James Caughey "Coy" Watson, Jr., 96   

Child Movie Star, News Photographer, Inventor, Television Pioneer, Author

By Pattie Watson Price
(Daughter of Coy Watson Jr.)

    James Caughey
"Coy" Watson, Jr., 96, went home to be with our Lord on Saturday, March
14, near his home in Alpine, CA, a mountain community in San Diego
County.  He died from complications of stomach cancer. 

    Coy was born November 16, 1912, in his home in Edendale, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, the oldest of nine children born to Golda and Coy Watson.

   
From the age of nine months to 21, Coy Watson appeared in more than 65
motion pictures. He became know as "The Keystone Kid." His father, Coy
Watson Sr., was an early motion picture pioneer. He worked as an
assistant director and special effects man for many studios, and
periodic member of the famous "Keystone Cops" of the Mack Sennett
Studio.
   
Coy Jr. appeared in early silent pictures (his
first, "The Price of Silence", 1913, Selig Studio) and "talkies"
playing feature roles and small parts with Hollywood greats such as Lon
Chaney, Mary
Pickford, Mae West, Cary Grant, Joan Bennett, Fatty Arbuckle, Jackie Coogan, Buck Jones and John Barrymore. Some of his directors included Mack Sennett, Marshal Neilan, King Vidor,
George Marshall, Sam Wood and George Hill. Coy appeared in the opening
scene of one of the first "sound on film" motion pictures, "Puttin’ on the Ritz" (1930), with Joan Bennett and Harry Richmond.
   
Coy
attended school on studio lots and Los Angeles’ Clifford Street Grammar
School, Thomas Starr King Junior High, and Belmont High School, and
graduated in 1933. All his life he battled dyslexia.  He was active in
Boy Scouts, earned the rank of Eagle Scout and later became a Scout
Master with Troop #78 in Los Angeles.  Throughout his life he worked
with boys at camps and helped establish a Los Angeles County Camp for
delinquent boys while President of the Los Angeles Press Photographers
Association in 1946, an organization he help found in 1936.

   
In 1929 Coy stepped behind the camera to pursue a career in news
photography. At age 4, Coy remembered watching his grandfather, James,
a Captain in the Salvation Army, magically developing film in their
pantry. He worked with Pacific and Atlantic Photos news-picture
syndicate, which became Acme New Pictures, still later becoming UPI and
now, Reuters.

    From 1935 to 1940 Coy worked with Acme New
Pictures, The Los Angeles Post Record, The Los Angeles Times, and The
Los Angeles Herald Express. With these organizations he photographed
all types of news stories for local and national newspapers and
magazines. Watson covered the big LA news stories of the day, including
the mysterious death of Thelma Todd, Franklin Roosevelt’s visit to Los
Angeles and was an official photographer of the Los Angeles Olympic
Games in 1932.  Coy’s photos appeared in the first and second issues of
LIFE magazine — November and December, 1936.

    In 1939, Coy invented and manufactured the Coy Watson Lite Beam Focuser,
a built-in camera device that assured accurate still camera focusing in
total darkness. It’s believed this invention marked the first time a
battery was ever placed in a camera.  During 1940 and ’41, Coy received
orders from around the world and traveled throughout the U.S. selling
and installing the Lite BeamFocuser in cameras of newspaper and professional photographers.
   
Coy
served his country (1942 – 1945) in the US Coast Guard during World War
II as a Boatswains Mate and Chief Photographer. In 1943, at a show
staged at the Hollywood Bowl for MadamChiang Kai-shek (there to raise
awareness and money for China), Coy took official still photos of Coast
Guard personnel and movie stars for the Coast Guard and newspapers, but
also took 16 mm motion pictures for his own historic interests. That
evening his motion picture film became  the first filmed news story
ever to be televised in the Los Angeles area on L.A.’s first television
station. There were less than 40 TV sets in the city.

    In
1945, Coy Watson Photos was established to serve the Los Angeles area
with photographic and public relations services. In 1948 he became a TV
news and film photographer "stringer" forWPIX and TeleNews , New York,
TV news services and was invited to become a member of the
International Photographers of the Motion Picture Industries Union (IATSE) Local 659. In 1949, NBC/New York assigned Coy to cover on 16mm film the historic story of Kathy Fiscus,
a little girl who had fallen into an abandoned well. It was the first
news story in California to be televised live — continuously for 52
hours.
   
