Recent Obituaries, Classic Films Only

[CBHagman]

18. Claudine Mawby Walker, 90, child star of early talkies.

Frankly, I'd never heard of the Mawby Triplets before I stumbled on this article! Theirs is a rather poignant story too.

[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/movies/claudine-mawby-last-of-early-film-triplets-dies-at-90.html?ref=obituaries[/url]

Hollywood publicity agents called them the Mawby Triplets. They were a set of adorably blond little English girls who appeared in some of the earliest talking films, cherubs adorning the celluloid canvases of the 1920s and ’30s. Cast in movies with stars like Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Gloria Swanson and John Barrymore, they were, for a time, among the most famous children in the world

Their parents shielded them from knowing how famous they were, isolating them from their fans and other children. Their agents shielded the fans from knowing the truth about the girls — that they were not really triplets. They were actually composed of twins, Claudine and Claudette, and their sister, Angella, who was 11 months older.

“Mummy and Daddy were at first rather taken aback,” Claudine Mawby Walker recalled in an interview with The Daily Mail in 1995. “They kept saying that, contrary to appearances, we weren’t actually triplets. But the film people just said we looked like triplets, and that was what counted.”

If anyone asked, she added, “Daddy would just joke that only two of us were triplets.”

Read more, including the eventual fates of the Mawby sisters, at the link.