20 Review of Baby Take a Bow, New York Times, June 30, 1934, 17.
21 “Dimples conference with Mr. Zanuck,” December 9, 1935, 8, Twentieth Century–Fox Scripts Collection, USC.
22 On her dimples, see Black, Child Star, 141.
23 Black, Child Star, 141, 142.
24 Review of Dimples, Time, October 19, 1936, 80–82; Frank S. Nugent, review of Dimples, New York Times, October 10, 1936, 21.
25 Nugent, review of Dimples, 21.
26 Review of Dimples, Variety, October 14, 1936, 15.
27 “What the Picture Did for Me,” Motion Picture Herald, December 5, 1936, 6; January 2, 1937, 92.
28 “Conference with Mr. Zanuck on Treatment of July 25, 1936,” and Zanuck’s notes on treatment outline of Wee Willie Winkie by Howard Ellis Smith, July 30, 1936, Twentieth Century–Fox Scripts Collection, USC.
29 Mel Gussow, Don’t Say Yes until I Finish Talking: A Biography of Darryl F. Zanuck (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), 70.
30 Black, Child Star, 169–77, 179–80.
31 Review of Wee Willie Winkie, Time, July 19, 1937, 44; Howard Barnes, review of Wee Willie Winkie, New York Herald Tribune, July 24, 1937, 4.
32 “What the Picture Did for Me,” Motion Picture Herald, November 27, 1937, 74; September 25, 1937, 64; December 25, 1937, 50.
33 “What the Picture Did for Me,” Motion Picture Herald, December 4, 1937, 66; November 13, 1937, 74; January15, 1938, 59; August 20, 1938, 60; October 23, 1937, 79; February 5, 1938, 73.
34 Peter Bogdanovich, Allan Dwan: The Last Pioneer (New York: Praeger, 1971), 108.
35 Howard Barnes, review of Heidi, New York Herald Tribune, November 6, 1937, 8.
36 “What the Picture Did for Me,” Motion Picture Herald, February 12, 1938, January 1, 1938, 45.
37 “Conference with Mr. Zanuck,” June 24, 1937; “Conference with Mr. Zanuck,” July 7, 1937, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Twentieth Century–Fox Scripts Collection, USC.
38 Alexander Kahn, “Shirley Temple’s Coiffure Taxes Filmdom’s Brains,” Washington Post, December 5, 1937, sec. TS, 1.
39 Review of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Variety, March 9, 1938, 14; Frank S. Nugent, review of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, New York Times, March 26, 1938, 12.
40 Review of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Motion Picture Daily, March 9, 1938, 4.
41 W.R.W. [William R. Weaver], review of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Motion Picture Herald, March 12, 1938, 36–39.
42 Review of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Time, March 21, 1938, 42.
43 Ed Sullivan, “Looking at Hollywood: Zanuck in Person,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 12, 1937, 19; “Conference with Mr. Zanuck,” January 24, 1938, Little Miss Broadway, Twentieth Century–Fox Scripts Collection, USC.
44 William R. Weaver, review of Little Miss Broadway, Motion Picture Herald, July 9, 1938, 2, 8.
45 “What the Picture Did for Me,” Motion Picture Herald, October 15, 1938, 47.
46 “What the Picture Did for Me,” Motion Picture Herald, November 12, 1938, 58.
47 “What the Picture Did for Me,” Motion Picture Herald, October 22, 1938, 55; August 13, 1938, 8.
48 Solomon, Twentieth Century–Fox, 218.
49 Just around the Corner, Twentieth Century–Fox Scripts Collection, USC. The phrase “just around the corner” achieved still greater currency after Irving Berlin incorporated it into his famous song “Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee” (1932).
