It was with great sadness that I received the news of Shirley Temple Black’s passing. I remembered growing up watching her movies and adoring her. I wanted to be able to sing and dance just like her and when my mother would dress me up for special occasions I would beg for “Shirley Temple” curls. I’m sure I was not the only little girl that learned the songs and practiced the dances in an effort to be just like her and she always remained an inspiration to me. Shirley Temple Black passed away peacefully on February 10th, 2014 at her Woodside, California home due to natural causes. She was a remarkable woman who made a nation fall in love with her, an excellent actor and later diplomat, wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother to a loving family. Shirley Temple was well known for raising the spirits of a nation during the depression. She made 23 motion pictures during her career and from 1935 to 1939 she was the most popular movie star in America, leaving even Clark Gable in the dust. She received more fan mail than Greta Garbo and she was photographed more than President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who stated during the depression that, “As long as we have Shirley Temple; this nation will be all right.”
Shirley Jane Temple was born in Santa Monica, California on April 23rd, 1928. Her career started most humbly at the age of three, when her mother enrolled her in Mrs. Meglin’s Dance Studio for a fee of 50 cents per week. In 1932 she was spotted by an agent from Educational Pictures and chosen to appear in “Baby Burlesks” a series of one-reel shorts that featured 4- and 5- year old children wearing adult costumes and parodying well known films such as “What Price Glory” (“War Babies”), in which, Shirley Temple imitated Marlene Dietrich and Mae West. After “Baby Burlesks” there were many casting calls and bit-part auditions that netted Shirley half a dozen small roles until 1934, when she was picked to play the role of the daughter in “Stand Up and Cheer”. Within weeks she was placed under contract to Fox for a year at $150 a week. She made eight movies in 1934, including “Little Miss Marker”, when Fox lent her to Paramount. One of my favorites was “The Little Colonel” made in 1935, “Wee Willie Winkie” followed in 1937 and then “Susannah of the Mounties” in 1939. It was no surprise that at the height of the depression the nation needed the enthusiasm and optimism of the sparkling little girl, who sang such wonderful songs as “On the Good Ship Lollipop” and “Animal Crackers in My Soup”. She tap danced with the likes of George Murphy, Jack Haley, Buddy Ebsen and of course Bill (Bojangles) Robinson.
Shirley continued to make movies into her teen years but they lacked the success of her earlier vehicles and just a few days before her seventeenth birthday, while attending the private Westlake School for Girls she accepted a proposal and ring from John Agar Jr. Unfortunately John Agar was unable to handle Shirley’s stardom and he began drinking heavily. Shirley continued on to star in “The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer” with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy as well as “That Hagen Girl” with Ronald Reagan. John Agar attempted to have a career of his own appearing in several low budget movies, mostly westerns but he could not complete with her success and the couple divorced in December of 1949, a year after the birth of their daughter, Linda Susan. Less than 60 days after her divorce, Shirley Temple now 21, met and became engaged to Charles Alden Black. Charles Black was an assistant to the president of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company and had never even seen a Shirley Temple movie. They were engaged after only a 12-day courtship and their marriage lasted almost 55 years, until his death in 2005.
Shirley Temple Black retired from the screen at the age of 22. Her retirement from movies though only left the road clear for her to pursue yet another career, that of diplomat. After her marriage to Charles Alden Black she became a leading Republican fund-raiser and she was appointed a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly by President Richard M. Nixon in 1969. She acted as the United States Ambassador to Ghana from 1974 to 1976 and served as President Gerald R. Ford’s Chief of Protocol in 1976 and 1977. Shirley became President George H. W. Bush’s Ambassador to the then Czechoslovakia in 1989 and served in that role during the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. She was very successful in her diplomatic service winning respect and acclaim from many including Henry Kissinger, who called her “very intelligent, very tough-minded, and much disciplined.”
In her efforts to serve the community Shirley served as President of the Multiple Sclerosis Society and co-founder of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies, raising funds to fight the disease that had struck her brother George. During a time when cancer was never spoken of Shirley Temple Black held a news conference in her hospital room after her mastectomy to talk about her experience and urge other women to come forward and not be afraid. She did a great deal toward making the discussion of breast cancer in the open acceptable. She is survived by her daughters Linda Susan and Lori and her son, Charles Jr. She was an exceptional woman that will be sorely missed.
