No child performer in the annals of mass entertainment ever matched the level of acclaim and visibility that surrounded Shirley Temple, who already ranked among the planet’s foremost celebrities by the time she turned six. She entered the world on April 23, 1928 in Santa Monica, California, and at the age of three began dance lessons that brought her to Hollywood’s attention in 1932. Her first assignment placed her in the “Baby Burlesks,” a string of short subjects that lampooned current adult pictures in an effort to ride the coattails of Hal Roach’s hugely successful Our Gang comedies. Minor supporting roles in low-budget productions followed until her rendition of “Baby Take a Bow” in the 1934 musical Stand Up and Cheer placed her on the threshold of major stardom. While her singing and dancing already displayed uncommon polish, it was her acting ability that proved the strongest magnet for viewers, forging an emotional bond equaled by few leading adult stars of the period.
Within that single calendar year she completed nine feature films, chief among them Little Miss Marker and Bright Eyes, the latter introducing the hit number “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” The impact of her debut season as a leading actress earned her a special miniature Academy Award. Her unflappable composure on set prompted widespread speculation that she was actually a dwarf rather than a genuine youngster. Amid the economic gloom of the Depression her pictures supplied indispensable diversion for viewers of every age, generating an annual income that soon reached $300,000 along with a flood of merchandise—dolls, coloring books, garments, and countless other items—bearing her image. Her stature continued to climb through the remainder of the decade; each successive release surpassed the earnings of its predecessor and encompassed such successes as The Littlest Rebel in 1935, Poor Little Rich Girl in 1936, and Heidi in 1937. These vehicles also yielded additional popular songs, including “Animal Crackers in My Soup,” “When I Grow Up,” “Curly Top,” and “Swing Me an Old-Fashioned Love Song.”
By 1938 she stood as the industry’s highest-grossing attraction, though only a handful of further hits, among them 1939’s The Little Princess, appeared before her drawing power began to fade with the arrival of the 1940s. Like many juvenile performers before and since, she found that her broad appeal evaporated once she reached adolescence. She remained before the cameras for the rest of the decade, yet returns steadily shrank until she stepped away from motion-picture acting at twenty-one. An effort to reestablish herself on the small screen in 1958 with the short-lived anthology The Shirley Temple Storybook met with little response, and the follow-up Shirley Temple Show two years later fared no better. After her marriage to businessman Charles Black, she devoted herself primarily to raising a family while devoting considerable energy to philanthropic causes. Political involvement began in the late 1960s with an unsuccessful congressional bid. In 1968 she received an appointment as a United States delegate to the United Nations, later serving as ambassador to Ghana from 1974 to 1976. Her autobiography, Child Star, appeared in 1988; the following year she was named ambassador to Czechoslovakia. She passed away at her Woodside, California residence on February 10, 2014, at the age of eighty-five.
