General News
Child Star Shirley Temple Dead at 85
She was far and away the most popular child actress of all time and at her prime, she was the most recognized star in the world. Shirley Temple’s sweet charisma and loveable voice lifted the spirit of depression-era America in a series of incredibly successful films throughout the 1930’s such as THE LITTLE COLONEL, CURLY TOP (which featured her signature song ‘Animal Crackers in My Soup’), REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM, and THE LITTLEST REBEL. Before those, when she was just three and four, Ms Temple starred in a series of politically incorrect ‘Baby Burlesque’ shorts, which featured its toddler cast members clad in adult costumes on the top and diapers fastened with large safety pins on the bottom (I’ve shown a couple of these at my Super-8 Movie Madness show to astounded audiences). In 1945, she married cult actor John Agar and co-starred with him in John Ford’s FORT APACHE in 1948. That marriage ended in 1949, and the next year she married Navy Intelligence Office Charles Alden Black, who remained her husband until his death in 2005. Temple left showbiz in the ’50s to raise her family. In the 1970’s she began a second career as a US diplomat, serving as Ambassador to Ghana from 1974 to 1977 and Ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992. Shirley Temple died of natural causes on February 10, 2014 at the age of 85.
From The New York Times:
Shirley Temple Black, who as a dimpled, precocious and determined little girl in the 1930s sang and tap-danced her way to a height of Hollywood stardom and worldwide fame that no other child has reached, died on Monday night at her home in Woodside, Calif. She was 85. Her publicist, Cheryl Kagan, confirmed her death. Ms. Black returned to the spotlight in the 1960s in the surprising new role of diplomat, but in the popular imagination she would always be America’s darling of the Depression years, when in 23 motion pictures her sparkling personality and sunny optimism lifted spirits and made her famous. From 1935 to 1939 she was the most popular movie star in America, with Clark Gable a distant second. She received more mail than Greta Garbo and was photographed more often than President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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