Violently cute child actor Richard Nichols, 87, died on Oct. 1, 2023 (his death went unreported in the press at the time). Nichols, with his shoe-button eyes, curly hair and baby lisp, was so adowable (as he’d pronounce it) that he made Shirley Temple look like Broderick Crawford. He was from a theatrical family: Nichols’s five siblings also acted. Between 1939 and 1944, Richard acted in 11 films, some of them quite high-profile: he was Bette Davis’s young charge in All This and Heaven Too and Joan Crawford’s in A Woman’s Face; he had small but important roles in Little Men, A Dispatch from Reuters, Kitty Foyle, Blossoms in the Dust, Hitler’s Madmen, and—his last film—This is the Life. Nichols left show business when adolescence set in. His family wrote that he was “an evangelist of the gospel, a bus driver and substitute teacher for Jefferson County, Alabama; a talented musician, vocalist, and pianist; a gospel song writer and congregational singing school instructor. Richard's preaching, talent, and humor will be missed by all who knew and loved him.”