50 William R. Weaver, review of Just around the Corner, Motion Picture Herald, November 5, 1938, 36, 38.
51 Frank S. Nugent, review of Just around the Corner, New York Times, December 3, 1938, 11.
52 Howard Barnes, review of Just around the Corner, New York Herald Tribune, December 3, 1938, 8.
53 “What the Picture Did for Me,” Motion Picture Herald, January 7, 1939, 46.
54 Black, Child Star, 221.
55 Black, Child Star, 255.
56 Darryl F. Zanuck, signed advertisement, New York Times, March 9, 1939, 19. Film costs are notoriously difficult to calculate accurately, especially in this period. Shirley Temple Black reports the cost of The Little Princess as $1.3 million, six times the budget of her early movies for Fox. Black, Child Star, 252. Aubrey Solomon reports the cost of Stowaway at $500,000, Heidi at $600,000, The Little Princess at $700,000, and The Blue Bird at $1,000,000. Solomon, Twentieth Century–Fox, 240.
57 Nelson Bell, review of The Little Princess, Washington Post, March 24, 1939, 12; Mae Tinee, review of The Little Princess, Chicago Daily Tribune, March 22, 1939, 15.
58 Black, Child Star, 263.
59 Review of Susannah of the Mounties, Time, July 3, 1939, 37; review of Susannah of the Mounties, Variety, June 21, 1939, 16; Frank S. Nugent, review of Susannah of the Mounties, New York Times, June 24, 1939, 20.
60 What the Picture Did for Me,” Motion Picture Herald, August 26, 1939, 78; September 9, 1939, 67; September 23, 1939, 62.
61 Black, Child Star, 274, 277.
62 Hubbard Keavy, “Shirley Temple at Crucial Stage in Her Career,” [Baltimore] Sun, July 30, 1939, sec. SM, 6; “Studio Pays $200,000 for New Movie Stories to Put Shirley over Age Barrier (She’s 10!),” Atlanta Constitution, July 30, 1939, 12.
63 Keavy, “Shirley Temple at Crucial Stage,” 6.
64 Black, Child Star, 274–75. Black quotes Zanuck’s remark that “specialists never last long” but omits his additional remark that she was “the exception to the rule.”
65 “20th Outbids Disney for Bluebird,” Variety, April 26, 1939, 5; Maurice Maeterlinck, The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Five Acts, trans. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (London: Methuen, 1910).
66 Black, Child Star, 288 (ellipses in original).
67 Black, Child Star, 289–90.
68 Black, Child Star, 291.
69 Black, Child Star, 289.
70 “ ‘Blue Bird’ Lures Industry’s Top Executives to Premiere,” Motion Picture Daily, January 20, 1940, 1, 9; Black, Child Star, 292.
71 Edwin Schallert, review of The Blue Bird, Los Angeles Times, January 20, 1940, sec. A, 7.
72 Review of The Blue Bird, Motion Picture Herald, January 27, 1940, 50.
73 Howard Barnes, review of The Blue Bird, New York Herald Tribune, January 20, 1940, 6; Schallert, review of The Blue Bird, 7.
74 Frank S. Nugent, review of The Blue Bird, New York Times, January 20, 1940, 15; Nugent, review of The Wizard of Oz, New York Times, August 18, 1939, 16.
75 “What the Picture Did for Me,” Motion Picture Herald, April 20, 1940, 51; April 27, 1940, 71; May 25, 1940, 59 ; August 24, 1940, 74.
76 Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck: The Golden Years at Twentieth Century–Fox (New York: Grove Press, 1993), 36
77 Behlmer, Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck, 36–37.
78 Black, Child Star, 298–99.
79 Grant Hayter-Menzies, Charlotte Greenwood (Jefferson, NC: Macfarland, 2007), 8.
80 “Shirley Temple Leaving Screen, Mother States,” New York Times, May 12, 1940, 47; “Shirley Temple, 11, Leaves Film Stage,” New York Times, May 13, 1940, 16.
81 Howard Barnes, review of Young People, New York Herald Tribune, August 24, 1940, 6; Richard L. Coe, review of Young People, Washington Post, August 31, 1940, 14.
