Shirley Temple

Early years

Shirley Temple was born on April 23, 1928 in Santa Monica, California, the third child of homemaker Gertrude Amelia Temple and bank employee George Francis Temple. The family was of Dutch, English and German ancestry. She had two brothers, John Stanley and George Francis, Jr. The family moved to Brentwood, Los Angeles. Her mother encouraged her singing, dancing and acting talents, and in September 1931 enrolled her in Meglin's Dance School in Los Angeles. At about this time, Shirley's mother began styling her daughter's hair in ringlets.

While at the dance school, she was spotted by Charles Lamont, who was a casting director for Educational Pictures. Temple hid behind the piano while she was in the studio. Lamont took a liking to the young actress and invited her to audition; he signed her to a contract in 1932. Educational Pictures was going to launch their Baby Burlesks, multiple short films satirizing recent film and political events using preschool children in every role.

Baby Burlesks was a series of one-reelers, and another series of two-reelers called Frolics of Youth followed with Temple playing Mary Lou Rogers, a youngster in a contemporary suburban family. To underwrite production costs at Educational Pictures, she and her child co-stars modeled for breakfast cereals and other products. She was lent to Tower Productions for a small role in her first feature film (The Red-Haired Alibi) in 1932 and, in 1933, to Universal, Paramount and Warner Bros. Pictures for various parts. After Educational Pictures declared bankruptcy in 1933, her father managed to purchase her contract for just $25.

Film career

Fox Film songwriter Jay Gorney was walking out of the viewing of Temple's last Frolics of Youth picture when he saw her dancing in the movie theater lobby. Recognizing her from the screen, he arranged for her to have a screen test for the movie Stand Up and Cheer! Temple arrived for the audition on December 7, 1933; she won the part and was signed to a $150-per-week contract that was guaranteed for two weeks by Fox Film Corporation. The role was a breakthrough performance for Temple. Her charm was evident to Fox executives, and she was ushered into corporate offices almost immediately after finishing Baby Take a Bow, a song and dance number she did with James Dunn. On December 21, 1933, her contract was extended to a year at the same $150/week with a seven-year option and her mother Gertrude was hired on at $25/week as her hairdresser and personal coach. Released in May 1934, Stand Up and Cheer! became Shirley's breakthrough film. Within months, she became the symbol of wholesome family entertainment. In June, her success continued when she was loaned out to Paramount for Little Miss Marker.

After the success of her first three movies, Shirley's parents realized that their daughter was not being paid enough money. Her image also began to appear on numerous commercial products without her legal authorization and without compensation. To get control over the corporate unlicensed use of her image and to negotiate with Fox, Temple's parents hired lawyer Loyd Wright to represent them. On July 18, 1934, the contractual salary was raised to $1,000 a week and her mother's salary was raised to $250 a week, with an additional $15,000 bonus for each movie finished. Temple's original contract for $150 per week is equivalent to $2,750 in 2015, adjusted for inflation. However, the economic value of $150 during the Great Depression was equal to $18,500. The subsequent salary increase to $1,000 weekly had the economic value of $123,000 and the bonus of $15,000 per movie (equal to $275,000 in 2015) was equivalent to a staggering $1.85 million in a decade when a quarter could buy a meal. Cease and desist letters were sent out to many companies and the process was begun for awarding corporate licenses.

On December 28, 1934, Bright Eyes was released. The movie was the first feature film crafted specifically for the girl's talents and the first where her name appeared eponymously over the title. Her signature song, On the Good Ship Lollipop, was introduced in the film and sold 500,000 sheet-music copies. In February 1935, Shirley Temple became the first child star to be honored with a miniature Juvenile Oscar for her film accomplishments, and she added her foot- and handprints to the forecourt at Grauman's Chinese Theatre a month later.

In 1935, Fox Films merged with Twentieth Century Pictures to become 20th Century Fox. Producer and studio head Darryl F. Zanuck focused his attention and resources upon cultivating Shirley's superstar status. She was the studio's greatest asset. Nineteen writers, known as the Shirley Temple Story Development team, made 11 original stories and some adaptations of the classics for her.

