In December 1933, five-year-old Shirley Temple signed a contract with Fox Studios, which was on the verge of bankruptcy. In History looks back at how she revived the studio’s fortunes and became a superstar.
“The lessons I learned were that time is money and that it’s work, not play. I learned that before I became a star.”
When Shirley Temple was interviewed by the BBC about her superstar childhood in 1989, she was enjoying a remarkable second act in her career as a US diplomat. Despite once being Hollywood’s highest-paid star, she had to work because most of her millions of dollars were gone.
“You saved 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy, right?” chat show host Terry Wogan asked Shirley Temple-Black, then known by her married name. “I think so,” she replied.
In 1933, Fox Studios was on the verge of bankruptcy. Founded in 1915 by William Fox, it flourished during the era of silent films. By the time the Great Depression arrived, the company was operating in the red, had millions of dollars in debt, and its stock price had plummeted. The person who helped me was a little girl with curly blonde hair.
Two weeks before signing a contract with the studio, she appeared on “Stand Up” and “Cheer! ” was appearing on the show. along with James Dunn, who was to play her father. Although their roles were relatively small, the pair made such a strong impression that they soon ended up co-starring in more films. Shirley Temple became famous.
Temple’s first foray into show business came when her mother took her to dance classes at the age of two and a half. She told the BBC: “I had so much energy that I didn’t take naps, so she sent me to a local dance school, less than three miles from my house. And I worked out there, you know. So, I learned “Rumba and Tango.” ”
She was discovered by director Charles Lamont at the school and appeared in a series of short films called Baby Burlesque. She was paid a total of $10 for each shooting day, but rehearsals were unpaid, and Temple did not praise her work. She said, “He wasn’t a great producer. He was a very cheap producer. It was part of a lot of what we call ‘shantytown’ in Hollywood.”
dark clouds
Lamont worked at an educational film company with producer Jack Hayes. The then three-year-old appeared in eight films, but the set was not a comfortable place for Temple and other child actors. She explained the punishment for cheating as follows: “We had two sound boxes on our set. One of them had a big ice cake in it, and if one of us misbehaved, we would send each one of us to a black box to cool down and think. ” About that in the dark with the door closed. He added: “My ears hurt, I got a lot of styes, and I had a lot of problems because of that. I ended up in the box a lot.”
Parents were also prohibited from entering the set with their children. Instead, Temple’s mother made her costumes, gave her acting lessons, and styled her hair into her signature curls every night.
The themes of recent movies seem incredibly inappropriate. Temple described them as “adult film plagiarism.” One of the first characters she played was named More Legs Sweet Trick, a play on movie star Marlene Dietrich. In War Babies, three-year-old Shirley, wearing an off-the-shoulder blouse and holding her diaper with comically large safety pins, dances in front of other children playing soldiers, fighting over Shirley and giving lollipops. It was depicted giving something. In Polly Ticks of Washington, she is an “instigator” sent to seduce a “senator.” In the first scene, she is wearing a bra and brushing her nails. She then shows up at the senator’s office wearing a string of pearls and tells the senator’s toddler that she has been sent to “entertain” him. In his autobiography, Child Star, Temple wrote that these films were “a cynical exploitation of our childlike innocence” and “sometimes racist or sexist.” said.
The next step was a series of small roles under contract with producer, writer and director Jack Hayes. When he went bankrupt, her father bought her contract back, realizing how bad it was in the first place. Shortly thereafter, Temple was spotted dancing in the lobby by a songwriter who worked at Fox. She was asked to audition for the movie Stand Up and Cheer!, which is currently being filmed. She got only a small role, but it meant two weeks’ worth of pay.
The premise of the film is that the Great Depression is the result of a lack of “optimism,” so auditions are held to find entertainers to cheer people up. Temple and James Dunn were partners in the dance scene. There was not enough time to learn new choreography, so she taught Dan the dances she had learned for another performance. Immediately after filming, she was offered a one-year contract (with the possibility of a seven-year extension) at a weekly salary of $150. Her mother was also paid to accompany her on set. They signed the contract on December 21, 1933. In his autobiography, Temple called this “the first in a series of dark clouds that would linger over the next seven years.”
Temple and Dunn’s next film was Baby, Take the Bow, released in April 1934. She was also loaned out to other studios for thousands of dollars, many times her salary. Bright Eyes was released later that year. The film, written especially for them, featured what would become her signature song, “On the Good Ship Lollipop.”
However, Fox Studios fell on hard times after the stock market crash of 1929, and in 1934 Fox merged with 20th Century Pictures to become 20th Century Fox. “They didn’t buy Fox Studios, they bought Shirley Temple,” Fox executive Winfield Sheehan said, according to Vanity Fair.
raise the spirit
In his first year with the company, he appeared in 10 movies. The year was so notable that she won her first Academy Juvenile Award at the 1935 Oscar Awards. And she remains the youngest person to receive that award.
Temple was a huge box office success for Depression-era audiences who wanted to see optimistic, happy movies in theaters. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said of her, “In the midst of the Great Depression, when the nation’s spirits are lower than at any other time, Americans can go to the movies for as little as 15 cents and see a smile on their faces.” That’s great,” he said. Forget about the baby and his troubles. ”
As her films became more profitable, her salary also increased, and by the age of 10 she was Hollywood’s highest-paid star. Her work schedule may have been intense, but as an adult she looks back fondly. After signing a contract with Fox, her mother was always on set with her. One notable thing that set Temple apart from other child stars was the close relationship she had with her parents. She dedicated her autobiography to her “beloved mother.” Other child stars weren’t so lucky.
In 1939, California passed the California Child Actor Act, commonly known as the Coogan Act, named after Jackie Coogan. Coogan, who was born 13 years before Temple, became one of the first child stars when he co-starred with Charlie Chaplin in the 1921 hit film The Kid. He made millions of dollars, but it was embezzled by his mother and stepfather, who sued him in 1938. After a legal battle, California passed a law specifying working conditions and guaranteeing child actors 15% of their wages. In the so-called Coogan account.
That was the extent of Temple’s luck with her parents. Her father worked in a bank and became her business manager. But, she told the BBC, “he dropped out of school right after seventh grade” and began receiving unscrupulous investment advice. “Out of the $3.2 million they earned from doll sales, books, clothing, everything, there was $44,000 left in the trust account,” she said.
Her films had many facets and never felt old. Temple told the BBC that she and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson were the first on-screen interracial dance partners, but scenes of them touching were often cut. Meanwhile, off-screen, Hollywood was often a wicked place for young actors. Long after his film career ended, Temple spoke out about the predatory behavior he suffered when he was 12 years old.
She retired from the film industry at the age of 22. Her last film was 1949’s Kissing Corliss. However, this is not the end of her interesting career. She continued to work in the field of international relations, serving in the U.S. government as ambassador to both Ghana and Czechoslovakia. Temple told Wogan in an interview that his ambassadorship to Ghana was “the best job of my life.”
Wogan asked her: “Are you tired of that Good Ship Lollipop song?”
“No,” Temple replied. “It took me a long way.”
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