82 Bosley Crowther, review of Young People, New York Times, August 24, 1940, 16.
83 “What the Picture Did for Me,” Motion Picture Herald, October 19, 1940, 61; November 23, 1940, 58.
CHAPTER SIX: WHAT’S A PRIVATE LIFE?
1 Julia Grant, Raising Baby by the Book: The Education of American Mothers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), esp. 115, 153.
2 Amy Gajda, “What if Samuel D. Warren Hadn’t Married a Senator’s Daughter? Uncovering the Press Coverage That Led to ‘The Right to Privacy,’ ” Michigan State Law Review, Spring 2008, 36–60.
3 Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, “The Right to Privacy,” Harvard Law Review 4 (December 15, 1890): 195, 196, 206.
4 Warren I. S
usman, “Personality and the Making of Twentieth-Century Culture,” in Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon, 1984), esp. 277, 280, 282–84.
5 Ida Zeitlin, “The Private Life of Shirley Temple,” Modern Screen, June 1939, 34.
6 Samantha Barbas, Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 19–20. The quotations are from an IMP advertisement in Moving Picture World, as quoted in Barbas, 19; and “Ovation for Film Star at Union Station,” St. Louis Times, March 26, 1910, 3.
7 Barbas, Movie Crazy, 169; Alexander Woollcott, “The Strenuous Honeymoon,” Everybody’s Magazine, November 1920, 36.
8 “Crowd Surges at Theater,” Los Angeles Times, January 27, 1923, II1.
9 Barbas, Movie Crazy, 169–70; “Many Injured in Crush to View Valentino Bier,” [Baltimore] Sun, August 25, 1926, 1; “Thousands in Riot at Valentino Bier, More than 100 Hurt,” New York Times, August 25, 1926, 1, 3.
10 Harold Hefferman, “Hollywood Today: Shirley Temple Hidden by Thoughtless Stars,” Atlanta Constitution, July 5, 1937, 11.
11 Marsha Oregeron, Hollywood Ambitions: Celebrity in the Movie Age (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008), 102; Barbas, Movie Crazy, 31, 138.
12 Gertrude Temple, “Bringing Up Shirley,” American Magazine, February 1935, 92; Shirley Temple Black, Child Star: An Autobiography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988), 51. On fan letters and the movies, see Barbas, Movie Crazy, passim; on letters from radio listeners expressing personal bonds with radio personalities, see Bruce Lenthall, Radio’s America: The Great Depression and the Rise of Modern Mass Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 68–76.
13 Robert Eichberg, “Lines to a Little Lady,” Modern Screen, February 1935, 48, 74ff.; “Deluge of Mail Surprises Tiny Shirley Temple,” Washington Post, December 16, 1934, MB2.
14 Temple, “Bringing Up Shirley,” 92; Thornton Sargent, “New Slant on Shirley!” Screenland, March 1935, 82.
15 “Crowds End Vacation of Film Child,” Los Angeles Times, August 25, 1934, A1.
16 Sargent, “New Slant on Shirley!” 81; Rod MacLean, “Letters,” Time, August 20, 1934, 6; “Shirley Temple Draws to 2 Kinds of Windows,” Variety, July 24, 1934, 1.
17 Black, Child Star, 59, 51; Sargent, “New Slant on Shirley!” 82; Dorothy Calhoun, “Shirley Temple—One Year Later,” Movie Classic, July 1935, 66.
18 David Gebhard and Robert Winter, A Guide to Architecture in Los Angeles & Southern California (Santa Barbara, CA: Peregrine Smith, 1977, 104; Black, Child Star, 120; “Shirley Temple Home Listed for $1.75 Million,” Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1983, L1.
19 Anne Edwards, Shirley Temple: American Princess (New York: William Morrow, 1988), 87.
20 Black, Child Star, 121, 115–16.
21 Stanley Hamilton, Machine Gun Kelly’s Last Stand (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 9–11; Black, Child Star, 121, 115–16, 80, 116–18.