Biographer Anne Edwards wrote about the tone and tenor of Shirley Temple films, "This was mid-Depression, and schemes proliferated for the care of the needy and the regeneration of the fallen. But they all required endless paperwork and demeaning, hours-long queues, at the end of which an exhausted, nettled social worker dealt with each person as a faceless number. Shirley offered a natural solution: to open one's heart." Edwards pointed out that the characters created for the little actress would change the lives of the cold, the hardened, and the criminal with positive results. Her films were seen as generating hope and optimism, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "It is a splendid thing that for just fifteen cents an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles."

Most of the Shirley Temple films were inexpensively made at $200,000 or $300,000 per picture and were comedy-dramas with songs and dances added, sentimental and melodramatic situations, and little in the way of production values. Her film titles are a clue to the way she was marketed—Curly Top and Dimples, and her "little" pictures such as The Little Colonel and The Littlest Rebel. Shirley often played a fixer-upper, a precocious Cupid, or the good fairy in these films, reuniting her estranged parents or smoothing out the wrinkles in the romances of young couples. Elements of the traditional fairy tale were woven into her films: wholesome goodness triumphing over meanness and evil, for example, or wealth over poverty, marriage over divorce, or a booming economy over a depressed one. As the girl matured into a pre-adolescent, the formula was altered slightly to encourage her naturalness, naïveté, and tomboyishness to come forth and shine while her infant innocence, which had served her well at six but was inappropriate for her tweens (or later childhood years), was toned down.

1935–1937

In the contract they signed in July 1934, Shirley's parents agreed to four films a year (rather than the three they wished). A succession of films followed: The Little Colonel, Our Little Girl, Curly Top (with the signature song "Animal Crackers in My Soup") and The Littlest Rebel in 1935. Curly Top and The Littlest Rebel were named to Varietys list of top box office draws for 1935. In 1936, Captain January, Poor Little Rich Girl, Dimples and Stowaway were released. Curly Top was Shirley's last film before the merger of 20th Century and Fox.

Based on Shirley Temple's many screen successes, Zanuck increased budgets and production values for her films. By the end of 1935, her salary was $2,500 a week. In 1937, John Ford was hired to direct the sepia-toned Wee Willie Winkie (Temple's own favorite) and an A-list cast was signed that included Victor McLaglen, C. Aubrey Smith and Cesar Romero. Elaborate sets were built at the famed Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Calif., for the production, with a rock feature at the heavily filmed location ranch eventually being named the Shirley Temple Rock.

The film was a critical and commercial hit, but British writer/critic Graham Greene muddied the waters in October 1937 when he wrote in a local magazine that Temple was a "complete totsy" accusing her of being too nubile for a nine-year-old:

Her admirers—middle-aged men and clergymen—respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire.

Shirley Temple and Twentieth Century-Fox sued for libel and won. The settlement remained in trust for the girl in an English bank until she turned twenty-one, when it was donated to charity and used to build a youth center in England.

Heidi was the only other Shirley Temple film released in 1937. Midway through the shooting of the movie, the dream sequence was added into the script. There were reports that the little actress was behind the dream sequence and she had enthusiastically pushed for it, but in her autobiography, she vehemently denied it. Her contract gave neither her nor her parents any creative control over the movies she was in. She saw this as the collapse of any serious attempt by the studio to build upon the dramatic role from the previous movie Wee Willie Winkie.

1938–1940

The Independent Theatre Owners Association paid for an advertisement in The Hollywood Reporter in May 1938 that included Shirley Temple on a list of actors who deserved their salaries while others, such as Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford, were described as "whose box-office draw is nil". That year, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Little Miss Broadway and Just Around the Corner were released. The latter two were panned by the critics, and Corner was the first of her films to show a slump in ticket sales. The following year, Zanuck secured the rights to the children's novel, A Little Princess, believing the book would be an ideal vehicle for the girl. He budgeted the film at $1.5 million (twice the amount of Corner) and chose it to be her first Technicolor feature. The Little Princess was a 1939 critical and commercial success with Shirley's acting at its peak. Convinced that the girl would successfully move from child star to teenage actress, Zanuck declined a substantial offer from MGM to star her as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and cast her instead in Susannah of the Mounties, her last money-maker for Twentieth Century-Fox. The film was successful, but because she made only two films in 1939 instead of three or four, Shirley dropped from number one box-office favorite in 1938 to number five in 1939.

