Shirley Temple - actress

Shirley Temple was born Shirley Jane Temple on April 23, 1928 in Santa Monica, California. Motivated by the ambitious efforts of her mother, Shirley started her lessons early, studying dancing and singing when she was only two years old. A year and a half later, at the ripe old age of three, she became an actress. Soon she was spotted by the two-reel comedy firm of Educational Pictures and in 1933 she was hired to star in an imitation Our Gang series, called "Baby Burlesks," in which she did impressions of Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. A year later, in 1934 she was signed by Fox Pictures, and after a show-stopping performance of "Baby Take a Bow" in Fox's "Stand Up and Cheer," she was promoted to her own starring features. She ultimately wound up saving Fox (and its successor 20th Century Fox) from bankruptcy.

The appearance of the curly-haired girl on the historical scene occurred immediately after the crushing blow of the Stock Market crash that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Without a lot of money, the cinema provided cheap entertainment, and Shirley Temple allowed a lot of unhappy people to forget their troubles. As an actress, Shirley was no mere child mouthing memorized words, but a trooper with the ability to emote, interact realistically with her adult co-stars, and quite often this caused her to upstage her famous co-stars of the time, such as Gary Cooper, Adolph Menjou, Lionel Barrymore, Robert Young, and Jimmy Durante. Some of the movies she made included: "The Little Colonel," "Curly Top," "The Little Rebel," (1935); "Poor Little Rich Girl," "Dimples," "Stowaway," (1936), "Wee Willie Winkie," "Heidi," (1937); "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," "Little Miss Broadway," (1938); "The Little Princess," and "Susannah of the Mounties," (1939).

In 1934, Shirley was named "The Outstanding Personality of 1934" "in grateful recognition of her outstanding contribution" by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, because of her starring roles in four popular films, "Now and Forever," "Little Miss Marker," "Baby Take a Bow," and "Bright Eyes." She was age six at the time. A year later, she became the first child and the youngest actor to win an Academy Award.

The one major movie for which she was originally considered, but lost out on, was "The Wizard of Oz." As a teenager, she made a few additional movies, but none reached the popularity of her child starring roles. Some of these included: "Miss Annie Rooney" (1942, age 14), "I'll Be Seeing You" (1944), "Since You Went Away" (1944), "The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer" (1947), and "Fort Apache" (1948, age 20, along with husband, John Agar). In 1949, at the age of 21, Shirley Temple retired from acting after her final film, "Mr. Belvedere Goes to College" (1949).

Shirley married John Agar in 1945. They had one daughter, but four years after the birth of her daughter, they divorced, primarily because John Agar resented being referred to as Mr. Shirley Temple. She later married Charles A. Black and had two children. In 1969, Shirley Temple Black became a U.S. delegate to the United Nations, and in 1974 she served as U.S. Ambassador for Ghana.

Shirley fought a successful battle with cancer, and retired to Woodside California where she found time for her three children, husband Charles Black, and one grand-child. Her hobbies included golf, gardening and cooking. 15hqqk.

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