Hoping that her archery improves. Affectionately, Katharine Hepburn.’ I cherish that to this day, especially since I found out later how rarely she would give her autograph.”

After acting, she graduated from Beverly Hills High School and then earned a scholarship to Mills College in Oakland. She married serviceman Richard Goates in 1946, and traveled with him to China and Japan where she worked for the Armed Forces Radio Service. She wrote music, lyrics and scripts for several musicals before returning to acting via the stage.