URGENT: Please help Diana Serra Cary - silent screen legend “Baby Peggy”
For fans of the silent film era, Baby Peggy needs no introduction. For those yet to “meet” this child star of early film, you can read about her here.
Today, Ron Hutchinson of The Vitaphone Project informs us that this 97 year old lady needs our help. Please read his statement below, and act - bring pressure on social media to bear on the Motion Picture and Television Fund and share his statement:
“Baby Peggy (Diana Serra Cary), beloved star of silent films, received over a million fan letters for her 150 shorts and features. Her highly-praised autobiography, Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy?, spawned a feature-length documentary. Now 97 and healthy but alarmingly frail, she has attempted for months to find financial support for modest in-home, non-medical care from the Motion Picture and Television Fund (MPTF), founded by her screen contemporaries Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin with one stated mission: “Taking Care of Our Own.“Instead of honoring this, MPTF management has refused Baby Peggy any support whatsoever, claiming her limited time in the motion picture industry and modest pension (which covers only bare living expenses) prevents this. In other words, her childhood should have been longer – and now she is effectively not poor enough.
Such shameful treatment of our oldest surviving silent star is particularly indefensible given the MPTF CEO, Bob Beitcher, reportedly earns over $700,000 per year, while his top ten employees take home a total of $4 million. This outrageous situation needs high visibility to hopefully change the MPTF’s mistreatment of a movie pioneer. I ask everyone to join forces and make the MPTF take immediate, compassionate action. Here’s how:
1) Email MPTF CEO and President Bob Beitcher at [email protected] and tell him he needs to quickly reverse his organization’s appalling refusal to provide assistance to Ms. Cary, and fund her need for in-home, non-medical support. Copy your email to [email protected]
2) Re-post this right now on your own page, and any others you feel are appropriate. We need to get the word out fast! Baby Peggy’s situation is urgent!
3) “Like” the MPTF’s Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/mptf/?fref=ts then post a comment about its disgraceful refusal of support to Baby Peggy despite its mission statement to do so (fyi you may not need to ‘like’ to comment, I was able to).
(You can learn about the MPTF mission at http://www.mptf.com/about and see how they are ignoring their own charter.)
Taking the above actions will cost you nothing, and will mean the world to a frantic senior citizen who spent her childhood making movies that have entertained the world ever since. Diana Serra Cary is aware of this post, and saddened it has come to this juncture. Ever since the MPTF’s founding, she had always assumed it would be there in time of need; after all, that was always its entire purpose.
Please help spread the word and make the MPTF abide by its mission!”
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