In 1933, Fox Studios was on the verge of bankruptcy. Founded in 1915 by William Fox, the studio flourished during the silent film era. However, when the Great Depression hit, he was running at a loss, owed millions, and stock prices plummeted. Salvation came in the form of a blonde girl with curly hair.
Two weeks before signing with the studio, Shirley Temple was cast in the film Stand Up and Cheer! along with James Dunn, who played her father. Although their roles were relatively small, the pair made such a strong impression that they immediately received additional engagements together. Shirley Temple soon became a household name.
The beginning in the world of show business
Temple first tried her hand at show business when her mother took her to dance lessons at the age of two and a half. She told the BBC: “I had so much energy – and I didn’t want to sleep – that she enrolled me in a nearby dance school, less than two kilometers from our house. There I learned, you know, rumba and tango.”
Film Bright Eyes it contained the song that would become her trademark: On the Good Ship Lollipop. It was at that school that she was discovered by director Charles Lamont, who hired her for a series of short films called Baby Burlesks. For each day of filming, Temple received a total of $10, while rehearsals were unpaid. She didn’t have kind words for the production, saying, “He wasn’t a good producer. He was a very stingy producer. It was a part of Hollywood known as ‘Poverty Row.'”
Lamont and producer Jack Hayes worked for Educational Films Corporation. Three-year-old Temple starred in eight films, but the conditions on the set were not pleasant for her or the other child actors. She described the punishment for bad behavior: “On our set, there were two sound boxes. One had a big block of ice, and if we misbehaved, they would send us one by one into that ‘black box’ to cool off and think. In the dark, with the door closed.” She added: “I often had ear infections, ear infections and various health problems because of it. I’ve been in the box a few times.”
Parents were not allowed to be on set with their children. Instead, Temple’s mother made her costumes, gave her acting lessons and gave her signature curls every night.
Inappropriate topics
Movie themes today seem extremely inappropriate. Temple described them as “parodies of adult films”. One of the first characters she played was called Morelegs Sweet Trick, a play on the name of movie star Marlene Dietrich. The movie War Babies it showed three-year-old Shirley, dressed in an off-the-shoulder blouse and a diaper fastened with a large safety pin, dancing for children playing soldiers, who fight each other for her and give her lollipops.
In the movie Polly Tix in Washington she played the “seductress” sent to charm the “senator”. In the first scene, she wears a brush holder and files her nails, and later arrives at the senator’s office wearing a string of pearls, telling the toddler playing the senator that she was sent to “entertain” him. Temple is in his autobiography Child Star wrote that these films were a “cynical exploitation of our childhood innocence” and that they were “occasionally racist or sexist”.
When Shirley Temple appeared in 1932’s War Babies — her first credited role — she was only three years old. The film was one of the Baby Burlesks, a series of eight shorts that satirized major motion pictures, film stars, celebrities, and current events.
In these often sexually… pic.twitter.com/iHkIYXkEjk— 0⃣BlackBetty (@BabyD1111229) January 4, 2025
The next step in Shirley Temple’s career was the smaller roles she got under contract with producer, writer and director Jack Hayes. When Hayes went bankrupt, her father bought out her contract, realizing how bad it was. Not long after, Temple was spotted by a Fox studio songwriter while she was playing in the building’s lobby. She was invited to audition for the film Stand Up and Cheer!which was being filmed at the time. She got a small part, which earned her two weeks’ salary.
The plot of the film was based on the idea that the Great Depression was the result of a lack of “optimism”, so auditions were organized to find entertainers who would lift the spirits of the people. Temple and James Dunn danced together in a dance sequence. There wasn’t enough time to learn new choreography, so Temple taught Dana a dance she had already mastered for the second performance.
Immediately after filming, she was offered a one-year contract, with the option of extending it to seven years, at a salary of $150 per week. Her mother was also paid to accompany her on set. They signed the contract on December 21, 1933. In her autobiography, Temple described the contract as “the first of a series of clouds that would hang darkly over her for the next seven years.”
“They didn’t buy Fox studio, they bought Shirley Temple”
Temple and Dana’s next film was Baby, Take a Bowwhich premiered in April 1934. She was also hired out to other studios for fees that far exceeded her salary. A movie was released later that year Bright Eyeswritten specifically for their duo. This movie featured a song On the Good Ship Lollipopwhich became Temple’s trademark.
However, Fox Studios had been struggling financially since the stock market crash of 1929, and in 1934 Fox merged with 20th Century Pictures, creating 20th Century Fox. According to the magazine Vanity FairFox CEO Winfield Sheehan stated, “They didn’t buy the Fox studio, they bought Shirley Temple.”
Shirley Temple (Shirley Temple YouTube Screenshot)
In the first year of her contract with the studio, Temple appeared in 10 films. That year was so significant that at the 1935 Academy Awards, she received the first Academy Award for Young People – and to this day she remains the youngest person to receive it.
Temple became a major movie theater attraction for Depression-era audiences who wanted to see upbeat, cheerful films. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said of her: “During this Depression, when the spirit of the people is lower than ever before, it is wonderful that for only 15 cents an American can go to the movies, look at the smiling face of a child, and forget his worries.”
The highest paid star in Hollywood
As her films became more profitable, so did her salary, until she became the highest-paid star in Hollywood – and that was until she was ten years old. Although her work schedule was intense, as an adult she fondly remembers that period. After signing a contract with the Fox studio, her mother was always on set with her. One of the things that set Shirley Temple apart from other child stars was her close relationship with her parents. She dedicated her autobiography to her “beloved mother”. Other child actors were not so lucky.
In 1939, California enacted California Child Actors Actbetter known as the Coogan Act, named after Jackie Coogan. Coogan, born 13 years before Temple, became one of the first child stars after appearing with Charlie Chaplin in the hit film The Kid from 1921. He earned millions of dollars, but his earnings were spent by his mother and stepfather, for which he sued them in 1938. The legal dispute led to the passing of a law that specified the working conditions and ensured that 15 percent of the child actor’s earnings were allocated to the so-called Coogan account.
Shirley Temple’s happiness with her parents was not complete. Her father, who previously worked in a bank, became her business manager. However, as she told the BBC, “he dropped out of school after the seventh grade” and invested in bad investments. “Out of a total of $3,200,000 that I made – selling dolls, books, clothes and so on – I have $44,000 left in my account,” she said.
On October 25, 1988 Shirley Temple exposed Hollywood pedophilia on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” Temple shared her experience with a naked producer at MGM when she was 12-years-old.
Temple said that she was separated from her mother at MGM and went into the office of Louis B.… pic.twitter.com/fWFxOBGJ4j
— Thrilla the Gorilla (@ThrillaRilla369) September 22, 2024
Many aspects of her films have not aged well. Temple told the BBC that although she and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson were the first interracial dance partners on screen, scenes in which they touched were often cut. Meanwhile, off-set Hollywood was often a dark place for young actors. Long after her film career ended, Temple spoke about the predatory behavior she endured as early as age 12.
She retired from films at the age of 22; her last film was A Kiss for Corliss from 1949. However, this did not mark the end of her interesting career – she worked in international relations and served in the US government as ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. In an interview with Terry Vaughan, Temple said that the ambassador position in Ghana “was the best job of her life”.
Vogan asked her: “Are you tired of the song Good Ship Lollipop?“
“No,” Temple replied. “She took me far.”
Source: bizlife.rs
