Child actress Edith Fellows dies at 88

LOS ANGELES -- Child actress Edith Fellows had made about 30 films when she starred at 13 in a 1936 custody case driven, she later said, by "my money -- past, present and future."

Abandoned as an infant by her mother, she was being raised by her paternal grandmother, who brought Edith, then 4, to Hollywood from South Carolina.

Within two years, Edith was cast in her first film, the 1929 short "Movie Night." She had appeared in movies with stars including Tom Mix and W.C. Fields when the mother she had not seen for most of a decade came knocking on the door.

When her mother sued her grandmother for custody, Edith testified, "I might be willing to be friends with her if she'd leave me alone, but I'm not used to loving strangers." Once the two sides agreed that Edith would remain in her grandmother's care, her mother sought an allowance from her daughter. The judge advised taking it up with probate court.

Fellows died of natural causes Sunday at the Motion Picture and Television Fund's retirement home in Los Angeles, said her only child, Kathy Fields Lander. She was 88. -- Los Angeles Times