The cute little girl with the dimples and 56 curls had faded as an actress by the time I was born. So I don’t recall Shirley Temple and her movie heyday. By the time I arrived, she had walked away from films into a new life.
I do recall later hearing her name associated with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the master tapper with whom she made four movies during the 1930s. For many little girls of that era, Shirley Temple was the bomb – the child they wished to be. That was quite evident in one child’s scrapbook that I got in a box lot at auction recently.
It was a homage to the child star – page after of page of newspaper clippings of photos of her, along with a colored cardboard print that had appeared on a Wheaties cereal box. One photo was signed “love, Shirley Temple,” but I doubt that it was her signature. Likely, the little girl who loved her so much wrote it to herself.
The newspaper photo clippings included Temple as a baby (she was born in 1928) and toddler; 5-year-old Temple penning her name – or “making her mark,” as the newspaper described it – on her first big movie contract with Fox Films ($1,000 a week) with her mother at her side; Temple in all kinds of poses and too-short dresses; Temple playing tennis, riding a tricycle, riding a horse, wearing a top hat and tails, and Temple with her oh-so-many dolls.
There was also a linen postcard of a 20th Century Fox photo of the outside of her home, along with an ad for a Shirley Temple mug that promised to make your child eager to drink her milk.
Everyone cashed in on her popularity: In 1937, Snellenburg department store in Philadelphia invited girls 4 to 12 – with tickets, of course – to a Shirley Temple Birthday Party that featured a Doll Contest Game. For 35 cents, they could also get lunch, choosing either the “Little Bo Peep Luncheon” of roasted lamb and gravy, whipped potatoes and buttered new peas, or the “Jack and the Beanstalk Plate” of fresh stringless beans with crisp bacon, new red beets and mashed potatoes. Included were a special ice cream, milk or cocoa and a lollipop.
This apparently was before hotdogs and burgers.
Temple’s every movement was chronicled, and she spent her childhood in a very big spotlight as the little girl who could do it all – sing, dance and act. At 7 years old, one newspaper caption called her America’s most popular child prodigy.
Another clipping noted that she had earned more than $1 million in royalties from dolls (which now are highly collectible), dresses and other products bearing her name. Hers was the advertising face for a number of products, including Quaker Puffed Wheat – whose newspaper ad was loose in the scrapbook – books, paper dolls, clothes, jewelry and sheet music.
In an interview in 2006, Shirley Temple Black had this to say in answer to a question about working back then:
Q: How did you survive being about the most famous person on Earth when you were so young?
A: Basically, because of my mother. She believed if a child is working in the entertainment industry that a parent should always be with the child to step in front of the child and say, “She can’t do that” or “She can’t accept that great gift from you.” If there isn’t someone to do that, the (child actor) gets spoiled rotten.
Q: What are your most memorable moments from them?
A: The many baby teeth I lost (while acting). They’d go flying out of my mouth in the middle of a scene. It was a bit of a shock. (The director) would have to say “cut,” and we would search for the tooth. As a wife and mother, it was seeing my three babies for the first time.
She got her start in the movies at the age of 3, but got her big break in the film “Stand Up and Cheer” after signing with Fox in 1934. At the 1935 Oscars ceremony, she received a special miniature Academy Award for her performances in eight films the year before.
Temple appeared in about 50 shorts and full-length films in the 1930s and 1940s. She and Bill Robinson appeared together in four of them, him as the butler for her family. He danced his famous stair dance in their first, “The Little Colonel,” in 1935.
She missed out on one of the most famous roles of any child-star’s career – Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. When MGM asked Fox to allow her to play Dorothy, the studio refused, opting instead to cast her in one of its own films, which did poorly. Judy Garland got the role and the rest is history.
As Temple moved from adorable child to adolescent, her popularity waned, and she left film-making for high school at age 12. She later returned, worked for a few studios and then gave up Hollywood altogether in 1950.