In 1939, she was the subject of the Salvador Dalí painting, Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time, and she was animated with Donald Duck in The Autograph Hound.

In 1940 Lester Cowan, an independent film producer, bought F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, "Babylon Revisited and Other Stories" for $80, which was a bargain. Fitzgerald thought his screenwriting days were over and with some hesitation accepted Cowan's offer to write the screenplay titled "Cosmopolitan" based on the short story. After finishing the screenplay, Scott was told by Cowan that he would not do the film unless Shirley Temple starred in the lead of the youngster Honoria. Fitzgerald objected, saying that at age 12, going on twenty, the actress was too worldly for the part and would detract from the aura of innocence otherwise framed by Honoria's character. After meeting Shirley in July, Fitzgerald changed his mind and tried to persuade her mother to let her star in the film. However, her mother demurred. In any case, the Cowan project was shelved by the producer. F. Scott Fitzgerald was later credited with the use of the original story for The Last Time I Saw Paris starring Elizabeth Taylor.

In 1940, Shirley starred in two flops at Twentieth Century-Fox, The Blue Bird and Young People. Her parents bought up the remainder of her contract and sent her at the age of 12 to Westlake School for Girls, an exclusive country day school in Los Angeles. At the studio, the girl's bungalow was renovated, all traces of her tenure expunged, and the building was reassigned as an office.

Radio career

Temple had her own radio series on CBS. Junior Miss debuted March 4, 1942, in which she played the title role. The series was based on stories by Sally Benson. Sponsored by Procter & Gamble, Junior Miss was directed by Gordon Hughes, with David Rose as musical director.

Last films and retirement

After her departure from Twentieth Century-Fox, Shirley was signed by MGM for her comeback; the studio made plans to team her with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney for the Andy Hardy series. The idea was quickly abandoned, but MGM then teamed her with Garland and Rooney for the musical Babes on Broadway. Fearing that either of the latter two could easily upstage the girl, MGM replaced her with Virginia Weidler. As a result, her only film for Metro was Kathleen in 1941, a story about an unhappy teenager. The film was not a success, and her MGM contract was canceled after mutual consent. Miss Annie Rooney followed for United Artists in 1942 but was unsuccessful. The actress retired from films for almost two years, in order to instead focus on school and activities.

In 1944, David O. Selznick signed Shirley Temple to a four-year contract. She appeared in two wartime hits: Since You Went Away and I'll Be Seeing You. Selznick, however, became romantically involved with Jennifer Jones and lost interest in developing Shirley's career. Temple was then lent to other studios. Kiss and Tell, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer and Fort Apache were her few good films at the time.

According to biographer Robert Windeler, her 1947–49 films neither made nor lost money but "had a cheapie B look about them and indifferent performances from her". Selznick suggested that she move abroad, gain maturity as an actress and even change her name. He warned her that she was typecast and her career was in perilous straits. After auditioning for and losing the role of Peter Pan on the Broadway stage in August 1950, Temple took stock and admitted that her recent movies had been poor fare. She announced her retirement from films on December 16, 1950.

Merchandise and endorsements

Many Shirley Temple-inspired products were manufactured and released during the 1930s. Ideal Toy and Novelty Company in New York City negotiated a license for dolls with the company's first doll wearing the polka-dot dress from Stand Up and Cheer!. Shirley Temple dolls realized $45 million in sales before 1941. A mug, a pitcher, and a cereal bowl in cobalt blue with a decal of the little actress were given away as a premium with Wheaties.

Successful Shirley Temple items included a line of girls' dresses, accessories, soap, dishes, cutout books, sheet music, mirrors, paper tablets, and numerous other items. Before 1935 ended, the girl's income from licensed merchandise royalties would exceed $100,000, which doubled her income from her movies. In 1936, her income from royalties topped $200,000. She endorsed Postal Telegraph, Sperry Drifted Snow Flour, the Grunow Teledial radio, Quaker Puffed Wheat, General Electric and Packard automobiles.

Myths and rumors

At the height of her popularity, Shirley Temple was often the subject of myths and rumors, some propagated by 20th Century Fox/Fox Films. Fox also publicized her as a natural talent with no formal acting or dance training. As a way of explaining how she knew stylized buck and weave dancing, she was enrolled for two weeks in the Elisa Ryan School of Dancing.

