Appearances

Title	Role	Year	Approx. Age
A Yank at Eton	Peter Carlton	1942	18
Tom Brown's School Days (1940)	East	1940	16
Listen Darling	Herbert 'Buzz' Mitchell	1938	14
Lord Jeff	Geoffrey Braemer	1938	14
Kidnapped 1938	David Balfour	1938	14
Swiss Family Robinson 1940	Jack Robinson	1938	14
Captains Courageous 1937	Harvey	1937	13
Little Lord Fauntleroy - 1936	Cedric 'Ceddie' Erroll	1936	12
Lloyd's of London	Young Jonathan Blake	1936	12
The Devil is a Sissy	Claude 'Limey' Pierce	1936	12
David Copperfield 1935	David Copperfield as a child	1935	11
Professional Soldier	King Peter	1935	11

One of the most popular child actors in film history, Freddie Bartholomew was born Frederick Llwellyn in Dublin, Ireland, in 1924, the son of a British soldier with Welsh connections. He was raised in England by an aunt, Millicent Barthomolew.

Freddie had appeared on the London stage and in two minor British films, when on a visit to the U.S. with his aunt in 1934 he was offered the title role in David Copperfield (1935) by MGM. This film made him an overnight star. His salary soared to $2,500 a week making him filmdom's highest paid child star after Shirley Temple.

Following the success of Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), Freddie's birth parents, who were strangers to him, stepped in and attempted for seven years to gain custody of him and his fortune. His aunt Millicent attempted to offset these legal expenses and payouts by demanding a raise in Freddie's MGM salary in 1937. Another slew of court cases ensued, this time over the MGM contract, and Freddie missed a critical year's work and some golden film opportunities.

When he was 14 the millions he had earned as a child had been spent mostly on lawsuits. "I was drained dry," he said.

He was pitted against Mickey Rooney in five films: Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), The Devil is a Sissy (1936 - along with Jackie Cooper), Captains Courageous (1937), Lord Jeff (1938) and A Yank at Eton (1942). He worked along side Judy Garland in: Listen Darling (1938) and Jackie Cooper in two more films: The Spirit of Culver (1939) and Two Bright Boys (1938).

In 1943, Freddie enlisted in the U.S. Air Force for a year to work in aircraft maintenance, exiting with both a back injury and American citizenship. The additional time away from the screen had not done him any favors, though, and efforts to revive his career on film were unsuccessful. His efforts performing in regional theaters and vaudeville did not spark a comeback either. Aunt Millicent left for England when Freddie married publicist Maely Daniele in 1946 against her wishes. Freddie toured a few months in Australia doing nightclub singing and piano, but when he returned to the U.S. in 1949 he switched to television, making a gradual move from performer to host to director, at New York station WPIX.

In 1954, re-married to TV cookbook author Aileen Paul, he moved to Benton & Bowles ad agency as a television director and producer, becoming vice president of television programming in 1964 and directing and producing several prominent long-running soap operas.

Bartholomew retired due to emphysema by the late 1980s, and eventually moved with his third wife Elizabeth to Florida, where he died in 1992 at the age of 67, but not before being filmed in several lovely interview segments for the lengthy 1992 documentary, MGM: When the Lion Roars. (After leaving acting in 1951, Bartholomew vowed never to give any interviews about the so-called "good old days".)

He is survived by a son and daughter