Word: tatum
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Publicity posters liken her to Shirley Temple. Her perky performance in Paper Moon is being compared with the classic childhood performances of Jackie Coogan and Jackie Cooper. Still, such megapraise does not entirely please nine-year-old Tatum O'Neal. "It's not the funnest thing in the world being called a boy," she laments in her husky voice. It was not all that much fun making a movie either. "I thought you could make a movie in one day with maybe four hours of work, because you can see it in two hours," she reasoned. Instead...
With a cunning apple pie face, Tatum seems typecast as Addie Pray, a preternaturally shrewd waif who hooks up with a conartist, played by her father, Ryan O'Neal. Soon she proves a defter swindler than O'Neal. She also seems more worldly, smoking, cussing and plotting dirty tricks. A pair of rag tag charmers, they sometimes earn their keep hawking Bibles to new widows...
...screen Tatum is a pixie. Her moods flicker from gleeful to sassy, and she dreams of growing up to "wear big elevator shoes and great clothes." She confided to TIME'S Mary Cronin that "what was good about the film was that I got to know my father better." Then, green eyes sparking, she adds: "You have got to admit he did very well." Actually, Tatum stole scene after scene...
...Tatum's childhood has been more gothic than glamorous. Her mother, Actress Joanna Moore, and O'Neal are divorced, and waged bitter custody fights over Tatum and her brother Griffin, 8. For several years the children lived a hippie existence with their mother on a California ranch. O'Neal charged that his former wife was using drugs and not properly supervising the children. The parents came to an agreement in 1971, and Ryan took Tatum while the mother kept Griffin. When Director Peter Bogdanovich suggested that O'Neal and Tatum costar, O'Neal leaped...
...being together seemed like a good idea during the tensions of filming. When Tatum would blow a scene, she was quick to pass the buck. "It wasn't my fault," she would cry. "Ryan did it." Says Bogdanovich: "She was a handful...