One persistent rumor was especially prevalent in Europe; fake news circulated that Shirley was not a child but a 30-year-old dwarf due in part to her stocky body type. The rumor was so prevalent that the Vatican dispatched Father Silvio Massante to investigate if she were indeed a child. The fact that she never seemed to miss any teeth led some people to conclude that she had all her adult teeth. Temple was actually losing her teeth regularly through her days with 20th Century Fox, most notably during the sidewalk ceremony in front of Grauman's Theatre, where she took off her shoes and placed her bare feet in the cement to take attention away from her face. When acting, she wore dental plates and caps to hide the gaps in her teeth. Another rumor pertaining to her teeth was the idea that they were filed to make them appear like baby teeth.

Shirley's biggest trademark was her hair, which was also the subject of rumors. A rumor circulated that she wore a wig. More than once, fans yanked her hair to test the theory. She later said she wished all she had to do was wear a wig. The nightly process she went through in the setting of her curls was tedious and grueling, with once a week vinegar rinses burning her eyes. Rumors also spread about her hair color, namely that she wasn't a natural blonde. During the making of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, news spread that she was going to do extended scenes without her trademark curls. During production, she also caught a cold, which caused her to miss a couple of days. As a result, a false report originated in Britain that all of her hair was cut off.

Television career

Between January and December 1958, Temple hosted and narrated a successful NBC television anthology series of fairy-tale adaptations called Shirley Temple's Storybook. She acted in three of the sixteen hour-long episodes, and her son made his acting debut in the Christmas episode, "Mother Goose". The series was popular but faced issues. The show lacked the special effects necessary for fairy tale dramatizations, sets were amateurish, and episodes were telecast in no regular time-slot, making it hard for another. The show was reworked and released in color in September 1960 in a regular time-slot as The Shirley Temple Show. It faced stiff competition from Maverick, Lassie, Dennis the Menace, the 1960 telecast of The Wizard of Oz, and the Walt Disney anthology television series however, and was canceled at season's end in September 1961.

Temple continued to work on television, making guest appearances on The Red Skelton Show, Sing Along with Mitch, and other shows. In January 1965, she portrayed a social worker in a pilot called Go Fight City Hall that was never released. In 1999, she hosted the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars awards show on CBS, and, in 2001, served as a consultant on an ABC-TV production of her autobiography, Child Star: The Shirley Temple Story.

Motivated by the popularity of Storybook and television broadcasts of Temple's films, the Ideal Toy Company released a new version of the Shirley Temple doll and Random House published three fairy tale anthologies under her name. 300,000 dolls were sold within six months and 225,000 books between October and December 1958. Other merchandise included handbags and hats, coloring books, a toy theater, and a recreation of the Baby, Take a Bow polka-dot dress.

Life after Hollywood

Temple became active in the Republican Party in California. In 1967, she ran unsuccessfully in a special election in California's 11th congressional district to fill the seat left vacant by the leukemia death of eight-term Republican J. Arthur Younger. She ran in the open primary as a conservative Republican and came second with 34,521 votes (22.44%), behind Republican law school professor Pete McCloskey, who placed first in the primary with 52,882 votes (34.37%) and advanced to the general election with Democrat Roy A. Archibald, who finished fourth with 15,069 votes (9.79%), but advanced as the highest-placed Democratic candidate. In the general election, McCloskey was elected with 63,850 votes (57.2%) to Archibald's 43,759 votes (39.2%). Temple received 3,938 votes (3.53%) as an independent write-in.

Temple was extensively involved with the Commonwealth Club of California, a public-affairs forum headquartered in San Francisco. She spoke at many meetings through the years and was president for a period in 1984.

Temple got her start in foreign service after her failed run for Congress in 1967 when Henry Kissinger overheard her talking about Namibia at a party. He was surprised that she knew anything about it. She was appointed as a delegate to the 24th United Nations General Assembly by President Richard M. Nixon (September – December 1969) and United States Ambassador to Ghana (December 6, 1974 – July 13, 1976) by President Gerald R. Ford. She was appointed first female Chief of Protocol of the United States (July 1, 1976 – January 21, 1977) and in charge of arrangements for President Jimmy Carter's inauguration and inaugural ball.

