R.I.P. Junior Coghlan

[Big Magilla]

Frank Coghlan Jr., a freckle-faced child actor of silent movies who in the sound era thrilled Saturday matinee audiences by shouting “Shazam!” and mutating into the superhero Captain Marvel, died on Sept. 7 at his home in Saugus, Calif. He was 93.

He died of natural causes, his son, Patrick, said.

Junior Coghlan, as he was usually billed, did not actually become Captain Marvel in the 12-part serial “Adventures of Captain Marvel,” which Republic Pictures released in 1941. He played Billy Batson, the boy who meets a shaman in Siam who teaches him to transform himself into the superhero.

It was actually Tom Tyler who emerged as Captain Marvel, after Billy’s “Shazam!” moment, a giant flash and a billow of white smoke. (Although Mr. Coghlan was 25 at the time, his youthful looks and rather high-pitched voice allowed him to play the younger character.) Billy the boy and Captain Marvel, in a tight red costume with a yellow lightning bolt on the chest, would morph back and forth during the episodes, each 15 to 20 minutes long.

“It’s considered by many aficionados as the best cliffhanger serial of all time,” Bruce Goldstein, the director of repertory programming at Film Forum, the movie house in the South Village, said in an interview. “What a great fantasy for kids: a kid who turns into a superhero.”

Junior Coghlan had already made his name in movies when he was really a child. Starting at 3 as a crawl-on in a Western serial called “Daredevil Jack,” he had been an extra, played bit parts or had significant roles in more than two dozen silent movies.

“If you went to the movies in those days, you couldn’t help but know him, even though he was never a major star,” the film critic and historian Leonard Maltin said in an interview.

In 1925 the director Cecil B. DeMille signed little Frank to a five-year contract. “When DeMille saw Junior’s publicity stills, he stated, ‘Junior Coghlan is the perfect example of a homeless waif,’ ” according to the Web site Goldensilents.com.

“He had a spunk and an innocence,” Mr. Maltin said. “He would not be the one playing a juvenile delinquent.”

Yet in one of his first talkies, Mr. Coghlan played James Cagney’s hoodlum as a boy in “The Public Enemy” (1931), about a criminal’s rise in the Prohibition era.

Frank Edward Coghlan Jr. was born in New Haven on March 15, 1916, the only child of Frank and Katherine Coyle Coghlan. The family moved to California when Frank Jr. was a baby and, soon after, all three were working as extras in silent films.

Mr. Coghlan’s wife of 31 years, the former Betty Corrigan, died in 1974. His second wife, Letha Schwarzrocks, died in 2001. Besides his son, Patrick, of Saugus, Calif., he is survived by three daughters, Cathy Farley of Gold Hill, Ore.; Judy Coghlan of Seal Beach, Calif.; and Libbey Gagnon of Long Beach, Calif.; and six grandchildren.

Mr. Coghlan served as a naval aviator in World War II. He later headed the Navy’s motion picture cooperation program, acting as a liaison with Hollywood studios. After 23 years in the Navy, he returned to acting in bit parts in movies, on television and in television commercials.

Mr. Coghlan often appeared at conventions and seminars for movie buffs in his later years and was pleased that many people remembered his role in the Captain Marvel series.

His license plate said “Shazam,” Mr. Maltin said.