Shirley Temple

Susannah of the Mounties (1939)The Little Princess (1939)

Just Around the Corner (1938)Little Miss Broadway (1938)

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938) Heidi (1937)

Wee Willie Winkie (1937)Stowaway (1936)Dimples (1936)

Poor Little Rich Girl (1936)Captain January (1936)

The Littlest Rebel (1935)Curly Top (1935)

Our Little Girl (1935) The Little Colonel (1935)

Bright Eyes (1934) Now and Forever (1934)Baby Take a Bow (1934)

Now I'll Tell (1934) Little Miss Marker (1934) Change of Heart (1934)

Stand Up and Cheer! (1934)Managed Money (1934)

Managed Money As the Earth Turns (1934)

Mandalay (1934)Betty Shaw Carolina (1934)

Pardon My Pups (1934) What's to Do? (1933)Merrily Yours (1933)Kid 'in' Africa (1933)

To the Last Man (1933) Dora's Dunking Doughnuts (1933)

Polly Tix in Washington (1933)The Kid's Last Fight (1933/I)

Out All Night (1933) Kid in Hollywood (1933)

Glad Rags to Riches (1933)New Deal Rhythm (1933)

The Pie-Covered Wagon (1932)The Red-Haired Alibi (1932)

War Babies (1932)Runt Page (1932)

Kid's Last Stand (1932)

Shirley Temple

Shirley Temple was the most

famous child actor in history. From 1936-

1938, Temple earned more than any other

Hollywood star, starring in films that

offered an hour and a half of optimism at

the height of the Depression. Her movies

were credited with restoring the Fox studio

to profitability when it had teetered near

bankruptcy.

Temple’s mother had once had show

business aspirations, and frequently played

the phonograph and attended dance recitals

while she was pregnant. Eight months after

she was born, young Shirley was regularly

swaying to music in her crib, and at three

years of age she began taking dance les-

sons at Mrs. Meglin’s Dance Studio in Los

Angeles. She was discovered mere months

later, when executives from a low-budget

film company came by the dance studio.

Temple began appearing in “Baby Burlesks”,

short films which spoofed popular movies

by remaking them with children.

Shirley Temple was easily the most

popular and famous child star of all time.

She got her start in the movies at the age

of three and soon progressed to super star-

dom. Shirley could do it all: act, sing and

dance and all at the age of five! Fans loved

her as she was bright, bouncy and cheerful

in her films and they ultimately bought mil-

lions of dollars worth of products that had

her likeness on them. Dolls, phonograph re-

cords, mugs, hats, dresses, whatever it was,

if it had her picture on there they bought it.

In her earliest films, Temple performed

remarkable impressions of such stars as

Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. While

the cameras rolled, Temple’s mother

would be on the sidelines, encouraging

Shirley to “Sparkle!”

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When she was 11, Hollywood producer

(The Wizard of Oz) and lyricist (“Singin’ in

the Rain”) Arthur Freed exposed himself to

Temple. In her autobiography, Child Star,

Temple wrote, “Having thought of him as

a producer rather than exhibitor, I sat bolt

upright”. She says she laughed at him and

walked away, which infuriated him.

To make her seem even more precocious,

her mother subtracted a year from Temple’s

age, and until she was 13 Temple thought

she had been born in 1929. As she lost her

curls and began to grow curvy, she made

fewer movies and, for the first time, attended

a relatively normal albeit private school.

She met her first husband, actor John

Agar, who was the much older brother of a

classmate, and they married when she was

17. Agar, however, was unable to handle

being “Mr. Shirley Temple”, and began to

drink heavily. She continued appearing in

adult roles, with diminishing box office suc-

cess, and stopped acting after they divorced

when she was 21. Temple fell in love a

second time just months after the divorce,

when she met pineapple executive Charles

Black while on a vacation to Hawaii. She

was especially charmed when he admitted

having never seen any of her films. Temple

called an old friend, FBI Director J. Edgar

Hoover, and asked him to check into Black’s

background. Shortly thereafter, she became

Shirley Temple Black.

At 5, in 1934, she attained fame with

a featured role in Stand Up and Cheer,

starring Warner Baxter. Shirley starred in

several more films the same year, including

Little Miss Marker with Adolphe Menjou,

Baby Take A Bow with Claire Trevor, and

Bright Eyes with James Dunn, where she

sang her classic “On the Good Ship Lolli-

pop”. The next year, she broke racial barriers

by dancing with the original Mr. Bojangles,

Bill Robinson, in The Little Colonel.

Her family was protective, and her father,

a banker, handled her finances, but even

then, Hollywood was a ribald and raucous

town. When she was seven, her insurance

stipulated that it would not pay if she were

injured or killed while intoxicated.

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She briefly returned to acting in 1958,

as host and sometimes performer of Shirley

Temple’s Storybook, an anthology series

that ran on NBC and ABC from 1959-62.

She began her second career in public life

at about the same time, becoming involved

in the fight against multiple sclerosis after

the disease ravaged her brother George, Jr.

She co-founded the International Federa-

tion of Multiple Sclerosis Societies.

In 1967, Temple ran for Congress on a

platform urging more American involve-

ment in the war in Vietnam. She lost the

election, and attributes this to political car-

toons that showed the child Shirley Temple

facing off against big grown-up politicians.

She was 39 at the time. Shirley Temple

“When I was 14, I was the oldest I ever was. I’ve been getting

younger ever since.” ~ Shirley Temple

Black remained active in Republican poli-

tics, and was named by Richard M. Nixon

to serve as a US representative the United

Nations. She was later an ambassador to

Ghana. During the Ford administration, she

was the first female Chief of Protocol for the

White House, a position she did not enjoy

-- one foreign dignitary’s wife expected her

to act as a hairstylist. She was later a Foreign

Affairs officer for the State Department

under Ronald Reagan, who had played her

romantic interest in That Hagen Girl four

decades earlier.

Of her diplomatic posts, the strongly

anti-communist Temple thought her most

exciting position was as ambassador to

Czechoslovakia, under George H.W.

Bush. “I was told I was going to a Stalinist

backwater, one of the toughest countries

around... And I thought, ‘Good! Let’s go

get ‘em!’” While in Czechoslovakia, she

once eluded the secret police and attended

an anti-government rally, and then watched

that nation’s 1989 Velvet Revolution from a

friend’s apartment.

“Shirley Temple doesn’t hurt Shirley

Temple Black”, she once said. “Shirley

Temple helps Shirley Temple Black because

Shirley Temple is remembered with love

and with affection. I am thought of as a

friend -- which I am.” Shirley and Charles

Black were married for more than 50 years,

until his death; she continues to reside in

California.