She served as the United States Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (August 23, 1989 – July 12, 1992), having been appointed by President George H. W. Bush. She was the first and only female US ambassador to the former Czechoslovakia. Temple was a witness to two crucial moments in the history of Czechoslovakia's fight against communism. She was in Prague in August 1968, as a representative of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies and going to meet with Czechoslovakian party leader Alexander Dubček on the very day that Soviet-backed forces invaded the country. Dubček fell out of favor with the Soviets after a series of reforms known as the Prague Spring. Temple, who was stranded at a hotel as the tanks rolled in, sought refuge on the roof of the hotel. She later reported that it was from here she saw an unarmed woman on the street gunned down by Soviet forces, a sight that stayed with her for the rest of her life. Later, after she became ambassador to Czechoslovakia, she was present in the Velvet Revolution, which brought about the end of communism in Czechoslovakia. Temple played a critical role in hastening the end of the communist regime by openly sympathizing with anti-communist dissidents and later establishing formal diplomatic relations with the newly elected government led by Václav Havel. She took the unusual step of personally accompanying Havel on his first official visit to Washington, travelling on the same plane.

Temple served on boards of directors of large enterprises and organizations such as The Walt Disney Company, Del Monte Foods, Bank of America, Bank of California, BANCAL Tri-State, Fireman's Fund Insurance, United States Commission for UNESCO, United Nations Association and National Wildlife Federation.

Personal life

In 1943, 15-year-old Temple met John Agar (1921–2002), an Army Air Corps sergeant, physical training instructor, and member of a Chicago meat-packing family. When Temple was 17, she married him on September 19, 1945 before 500 guests in an Episcopal ceremony at Wilshire Methodist Church in Los Angeles. On January 30, 1948, Temple bore a daughter, Linda Susan. Agar became an actor, and the couple made two films together: Fort Apache (1948, RKO) and Adventure in Baltimore (1949, RKO). The marriage became troubled, and Temple divorced Agar on December 5, 1949. She was awarded custody of their daughter. The divorce was finalized on December 5, 1950.

In January 1950, Temple met Charles Alden Black, a World War II Navy intelligence officer and Silver Star recipient who was Assistant to the President of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. Conservative and patrician, he was the son of James Black, president and later chairman of Pacific Gas and Electric, and reputedly one of the richest young men in California. Temple and Black were married in his parents' Del Monte, California home on December 16, 1950, before a small assembly of family and friends.

The family moved to Washington, D.C. when Black was recalled to the Navy at the outbreak of the Korean War. In 1952, Temple gave birth to a son, Charles Alden Black, Jr., in Washington. Following the war's end and Black's discharge from the Navy, the family returned to California in May 1953. Black managed television station KABC-TV in Los Angeles, and Temple became a homemaker. Their daughter Lori Black was born on April 9, 1954; she went on to be a bassist for the rock band the Melvins. In September 1954, Charles Sr. became director of business operations for the Stanford Research Institute, and the family moved to Atherton, California. The couple were married for 54 years until his death on August 4, 2005, at home in Woodside, California of complications from a bone marrow disease.

At age 44 in 1972, Temple was diagnosed with breast cancer. The tumor was removed and a modified radical mastectomy performed. She announced the results of the operation on radio and television and in a February 1973 article for the magazine McCall's.

Death

Temple died at age 85 on February 10, 2014, at her home in Woodside, California. Her family stated that she died of natural causes. The specific cause, according to her death certificate released on March 3, 2014, was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Temple was a lifelong smoker and avoided displaying her habit in public because she did not want to set a bad example for her fans.

Awards, honors, and legacy

Temple was the recipient of many awards and honors including a special Juvenile Academy Award, the Life Achievement Award from the American Center of Films for Children, the National Board of Review Career Achievement Award, Kennedy Center Honors, and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. On September 11, 2002, a life-size bronze statue of the child Temple by sculptor Nijel Binns was erected on the Fox Studio lot.

On March 14, 1935, Shirley left her footprints and handprints in the wet cement at the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. She was the Grand Marshal of the New Year's Day Rose Parade in Pasadena, California three times in 1939, 1989, and 1999. On February 8, 1960, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In February 1980, Temple was honored by the Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, along with U.S. Senator Jake Garn of Utah, actor James Stewart, singer John Denver, and Tom Abraham, a businessman from Canadian, Texas, who worked with immigrants seeking to become U.S. citizens.