Jackie Lyn Dufton

Biography

Born in England as Jaquelyn Dufton, she worked in pictures under the name Jacquie Lyn. Her brief career as a child actor came to an end when her stepfather asked for more money than the studios were willing to pay. Later, she married and became Jacquelyn Woll. It was reportedly on the advice of the cowboy star Tim McCoy that Jacquie Lyn was taken to see the independent producer Hal Roach, whose "Our Gang" comedies - known in reissues as The Little Rascals - were centered around an ever- changing group of child performers. Lyn appeared in only two films from this series, Free Wheeling and Birthday Blues (both 1932). Though fast acquiring something of an American "twang", Lyn's accent was still recognizably English in origin. For many years Jacquie Lyn was the topic of speculation as to her whereabouts, helped not at all by frequent confusion with another Our Gang member, Jackie Lynn Taylor, and contemporary wrong documentation of her place and date of birth. Jacquie was rediscovered by the Sons of the Desert because of a home movie taken by Stan Laurel. The movie showed Jacquie playing with Stan's daughter Lois. The brief film was featured on a video that Jacquie's son had purchased for her in the early '90s. In the introduction to this video, Lois asked the whereabouts of Jacquie. Jacquie contacted the address given in the video. She was reunited with Lois and was subsequently an honored guest at a Sons of the Desert convention in Las Vegas.