Shirley Jane Temple was born in 1928 in Santa Monica, California, the third and last child and only daughter of a banker and his wife. Cute as a button, dimpled and precocious, her mother obsessed over molding her into a performer of some sort. From the very beginning, Shirley was eager to please her mother and took to performing as easily as she took to walking, talking and everything else she did.
By age three, Mama had her enrolled in dancing classes and after a short time she was discovered by a man who represented some little upstart company called Educational Pictures. Mrs. Temple was eager for them to put her little girl under contract. Shirley appeared in a string of low-budget shorts, called Baby Burlesks, that satirized adult lives and events with preschoolers in all the roles.
She made a few films, mostly in uncredited roles. Everyone who worked with her gushed about what a little dynamo of a talent she was but Educational Pictures folded. Not to be deterred, her father, who was by now aware of what a little goldmine the family had, bought her contract for a mere $25. The Temples would manage her and become her financial advisers. Even after Shirley was under contract to Fox, it was her parents, of course, with whom the studio dealt and the Temples were always attentive, formidable and shrewd.
Her first film with Fox was 1934's Stand Up and Cheer. Although it was a small role, her talent was most apparent, as usual, and the studio signed her up. They immediately loaned her out to Paramount (a practice they were quick to squelch) to appear as the title star in Little Miss Marker (1934) and it went on to become one of the most popular films she would ever make.
A Depression-era story about a little girl who is given by her father to a bookmaker as a marker against a bet. A template was established for most of her 30's films. She was usually motherless and often an orphan and thrown into some very sad situations before everything worked out most cheerfully at the end. Sometimes there was a song and/or dance routine thrown in but always the little tyke would humanize the hardest hearts.
To say that she was an antidote for the Depression is saying a mouthful. Often the Depression was at the heart of her films. And if that adorable little girl going through rough times could still put on a happy face, it was hoped that ticket buyers could too. FDR called her Little Miss Miracle because she raised the public's morale. We had a family friend who would frequently watch Shirley's films with us at our home and she would cry. When I asked her why she cried, she said because that little girl makes me so happy.
Shirley (and Will Rogers) helped pull Fox Films out of financial slumps and she became one of the biggest stars the studio ever had... and they had some biggies. From 1935 to 1938, she was the most popular movie star in America. She would win an honorary Academy Award at age 6. By age 12 she had 43 films under her little belt and had earned over a million dollars.
She was so popular that she had a galaxy of merchandise inspired in her image... dolls, of course, and mugs, pitchers, cereal bowls, dresses, paper tablets, mirrors and more. And of course there was that drink (which she couldn't stand).
Also in 1934 she appeared in one of her best, Bright Eyes, which features her iconic singing of On the Good Ship Lollipop, and the following year she made Curly Top which showcased the cutesy Animal Crackers. That same year brought another iconic number, the superb staircase dancing with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in The Little Colonel. Other famous films as a young child star include The Littlest Rebel, Captain January, Poor Little Rich Girl, Stowaway, Heidi, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Little Princess.
For as much as she worked, Shirley led a fairly normal life around her home in tony Brentwood. She had chores and collected an allowance. In public, of course, she was very protected and it was very rare that anything unseemly happened to her or around her. But in 1939, at age 11, she was on a radio production of The Blue Bird with Nelson Eddy and others. She had sung Silent Night with him and gone to her dressing room. While gazing out a window she saw a woman with a scowling face looking back. It frightened her and she told her mother who called the police. They were still looking for the woman when Shirley returned to the stage and spotted her in the front row of the audience, pointing a gun at her. The woman was apprehended and later said that she was intent on killing Shirley because the woman had lost a child on Shirley's exact birth date and thought Shirley had taken her soul.
She was growing up and while still cute, she was certainly no longer that adorable six-year old. Her boss, Darryl Zanuck, thought she would manage the transition into teen roles nicely. Nonetheless, he declined MGM's request to borrow her to play Dorothy in their ambitious The Wizard of Oz (1939). Shirley desperately wanted to do it. She said all her movies were for kids and Oz was a more grownup role and a full-fledged musical.
