Buddy Ebsen favored to inform the story concerning the time he tried to get Shirley Temple to rehearse their dance sequence for 1936’s Captain January. “She acquired there and requested my dad, ‘Is the dance set?’” Buddy’s daughter Kiki Ebsen tells Closer. “He stated, ‘No, I’m going to make a few modifications.’ She rotated and stated, ‘Call me when it’s set, and I’ll be taught it.’ The level is, she didn’t have time to be taught a dance that wasn’t set.”
When Shirley, then 8, returned, she discovered the routine in simply an hour. “He was very impressed together with her expertise,” provides Kiki.
There has by no means been one other youngster star as beloved as Shirley, who made 29 movies by the point she turned 10, however she didn’t dwell a fairytale existence. During the years of her biggest fame, she labored punishing hours, obtained demise threats and inappropriate advances and retired at 22 with simply $40,000 within the financial institution. “I ended believing in Santa Claus on the age of 6 when my mom took me to see him in a retailer and he requested for my autograph,” she as soon as quipped.
At 3, Shirley started taking dance classes and shortly appeared in Baby Burlesks, brief parody movies that she would later name “a cynical exploitation of our infantile innocence that often have been racist or sexist.” It was an training in different methods, too. When Shirley or certainly one of her different younger costars misbehaved on set, they have been made to sit down on a block of ice in a locked, windowless sound sales space. “So far as I can inform, the black field did no lasting harm,” she wrote in her memoir, Child Star. “Its lesson of life, nonetheless, was profound. Time is cash. Wasted time means wasted cash means hassle.”
At age 6, Shirley grew to become a sensation singing “On the Good Ship Lollipop” within the movie Bright Eyes. “She inhabited a really distinctive second within the movie trade,” her son, Charles Black Jr., tells Closer, including that Shirley’s movies have been widespread due to their “attraction” and “good household values.”
Shirley’s mom, Gertrude, grew to become her fixed companion on the set. “Her mom was very, very protecting,” Marilyn Granas, the kid star’s stand-in informed Closer. “When different children can be within the movies with us, her mom wouldn’t let Shirley play with them.” Part of it was worry of Shirley catching a chilly. Gertrude additionally wished to maintain her daughter away from kids who weren’t “socially acceptable,” stated Granas.
Nonetheless, yearly round Shirley’s April 23 birthday, the studio would stage a celebration for her. “They have been probably not social events, they have been publicity issues,” stated Granas. “Everybody would deliver presents, but it surely was my understanding that Shirley by no means opened any of them. They all went to charity.”
When the 1932 kidnapping of flier Charles Lindbergh’s toddler son made information, Shirley started receiving demise threats. Her terrified dad and mom arrange “an elaborate safety system with guards that patrolled her household’s gated house,” says John Kasson, creator of The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and Nineteen Thirties America. Shirley’s father additionally began carrying a gun.
The scariest incident occurred in 1939 when the little lady was selling her upcoming movie The Blue Bird at an L.A. theater. “A deranged girl within the entrance row stood up and aimed a handgun straight at Shirley,” says Kasson. The girl, who believed that Shirley had stolen her daughter’s soul, was subdued, but it surely was a horrifying shut name.
Despite the numerous thousands and thousands she made for Fox Studios, in 1941 Shirley was dumped as a result of slumping ticket gross sales. Her contract was picked up by MGM, which had a brand new plan for the 11-year-old. “First we eliminate the child fats…Then new hair,” Shirley recalled being informed by producer Arthur Freed earlier than he unzipped his trousers and uncovered himself to her in his workplace. “I reacted with nervous laughter,” Shirley stated. Taken aback, Freed threw her out of his workplace.
At the height of her profession, Shirley commanded a wage of $10,000 per week, incomes her a wholesome $3.2 million. She had additionally earned cash from dolls, clothes and different objects which bore her likeness. So, at 22, she was understandably shocked to be taught that her checking account contained simply $40,000. “Ninety-seven cents of each greenback she made was gone,” says Kasson, who explains that Shirley’s father squandered her cash on dangerous investments. “No doubt additionally they purchased a much bigger home and used it on household bills,” he provides. “But Shirley didn’t blame him. She thought he was badly suggested.”
With all of the pluck of her childhood self, Shirley persevered. Her second marriage to Charles Black, a person who claimed to have by no means seen certainly one of her motion pictures, was blissful and enduring. Shirley additionally discovered a second profession as an American diplomat. “I’ve led three lives: the performing half, spouse and mom — which is a profession — and worldwide relations,” she stated. “I’m happy with my profession, the primary one, and I’m happy with the opposite two, too.”
