Shirley Temple Black

American actor and diplomat

• Born: April 23, 1928
• Birthplace: Santa Monica, California
• Died: February 10, 2014
• Place of Death: Woodside, California

In the 1930s, child actor Shirley Temple starred in immensely popular Hollywood films that lightened the hearts of audiences after the Great Depression. In later life, as Shirley Temple Black, she became active in government service as a United Nations delegate and an ambassador.

Early Life

Shirley Temple achieved her greatest success as a child entertainer. Born in 1928, the third child of Gertrude Krieger and banker George Temple, her career began in January, 1931, when her mother, who once dreamed of becoming a ballerina, enrolled her at Mrs. Meglin's Dance Studio. Barely three years old, Temple already could sing on key and learn tap steps quickly.

At an unscheduled talent scout audition, Temple shyly hid behind a piano. Nevertheless, her interviewer was charmed, and just after Thanksgiving she was hired for The Runt Page, a one-reel parody of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’sThe Front Page. She portrayed gossip columnist Lulu Parsnips. In 1932, Temple’s parents signed a contract at $50 per week for her work in additional Baby Burlesks, short films that satirized current feature films. The actors were very young children who wore the top halves of adult costumes but were swathed in diapers fastened with a huge safety pin. If the children misbehaved on set, they were disciplined by being locked in a black box with only a giant cake of ice to sit on, and from time to time they were placed in risky situations. For instance, once Temple was trapped in a cart pulled by an out-of-control ostrich. Although Temple had danced with popular humorist Will Rogers at a benefit in front of an adoring audience, her biggest break would come a short time later in a memorable musical.

Life’s Work

Temple entered full-length film acting at age six in the 1934 Fox Studios musical Stand Up and Cheer . In the film’s finale, as James Dunn and assorted chorus girls sang “Baby, Take a Bow,” a dimpled Temple pranced from between Dunn’s legs singing “Daddy, take a bow,” and she quickly became America’s darling. Her weekly salary was increased to $150, which was more than her father earned at the bank, and a bodyguard and personal maid (assistant) were hired for her. She was then contracted to Fox Studios, who marketed her as one year younger to make her appear more precocious. Temple did not learn her true age until her twelfth birthday party when she was told that she was actually thirteen.

With her new film Baby, Take a Bow (1934), Temple first achieved star billing. Her favorite early role, though, was the title character in Little Miss Marker (1934), through whom she could break rules and be impertinent (things she was never allowed to do in reality). When it came time for Academy Awards voting, Temple received so many write-in votes for her performances in these two films that she was given an honorary Oscar at the 1935 awards ceremony.

A typical Temple film centered on her as an adorable tot or foundling at the heart of some kind of misfortune (often a dead mother), whose wide-eyed innocence and cheerful disposition brought people together in an invariably happy ending that usually involved singing and dancing. Temple danced with Buddy Ebsen and George Murphy, among others, but her favorite partner was Bill “Bojangles” Robinson , a veteran vaudeville entertainer whom she called Uncle Billy. She learned his tap dances by listening to the rhythm of his feet. Their best-known pairing was the stair dance from The Little Colonel (1935), their first film together.

Temple’s life was rigidly controlled. Gertrude proved to be an astute stage mother, coaching her daughter and going over lines with her each day. On the set she would remind Temple to “sparkle, Shirley, sparkle!” Later, Gertrude became a force to be reckoned with, ordering other actors’ scenes to be shortened or omitted to emphasize Temple’s role. In Bright Eyes (1934), which featured Temple’s signature song “On the Good Ship Lollipop,” Temple appeared with child costar Jane Withers, who was not permitted to speak to her off camera, and Temple was not allowed to eat with others in the commissary. The studio preferred to isolate her, ostensibly to calm her behavior and avoid the spread of childhood diseases to its valuable “property.”

Temple’s fame created many jobs, not only through her films but also indirectly through the countless commercial products made and marketed internationally with her image: sheet music, books, dolls of every stripe, little girls’ dresses, jewelry and hair ribbons, hand-painted dishes, and even dog toys. Her image appeared on bags of flour, milk bottles, cereal boxes, radios, refrigerators, and automobiles. Singing phonetically in Japanese, she recorded folk songs for her Asian fans. The Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood, California, created the nonalcoholic drink, the Shirley Temple, which was a sweet and bubbly mixture of grenadine and ginger ale with a maraschino cherry.

