JACKIE COOGAN, CHILD STAR OF FILMS, DIES AT 69

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Jackie Coogan, who in 1919 became the first major child star in American movie history as the sad-eyed foundling in ''The Kid,'' died after a heart attack yesterday at the Santa Monica (Calif.) Hospital. He was 69 years old and lived in Palm Springs, Calif.

Mr. Coogan, who charmed a later generation as Uncle Fester on the television series ''The Addams Family,'' was taken to the hospital's emergency room shortly before noon, said a hospital spokesman, Mary Isaacs. He died two hours later.

For several years in the 1920's, he was the most famous boy in America. In one popularity poll, he topped Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks.

''I had the flu in New York, and it pushed the President of the United States off the front pages,'' he said in an interview in 1972.

After making his stage debut at the age of 16 months, he earned between $2 million and $4 million before he was out of short pants. Spotted by Chaplin

At the age of 4, he was spotted on a Hollywood vaudeville stage by Charlie Chaplin, who gave him a $75-a-week role in ''The Kid.'' When the film was finished, he received a $5,000 bonus. Then came ''Peck's Bad Boy'' at $1,000 a week, followed by a $500,000 Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer contract with a clause guaranteeing him 60 percent of the profits from such pictures as ''Tom Sawyer'' and ''Huckleberry Finn.''

John Leslie Coogan Jr. was born in Los Angeles, and by the time he was 13 he had been to New York 18 times, most often traveling in his private railroad car.

''Normal boy?'' he said in the 1972 interview. ''How would I know what a normal boy would do? When I was 7, we bought a big house at the corner of Wilshire and Western and put in one of the earliest swimming pools in Southern California.

''Being who I was, I had the best swimming instructor - Duke Kahanamoku - the year after he won the Olympics. I surfed from Baja California to San Francisco when there were only 9 or 10 surfers on the entire Pacific Coast. I drank milk from my own ranch. Other boys went to see Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth came to see me.'' Death of Father

But his life unraveled months before his 21st birthday. After a day of dove hunting in Mexico, the car his father was driving was forced off the road. The young actor was badly bruised, and his father and three other passengers were killed.

Mr. Coogan said later that the rest of his life would have been different if his father had survived. The reason was money.

Of the millions he had made as a child star, all he had ever received was a weekly allowance of $6.25. When he turned 21, his mother, Lillian, and Arthur Bernstein, the family lawyer whom she had married, announced that they would not turn any of it over to him. ''The law is on our side, and Jackie Coogan will not get a cent from his past earnings,'' Mr. Bernstein declared at a news conference.

After a childhood of virtually unquestioning obedience, Mr. Coogan agonized for two years before deciding to file suit to recover the money. 'Blackballed by the Studios'

''It was the lowest point of my life,'' he said in 1972, ''because my stepfather was related to many people, and I was blackballed by the studios.''

His anxiety was compounded by the disintegration of his first marriage, to a young starlet named Betty Grable. Eighteen months later, when the lawsuit was settled, he was left with only $35,000 - but with the knowledge that such a situation could not recur.

''Forty-eight hours after I filed my suit, they rushed a new law through the Legislature,'' he said. The measure said that all juvenile actors' earnings had to be deposited in court-administered trust funds.

Mr. Coogan became a stage actor in 1937 and estimated in 1966 that he had appeared in 35 silent films, 100 talkies and 850 television programs, including more than 65 episodes of ''The Addams Family.'' His Uncle Fester character in that series would stuff a light bulb in his mouth and make it glow. A Landing in Burma

In World War II, Mr. Coogan joined the Army as a flight officer and was the first glider pilot to land Allied troops behind the Japanese lines in Burma.

''If you think the natives were surprised when our gliders landed,'' he said, ''you should have seen them when we opened up the mouth of one and drove out a jeep.'' He was later awarded the Air Medal for meritorious service.

After his divorce from Miss Grable, he married another actress, Flower Parry, in 1941. They were divorced two years later, and in 1946 he married Ann McCormick, from whom he was divorced in 1951. The following year, he married Dorothea Lamphere, a dancer, who was at his bedside when he died.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Anthony, of Los Angeles, and Chris, of Palm Springs; two daughters, Joan, of Los Angeles, and Leslie Franklin of Malibu, and two grandchildren.