Johnny Russell, Shirley Temple’s Co-Star in ‘The Blue Bird,’ Dies at 91

Before starting a prestigious career in the U.S. Foreign Service, he acted as a child in the films Mr. Always Goodbye, Smith Goes to Washington, and Jesse James. 

Before working as a U.S. diplomat and ambassador in the Middle East and Africa, John R. Countryman, who played the child actor Johnny Russell, starred in movies with Shirley Temple, Tyrone Power, Barbara Stanwyck, and Jimmy Stewart. He died when he was ninety-one years old.

According to his daughter, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Secretary Vanessa Countryman, Countryman passed away in Loudoun, Virginia, on December 14 following a brief illness of pneumonia, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

Russell's most significant role in his short playing career was that of Tyltyl, Temple's Mytyl's younger brother, in the fantasy movie The Blue Bird (1940), Fox's response to MGM's The Wizard of Oz, which had come out the previous year. The two children embark on a series of adventures in a dream.

According to reports, Temple's mother, Gertrude, was upset that her daughter was spending so much time on screen with the cute Russell and wanted him replaced, but producer Darryl F. Zanuck demanded that the child stay.

In the Fox drama Always Goodbye (1938), Russell portrayed Roddy, the boy that Stanwyck's Margot Weston places for adoption after her fiancé is slain just before her wedding. According to the account, Russell, who was five at the time, was chosen for the role and a studio contract after 489 boys between the ages of 4½ and seven were "scanned and tested" in a month.

Russell was one of the Hopper Boys in the Frank Capra classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington at Columbia Pictures. In 1939, he played Jesse James Jr., the son of Power's lead role, in the Fox outlaw drama Jesse James.