In 1949, Coy shot Hollywood’s first TV commercial on
film for Vermont Motors. It aired between the televising of the Santa
Anita horse races. The film replaced the usual "ad-card" advertising.
That same year he made the first TV film documentary. Coy’s story,
"Operation Endurance"  forMcMillian Oil, featured two former W.W. II
pilots "staying in the air" in a single-engine plane over 1,000 hours
(42 days). Coy captured the non-stop re-fuelings, family-on-the-ground and other elements documenting this world-record-breaking event.

   
Recognition of this milestone in TV film production lead to the reunion
of two former Hollywood news buddies who would also make television
history together. Coy and syndicated Hollywood columnist Erskine
Johnson joined together to make "Hollywood Reel"; the first film-series
for American television featuring motion picture stars and their real
lives in Hollywood. The 52, 30-minute shows were broadcast across the
U.S. revealing stars at play, trendy fashions of the day, and behind
the scenes moments at studios and everyday events in Hollywood.  While
producing these shows, Coy married his secretary and production
assistant, Imelda "Willie"Niemer.

    After a sojourn running
cattle on his ranch near Sacramento, Watson returned to Hollywood in
1953 to pioneer television news as a TV news cameraman, organizing and
contributing to the film operations of CBS, ABC andKTLA . He originated
the Man on the Street Interview; spotlighting average citizens and
their views on current events. Among the many stories he covered were
the first atomic bomb tests in Yucca Flats, NV and was assigned to join
the White House Press Corps in Denver, CO during the hospitalization of
President Eisenhower. 

    He was also News Director at NBC’s KCRA in Sacramento, and produced films for the State of Oregon while operating Coy Watson Productions in Medford, OR.  In 1965, Coy took his pioneering spirit and family to Perth, Western Australia to train the TV film news department at TVW, ABC (Australia Broadcasting Co.)

   
In 1984, after managing the Vista Chamber of Commerce, serving as
public relations officer for a fast food corporation and building
miniature cameras for oil drilling exploration, Watson moved toRancho Bernardo, San Diego County, to retire.

    Nineteen ninety-two marked the return of the "Hollywood Reels" when the historic films aired for five years on AMC
(American Movie Classics, cable TV.)  After 80 years, producer Peter
Jones returned Coy to his roots and featured him in a production about
early Hollywood with Mary Pickford and Lon Chaney Sr.

    Coy
received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 from The Press
Photographers Association of Greater Los Angeles for his dedication,
pioneering foresight and professionalism in the arena of news
photography.

    In 1999, Coy Watson Jr. and his parents, Coy
Sr. and Golda Watson, and five brothers and three sisters were honored
with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Known as the "First Family
Of Hollywood," the nine kids literally grew up in Hollywood. Coy Sr.
started with the Mack Sennett Studio in 1912, and collectively the
family appeared in more than 1,000 motion pictures with some of motion
picture’s biggest stars.  No other theatrical family can match their
accomplishments.

    In his "golden years" Coy reflected on his
life, family and accomplishments by writing a book about his early
years in the motion picture industry that included historic photos from
his personal collection as well as the famous "Watson Family Archives":
four generations of Los Angeles photos.  "The Keystone Kid: Tales of
Early Hollywood," was published in 2001.

    In 2004 he was
delighted to "receive" a San Diego Emmy Award for "San Diego Insider:
Coy Watson, The Keystone Kid," a documentary by COX San Diego Channel 4
about his life.

    Along with his many accolades, "firsts" and
professional achievements, Coy was a wonderful father, brother, husband
and friend. His incredible sense of humor was a joy to all who knew
him. He always tried to make people feel good, with a joke or kind
word, wherever he went.  He was the eldest of the "nine Watson kids"
followed by Vivian, Gloria, Louise, Harry, Billy, Delmar, Garry and
Bobs.  He was a member of the fraternal organization ofDeMolay and Freemasonry and a long time member of Wisdom Lodge #202.

   
Coy is survived by his wife, "Willie", daughter Pattie Watson Price and
grand-daughter Haley Christine Price, of Alpine, CA. and son JamesCaughey "Jim" Watson III, grandson J.C. "Jim" Watson IV, and great grandson James Caughey Watson V, and grand-daughter Kimberly Cottrell
, and three additional great grandchildren, all residents of Perth,
Western Australia.  His sister, Louise Roberts and brothers Billy and
Garry are the surviving members of the nine Watson siblings.

Coy
Watson will be memorialized at a family ceremony and his remains will
be interred at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery at a later date.