22 Paula Fass, Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 119–21, 125–26.
23 Fass, Kidnapped, 99; interview with Maurice Sendak, NOW with Bill Moyers, March 12, 2004, http://billmoyers.com/content/author-and-illustrator-maurice-sendak/; “Maurice Sendak, Author of Splendid Nightmares, Dies at 83,” New York Times, May 9, 2012, A1. Among the many books on the Lindbergh case, see esp. Lloyd C. Gardner, The Case That Never Dies: The Lindbergh Kidnapping (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004).
24 On this point, see Fass, Kidnapped, 6–8, 51–56, 127–29, and passim. The phrase “public property” appears on p. 51. On ransom kidnapping in the 1920s and 1930s, see Ernest Kahlar Alix, Ransom Kidnapping in America, 1874–1974: The Creation of a Capital Crime (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 38–124.
25 Kathleen Norris, “Novelist Sketches the Trial Scene,” New York Times, January 3, 1935, late city ed., 4; see also Fass, Kidnapped, 126.
26 Although released in 1936, Poor Little Rich Girl had its first prepared treatment in October 1934. Kidnapping was an element from early on. See Poor Little Rich Girl, Twentieth Century–Fox Script Files, USC.
27 For threats to Withers and Bartholomew, see, for example, “Reveal Freddie Bartholomew Is Threat Target,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 28, 1936, 1; “Jane Withers Threatened in $50,000 Demand,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 31, 1936, 3
28 “$25,000 Demand on Child Star’s Father Admitted,” Illinois Daily News, August 1, 1936, Clippings File—Shirley Temple, MHL; “Arrested in Threat to Shirley Temple,” New York Times, August 1, 1936, 30; “Shirley Temple Threatened in Plea of Guilty,” [Hollywood?] Citizen [News?], August 3, 1936, Clippings File—Shirley Temple, MHL; “Youth Free under Bond in Shirley Temple Plot,” Los Angeles Times, August 2, 1936, Clippings File—Shirley Temple, MHL; “Boy Pleads Guilty in Temple Threat,” [Baltimore] Sun, August 2, 1936, 6.
29 “Boy Admits Threats to Shirley Temple,” New York Times, September 16, 1936, 52; “Youth Blames Movie for Shirley Threat,” unidentified clipping, September 16, 1936, Clippings File—Shirley Temple, MHL; Black, Child Star, 148–49. The film that inspired the plot was apparently Thirteen Hours by Air (Paramount, 1936).
30 Black, Child Star, 148–49.
31 “Shirley Temple in Peril,” New York Times, August 12, 1935, 10; Black, Child Star, 109–13.
32 “Surging Crowd Greets Shirley Temple Here,” Boston Globe, August 4, 1938, 1, 8; Black, Child Star, 244–47.
33 Black, Child Star, 293–95.
34 “The Story behind Shirley Temple’s Amazing Career,” Screen Book, August 1934, 42, 63, 67; Edith Lindeman, “The Real Miss Temple,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, October 31, 1937, Sunday magazine sec., 6–7; Dorothy Spensley, “The Life and Loves of Shirley Temple,” Motion Picture, July 1936, 34–35, 78; Zeitlin, “Private Life of Shirley Temple.” See also Berta A. de Martínez Márquez, “Esta es la historia de Shirley Temple,” Bohemia [Havana, Cuba], May 12, 1935, 8, 9, 66, 80.
35 “Child Actors and the Law,” New York Times, December 23, 1934, X4; Edwards, Shirley Temple, 77–78; “Peewee’s Progress,” 88.
36 Lester David and Irene David, The Shirley Temple Story (New York: Putnam, 1983, 97–98; “Acting Points Given Cooper by Shirley Temple,” Los Angeles Times, September 1, 1934, 5; George Hurrell and Whitney Stine, The Hurrell Style: 50 Years of Photographing Hollywood (New York: John Day, 1976), 126.
