Shirley Temple

When she was perhaps six, her mother took her to see a department store Santa Claus in a rare attempt to give her something of a normal childhood. Santa asked for her autograph. That’s the kind of anecdote you basically have to start any article about Shirley Temple, later Shirley Temple Black, telling, because without that anecdote you don’t really understand the person behind “sparkle, Shirley!” Which was literally a thing her mother would yell at her when she was performing. Her mother also lied to her about how old she was, presumably so Temple wouldn’t give away the truth to studio executives. But she kept it up until Temple asked for permission to marry at seventeen, believing she was fifteen.

Look, I get that basically you either have child actors or you don’t have kids in movies. I do know that there are kids with supportive parents who act because they want to. I know this because I’m related to someone who used to be one. I can’t imagine my cousin or his wife yelling, “Sparkle, Dyllan!” The problem is that there’s no system in place protecting the kids; Dyllan’s the same age as, say, Jamie Lynn Spears. And Shirley Temple was eleven when the so-called Coogan Act passed. Her trust fund ran to $45,000 out of over three million bucks’ salary. That’s 1.5%, not the required 15%.

Of course, by age eleven, her stardom was not quite as potent. Sure, she did Susannah of the Mounties and The Little Princess (a movie I don’t like because I like the book). But for whatever reason—stories conflict—she was turned down for The Wizard of Oz, something she apparently resented for the rest of her life. Her mother was still managing her career and rejected a lot of movies apparently because she didn’t feel Temple would be enough of the center of attention. Which pretty well spiked her adult acting career, though another issue was that people didn’t want Temple to grow up.

Now, I like The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. Frankly more than any of her other movies that I’ve seen. She herself attributed her own childhood popularity to the Depression and the need for lighthearted entertainment. She became an adult after World War II, at which point the nation was in a very different place. People didn’t want her to grow up. Watching her swoon over Cary Grant was scandalous, even if Cary Grant’s character found the whole thing laughable and was chasing Myrna Loy.

I’ll be honest; I tend to assume that her political beliefs came in part from being incredibly sheltered. And incredibly privileged, in a lot of ways—just because her parents spent all her money doesn’t mean she herself was living in or even really touched by poverty. And I will say she seems to have been an effective diplomat, even if that was at least in part because the people around her were fans and had a hard time saying no to Shirley Temple. She even got a group of refugees across a border by using that, and you have to admire the determination there.