She was crushed to not get the plum part and instead make Susannah of the Mounties, The Blue Bird and Young People. Susannah was more of the same but the other two were outright flops. Suffice it to say Shirley, her folks, the studio and the public were all thunderstruck.
Her contract was not renewed. Zanuck was wrong... there was not an easy transition for Shirley into her teens. She loved to work but something had definitely taken hold of her like never before. Puberty. She was attending the posh Westlake School for Girls and loved being one of them. Singing and tap dancing and 56 perfect blonde ringlets no longer captured her attention. Boys did.
She went to work at MGM in Kathleen (1941) but still in a kid role in which she had a governess and it certainly didn't turn a profit. Then it was to United Artists for Miss Annie Rooney (1942), arguably the worst film she made in her teenage years. That same year she began her own radio series, Junior Miss.
Enter David O. Selznick. Famous for producing Gone with the Wind, overbearing ways on film sets and interminable memos to underlings, he purchased the film rights to Margaret Buell Wilder's wartime romance novel, Since You Went Away (1944). He wanted Shirley for the role of Brig, Claudette Colbert's youngest daughter and Jennifer Jones' sister but she needed to sign a contract with him. Putting those kid movies aside, it is my favorite Shirley movie, although not my favorite Shirley role. It was not a very happy set but it certainly raised her stock in the environs of Hollywood because the film was immensely popular.
Around this time, at age 15, she met 21-year old John Agar, an Army physical training instructor and from a Chicago meat-packing family, and fell for him. She claimed she was madly in love, of course, but a lot of the truth was that Shirley, ever the celebrated child, had raging hormones and was dying to be a grownup. It wasn't long before they were engaged and it was important to her to be the first girl in her class to do so.
 |
| Mr. and Mrs. John Agar |
She played Ginger Rogers' sister in another Selznick wartime story, I'll Be Seeing You (1944). The actresses did not get along. In 1945, at age 17, she married Agar and the same year had a success with the comedy Kiss and Tell and a lesser success with Honeymoon (1947), although she and Guy Madison were an attractive pair.
Her best role in her teenage years was as Myrna Loy's sister in The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer (1947). It is a zany screwball comedy with a lovesick Temple as a high-schooler whacked out over Cary Grant, who, in turn, is in love with Loy. I enjoyed this one.
The following year she secured for her husband his first movie role as her beau in the John Ford cavalry western, Fort Apache, with John Wayne and Henry Fonda as her father. The youngsters were an adorable couple on screen. Too bad her character was saddled with the improbable name of Philadelphia Thursday.
Too bad too that their marriage wasn't as steady as their screen work which included another film, Adventure in Baltimore, released in 1949, the same year the marriage collapsed. Despite having a daughter in 1948, there were constant rumors of his infidelity, alcoholism and rough stuff. He didn't like being Mr. Shirley Temple but he was to remain bitter that she didn't discuss the impending divorce with him.
 |
| Mr. and Mrs. Charles Black |
In 1950, she married Charles Black, a former naval officer, and although she didn't know him very well, they remained married for nearly 55 blissful years. She would forever more be known as Shirley Temple Black.
After the marriage, she quit the movies for good, saying she'd had enough of pretend. She had two children with Black and enjoyed being a non-working wife and mother. In 1958, however, she was lured into doing an anthology television show which lasted for three years. She became the president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, a cause dear to her because one of her brothers suffered with it.
She was a life-long Republican and discovered she had a yen for politics. She worked under four presidents in various capacities, including ambassadorships to Ghana and later Czechoslovakia.
In 1988 she wrote an utterly charming autobiography, Child Star (McGraw Hill).
She died at age 85 at her home in Woodside, California, in 2014. The cause was listed as COPD.
Next posting:
This ends our tribute to the 1930's. Coming up is the 1980's. I am foregoing the usual introduction to a new decade and am also going to pass on postings on people (unless an obituary). Instead, the focus will be on 15 films that are special to me from that decade. I am also doing a few of the Remakes series and of course reviews of some current films. After doing the exhaustive 30's, I'll feel like I'm on vacation doing the 80's. On to 2018...
No comments:
Post a Comment