Shirley Temple

Shirley Temple was born on April 23, 1928, in Santa Monica, California, the third child of homemaker Gertrude Temple and bank worker George Temple.

Temple in Glad Rags to Riches (1933)

FILM CAREER

Shirley Temple made her on-screen debut at the age of 3, when she and a handful of other toddlers starred in the 1932 satire series Baby Burlesks. The kids wore adult clothing on the top and diapers fastened with large safety pins on the bottom, and their roles included prostitutes and World War I soldiers.  In her 1988 autobiography Temple described the series as "a cynical exploitation of our childish innocence".

The 1934 comedy drama movie Bright Eyes was the first film to be written and developed specifically for Shirley Temple, and the first in which her name was raised above the title. The movie featured her singing her best known musical number, "On the Good Ship Lollipop."

Movie poster for Bright Eyes. Wikipedia

Shirley Temple was honored in February 1935 with a special "pint-sized" Academy Award for her contributions on nine feature films and two shorts in 1934.

Shirley Temple stopped believing in Santa Claus at the age of 6 after her mother took her to see him in a department store and he asked for her autograph.

She was the top U.S. box-office draw from 1935 to 1938, beating out Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, and Joan Crawford.

Shirley Temple received received 135,000 presents for her ninth birthday in 1937. The film star's gifts included a baby kangaroo from Australia and a prize Jersey calf from schoolchildren in Oregon in the U.S. The calf was named "Shirley Temple" in her honor, and she even visited the calf on her birthday.

She was so famous they named a drink after her: The Shirley Temple cocktail is traditionally made with ginger ale and grenadine, topped with a maraschino cherry.

During Temple’s reign as a child star, because she was very physically coordinated and never seen missing baby teeth, there was a lingering rumor in Europe that she was actually an adult dwarf in disguise. The gossip was put to rest after the Vatican sent Father Silvio Massante to verify that Temple was indeed a little girl.

Her mother Gertrude was said to have done her hair for each movie, with every hairstyle having precisely 56 golden curls styled laboriously.

Temple's first on-screen kiss was in the 1942 comedy-drama Miss Annie Rooney when she played a modest girl who falls in love with a rich young man, played by Dickie Moore. He bestowed a kiss on her left cheek.

Ronald Reagan and Shirley Temple starred together in That Hagen Girl in 1947.

Wikipedia

POST MOVIE CAREER

Shirley Temple retired from acting at age 22 and became active in the Republican Party in California.

Shirley Temple in 1948

In 1967 Temple campaigned to fill an unexpired California congressional term. Her support of the Vietnam War and conservative Republicanism cost her the election, however.

However, her public career was not over, though. When Henry Kissinger overheard Temple talking about South West Africa at a party, he was surprised how knowledgeable she was. In 1969, President Richard Nixon appointed Temple to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. 

Nixon's successor, Gerald R. Ford, made Temple U.S. Ambassador to Ghana, a position she held from December 1974 to July 1976. 

Temple (far left) with First Lady Pat Nixon in Ghana, 1972

Later, Ford made Temple the first female Chief of Protocol of the United States. She held that title for half a year and was then in charge of arrangements for President Jimmy Carter's inauguration and inaugural ball.

Shirley Temple hated her namesake cocktail. She reportedly found it too sweet and even once said that it tasted like "liquid candy." In 1988, Temple sued the company that was bottling and selling a version of the drink called "Shirley Temple's Ginger Ale." She argued that the company was using her name without her permission and that the drink was not a true representation of her taste. Temple won the lawsuit and the company was forced to stop selling the drink.

In 1989, President George H.W. Bush appointed Temple as U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

Temple in 1990

PRIVATE LIFE

Shirley Temple married her first husband, John Agar on September 19, 1945. They'd met through Agar's sister, who was a schoolmate of the child actress. The bride wore a traditionally styled satin wedding gown, while John Agar was in military uniform. The ceremony took place in front of 500 guests.

Agar and Temple had a daughter together, Linda Susan Agar.  However, the marriage floundered due to Agar's drinking and pressures of their high public profile. The two were divorced on December 7, 1950.

John Agar

Temple met her second husband, Charles Black, a San Francisco businessman in Honolulu and they married a week after her divorce on December 16, 1950.

Black had never seen any of Temple's movies before they got together. The pair remained a couple until his death from complications of a bone marrow disease in 2005.

HEALTH AND DEATH

Shirley Temple was president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society and a co-founder of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies, a position that took her around the world. She was in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on MS Society business in 1968 when the Soviet Union's Red Army rolled into crush attempted democratic reform.

Temple had breast cancer in the early 1970s and had a mastectomy. She announced the results of the operation on radio and television and in a February 1973 article for the magazine McCall's. 

She was a lifelong smoker but Temple avoided displaying her habit in public because she did not want to set a bad example for her fans.

Shirley Temple died on February 10, 2014 from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia at her Woodside, California home, at the age of 85.

Sources About.com, LA Times