When World War II broke out in Europe, the mood of the nation changed, and so did Temple’s popularity, which plummeted as she reached puberty. In 1939 she was displaced by Mickey Rooney as the top box-office star. She had been privately tutored until 1940, when she entered Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles for her only formal education. Later, she signed on for teenage films like the wartime drama Since You Went Away (1944) and the comedy The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) with Cary Grant, but these films were not as successful as her earlier work.

From 1931 to 1949, Temple appeared in fifty-seven films, including forty-five feature films, four shorts, and eight Baby Burlesks. A generation of little girls wore moppet curls and learned to sing and tap dance in wishful imitation of her. A short-lived marriage at age seventeen to actor John Agar, with whom she had a daughter, ended in divorce. By 1949, Temple retired from Hollywood, but she hosted and acted in two children’s television series from 1958 to 1961. She assumed the name Shirley Temple Black in 1950 upon her marriage to Charles Black, which produced two more children and lasted more than fifty years until his death in 2005.

Black gradually became involved in California politics, supporting her former costars George Murphy (later US senator) and Ronald Reagan (later California governor and US president). In 1967, after her unsuccessful run as a Republican candidate for Congress, she chose to devote her life to public service. She was appointed the US delegate to the United Nations by President Richard M. Nixon in 1969, and she later served as ambassador to the Republic of Ghana (1974–1976). Immediately following that post, President Gerald Ford appointed her as the first female chief of protocol for the US Department of State. From 1981 to 1988 she worked with the Foreign Affairs Institute as a seminar leader for new ambassadors. In 1989, President George H. W. Bush named her as ambassador to Czechoslovakia, a position she held through 1992. Black died of natural causes on February 10, 2014, at her home in Woodside, California.

Significance

Black’s most popular films were made between 1934 and 1938. For four years she was Hollywood’s top box-office attraction, and by 1937 she had become an international star. In 1938, her annual income of $307,000 was seventh highest in the nation, reportedly more than that of the president of General Motors. Her hand and footprints were memorialized in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood in 1935. She was the youngest person ever to appear on the cover of Time magazine, to be listed in Who’s Who, and to receive an Academy Award. Temple received a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame in 1960, and in 2006 she was presented with a Life Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild.

Black delighted world leaders, including US president Franklin D. Roosevelt and Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev, who met her on his stormy visit to the United States in 1960. Although a career diplomat, Black is remembered most as Little Shirley, the smiling child who sang, danced, and occasionally shed a tear.

Bibliography

Black, Shirley Temple. Child Star: An Autobiography. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988. Print. Covers Temple’s life up to 1954. Includes photographs from her personal collection, with an index and a filmography.

David, Lester, and Irene David. The Shirley Temple Story. New York: G. B. Putnam’s Sons, 1983. Print. Emphasis on show-business anecdotes from people who worked with Temple, demonstrating her influence on American popular culture. Includes many photographs.

Dubas, Rita. Shirley Temple: A Pictorial History of the World’s Greatest Child Star. New York: Applause, 2006. Print. Lavishly illustrated art book, with a brief biographical account focusing on Temple’s career in motion pictures. Many previously unpublished photographs that include Shirley Temple clothing, commercial products, and collectibles.

Edwards, Anne. Shirley Temple: American Princess. New York: William Morrow, 1988. Print. A biography containing the transcript of Temple’s libel suit against English author Graham Greene for his suggestive review of her performance in Wee Willie Winkie (1937). Private photographs, a film chronology, television credits, and a bibliography.

Fass, Paula S., ed. Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society. 3 vols. New York: Macmillan, 2004. Print. Includes a compact biography of Temple’s career as well as a separate entry on child celebrities in general.

Hacker, Paul. "Ambassador Shirley Temple Black: The Person and the Flower." Slovakia on the Road to Independence: An American Diplomat's Eyewitness Account. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2010. 44–50. Print.

Hatch, Kristen. "Discipline and Pleasure: Shirley Temple and the Spectacle of Child Loving." Camera Obscura 27.179 (2012): 127–55. Print.

Kasson, John F. The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America." New York: Norton, 2014. Print.

Minott, Rodney G. The Sinking of the Lollipop: Shirley Temple Versus Pete McCloskey. San Francisco: Diablo, 1968. Print. Offers details of Temple’s only foray into politics as a conservative Republican candidate for Congress. Includes photographs.

Windeler, Robert. The Films of Shirley Temple. Secaucus: Citadel, 1978. Print. Briefly examines Temple’s film career. Includes biographical text and plentiful photographs.