Oscar Profile #542: Shirley Temple

Born April 23, 1928 in Santa Monica, California, Shirley Temple was the third child and only daughter of homemaker Grace and bank employee George Temple. When she was three, her determined stage mother enrolled her in Meglin’s Dance School where she honed her singing, dancing, and acting skills. At the same time, Mrs. Temple began styling her hair in ringlets. While at dance school, she was discovered by Charles Lamont, casting director for Educational Pictures who signed a contract with her parents for film work at his studio.

Temple appeared in several shorts for the company, which loaned her out to Tower Productions for The Red-Headed Alibi, her first feature film in 1932. In 1933, she was loaned out to Universal, Paramount, and Warner Bros. for various projects. At the end of the year, she was given a contract by Fox which cast her in 1934’s Stand Up and Cheer! starring Warner Baxter and Madge Evans. Third-billed Temple and fourth-billed James Dunn, who played her father, stole the show with their dance number, “Baby Take a Bow”. The result was a second film with Dunn with the title of that song. After making several more films including Little Miss Marker opposite Adolphe Menjou, Temple and Dunn were reunited for Bright Eyes, the first film made expressly for the emerging star in which she sang her signature song, “On the Good Ship Lollipop”.

Following the death of 65-year-old actress Marie Dressler in 1934, six-year-old Temple took over Dressler’s reign as the number one box-office star, a position she held for four years. Her films during this period included Curly Top, The Little Colonel, Captain January, Dimples, Wee Willie Winkie, Heidi, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and The Little Princess. 1940’s Young People was her last for Fox. A brief contract with MGM resulted in just one film, the 1941 flop, Kathleen. 1942’s Miss Annie Rooney for United Artists, though better reviewed, didn’t do much better at the box-office and she retired for two years.

Temple’s most successful films beginning in 1944 were those in which she had supporting roles beginning with Since You Went Away and continuing with I’ll Be Seeing You, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, and Fort Apache. She married actor John Agar in 1945 when she was 17, having met him two years before. They had a daughter in 1948 and divorced at the end of 1949. In 1950, Temple married second husband, Charles Alden Black with whom she had two more children, and with whom she would be married until his death in 2004.

Temple closed out her acting career in 1950 after being rejected for the lead in that year’s Broadway production of Peter Pan, the role going to Jean Arthur instead.

The former child star returned briefly to show business to host the 1958-1961 children’s anthology series, Shirley Temple’s Storybook. She later emerged as a diplomat, appointed by Republican presidents Nixon, Ford, and George W. Bush to various diplomatic posts including two ambassadorships. Shirley Temple died on February 10, 2014 at 85.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

BRIGHT EYES (1934), directed by David Butler

This was Temple’s third film with James Dunn who played her father in Stand Up and Cheer! and Baby Take a Bow and the first written expressly for the emerging five-year-old superstar. Dunn plays Temple’s aviator uncle who fights for custody of his orphaned niece after the courts have awarded custody to her snobbish uncle and aunt. Jane Withers, in a star-making role, plays her bratty cousin. Withers wasn’t allowed to speak to Temple except in character when filming. Even after she became the star of her own films, she wasn’t allowed to even say “hello” to Temple when she’d pass her on the lot.

THE LITTLE COLONEL (1935), directed by David Butler

Temple acts as a go-between between her retired Civil War Confederate Colonel grandfather (Lionel Barrymore) and her mother (Evelyn Venable) whom he had disowned after she married a Yankee (John Lodge). They meet when her parents return to the South. This was the first of five films Temple made with her favorite co-star, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who plays one of Barrymore’s servants, along with Hattie McDaniel. Temple’s staircase dance with Robinson was the highlight of the film and the first inter-racial dance in film history. It was shamefully removed from prints shown in the south.

MISS ANNIE ROONEY (1942), directed by Edwin L. Marin

This is the one in which 14-year-old Temple received her first screen kiss from a very nervous Dickie Moore. At 15, Moore whose roles ranged from Marlene Dietrich’s son in Blonde Venus to Gary Cooper’s brother in Sergeant York, had never kissed a girl before, either on screen or in real life. Cheeky Temple let him know it wasn’t her first kiss. Moore hilariously couldn’t dance either, so co-star Roland Dupree danced with Temple in a Dickie Moore mask. William Gargan and Guy Kibbee co-star as Temple’s father and grandfather, respectively.

SINCE YOU WENT AWAY (1944), directed by John Cromwell

Producer David O. Selznick persuaded Temple to come out of her self-imposed two-year retirement to play one of Claudette Colbert’s teenage daughters in his most elaborate film since Gone with the Wind. He even campaigned for an Oscar nomination for her, though it didn’t materialize. The film about life on the home-front during World War II, received nine Oscar nominations, winning for Best Score. It was the only film of Temples career nominated for Best Picture. Colbert, Jennifer Jones as Temple’s older sister, and Monty Woolley as an elderly boarder were nominated for their performances.

FORT APACHE (1948), directed by John Ford

The first film in Ford’s famed cavalry trilogy – the others being 1949’s She Swore a Yellow Ribbon and 1950’s Rio Grande – it was the last successful film of Temple’s career. The film stars John Wayne as beloved Army Captain nearing the end of his career and Henry Fonda as his replacement, a glory-hungry dilettante with no respect for the local Indians. Third-billed Temple plays Fonda’s daughter who becomes romantically involved with regimental sergeant Ward Bond’s son, played by Temple’s real-life husband John Agar in his acting debut. It was Fonda’s last film for seven years.