37 “Biography of Shirley Temple,” Fox Film, March 1935, Clippings File—Shirley Temple, MHL. On the legend of Lana Turner’s discovery, see Jib Fowles, Starstruck: Celebrity Performers and the American Public (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 60.
38 “The Story behind Shirley Temple’s Amazing Career,” Screen Book, August 1934, 42, 63, 67; Gladys Hall, telegram to Lester Grady, May 20, 1936, Gladys Hall Papers, MHL.
39 Rosalind Shaffer, “The Private Life of Shirley Temple, Wonder Child of the Screen,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 9, 1934, G1ff.; Black, Child Star, 55–57. On breaches of requisite rest and instructional periods for child film actors, see Diana Serra Cary, Hollywood’s Children: An Inside Account of the Child Star Era (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1997), 224.
40 Ida Zeitlin, “A Day on the Set with Shirley,” Screenland, September 1936, 78; Thornton Martin, “Miracle Moppet,” Ladies’ Home Journal, February 1938, 22.
41 “More Fun,” Modern Screen, May 1935, 51; “Summer’s the Time for Fun,” Modern Screen, July 1936, 8; “From Eight to Eight with Shirley,” Modern Screen, March 1936, 42–43; “[Shirley] Temple’s Physical Condition,” Screen Guide, n.d. 1938, in Shirley Temple scrapbook, vol. 1, Constance McCormick Collection, USC.
42 Joshua Gamson, Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 28–32.
43 See, for example, Temple, “Bringing Up Shirley,” 22–27, 92–94; Gertrude Temple, as told to Mary Sharon, How I Raised Shirley Temple (Akron, OH: Saalfield,
1935, first pub. in Silver Screen); Gertrude Temple, “Shirley Temple” (excerpted version of “How I Raised Shirley Temple” trans. into Spanish), Bohemia [Havana, Cuba], March 3, 1935, 6, 7, 59, 60, 64; Constance J. Foster, “Mrs. Temple on Bringing Up Shirley,” Parents Magazine, October 1938, 22–23. In one national survey in the early 1930s, 91 percent of mothers and 65 percent of fathers from professional classes reported reading child-rearing advice in newspapers and magazines. Lisa Jacobson, Raising Consumers: Children and the American Mass Market in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 174.
44 Helen Hunt, “Is Hollywood Spoiling Shirley Temple?” Movie Mirror, October 1934, 94; Temple, “Bringing Up Shirley,” 92; Dixie Wilson, “The Answer to Shirley Temple’s Future,” Photoplay, November 1937, 26.
45 Dorothy Cocks, “Beauty Secrets of a Star,” Pictorial Review, May 1936, 65; Lindeman, “Real Miss Temple,” 6.
46 Black, Child Star, 145.
47 David and David, Shirley Temple Story, 100–101; Black, Child Star, 48. Black says that Hall tried to trick her into thinking that her mother was truly gone.
48 Black, Child Star, 517, 7; Robert Windeler, The Films of Shirley Temple (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1978), 38.
49 Hunt, “Is Hollywood Spoiling Shirley Temple?” 11.
50 Benzion Liber, The Child and the Home: Essays on the Rational Bringing-up of Children, 2nd ed. (New York: Rational Living, 1923), 74; Temple, “Bringing Up Shirley,” 22–27, 92–94; Temple, How I Raised Shirley Temple, 14; Foster, “Mrs. Temple on Bringing Up Shirley,” 22; “Peewee’s Progress,” cover (Time), 37. For Shirley’s memory of her first spanking by her mother, see Black, Child Star, 58. Only several years later did Gertrude Temple profess not to remember ever spanking her daughter. On theories and practices of punishing children in this period, see Grant, Raising Baby by the Book, 150–52.
The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America Page 28