Shirley Temple

by Anne Edwards

  The other newspapers joined in with their enthusiasm for Shirley:

  New York Daily News: “Although Stand Up and Cheer was designed to wipe away our fears and blues over these hard times by insisting the Depression is over, I’m afraid it is going to have just the opposite effect. Little Shirley Temple earned the only burst of spontaneous applause.”

  New York Journal: “Despite the fact that the cast contains plenty of high-powered names, an individual triumph is scored by four-year-old Shirley Temple.”

  Los Angeles Times: “You must see Shirley Temple. The most adorable four-year-old on the screen today, she does a dance number and song with James Dunn that is amazing.”

  No one can question Shirley’s unique and precocious talent. But she did have an edge. Considerably short for a six-year-old, she had no problem being presented as two years younger. Her “amazing coordination” was partially illusion—as audiences looked at her as just two years past toddler age. Fox, however, did not know that Shirley was six. Her birth-date had been given to the studio by Gertrude as April 23, 1929, and Gertrude had taught Shirley to memorize that date. The child believed she was five years old. A few years later, when the press published articles suggesting her real age, she was kept from seeing them. A girlhood friend, Nancy Majors Voorheis, recalls Shirley’s shock at finding out in 1941 that she was about to celebrate her thirteenth, not her twelfth, birthday, that she was a teenager.

  Footnotes

  *Ruth Donnelly and Lucien Littlefield

  †When rereleased many years later, Temple's name was inserted in the credits.

  *This, of course, was not the truth. Temple had appeared in four feature films by this time, albeit in small roles.

  *The one chosen, copied and adapted, a red-dotted white organza with puffed sleeves and a short full skirt over many ruffled petticoats (flattering to Temple’s chubby legs) became a Temple trademark. Instead of the de rigneur black patent-leather Mary Jane tap shoes worn by most “Meglin Kiddies” at that time, Shirley wore white shoes.

  *Gangsters had taken over the Motion Picture Patents Company, which claimed control of (and was collecting fees for the use of) the patents of all the cameras and projectors designed by Edison, Kalim, Selig, Lubin Biograph Pathé, Essanay and the Vitagraph Company of America. Fox won a stunning victory over the Motion Picture Patents Company in 1912, after four years of constant court litigation, during which time his life had been threatened.

  †The great Savoy Plaza Hotel in New York was later torn down and replaced by the General Motors Building.

  4 THE EXPLOITS of gang leader John Dillinger dominated the headlines the spring of 1934: DILLINGER FORCES DOCTOR TO TREAT HIM, DILLINGER HALTS FOUR COPS. Author and editor Edmund Wilson wrote in his diary for April 17–May 2, 1934: “Dillinger is Surrounding the United States.” Dillinger’s name (or any violent crime, for that matter) sold newspapers. Hollywood took note. Warner Brothers were grinding out gangster films at an accelerated pace. Metro (The Thin Man) and Fox (Charlie Chan) had found the detective genre brought good box-office returns. One of the biggest money-makers in 1933 had been a Columbia film, the sentimental comedy Lady for a Day, which had gangsters help an old apple seller to pose as a rich woman when her daughter visits. The story had been written by Damon Runyon. Paramount, which was fighting to get back on its feet after being declared bankrupt the previous year, hoped the new Runyon story, Little Miss Marker, would pay off as handsomely for them. The same soft-hearted gangsters were in evidence, this time a child rather than an old woman melting their otherwise hard hearts.

  The story revolved around little “Marky” (Shirley), who is left by her father (Edward Earle) with a bookmaker (Adolphe Menjou) as the marker (security) on a racetrack ticket. When the horse, Dream Prince, loses the race, the father commits suicide and Marky is taken in by the bookmaker, Sorrowful Jones. The little girl had named Sorrowful and his gang after the members of King Arthur’s Court, Tennyson’s tale being her favorite bedtime story. Without a copy of the Legends at hand, Sorrowful improvises by reading to her from track magazines. When the child begins to speak in racetrack slang, Bangles (Dorothy Dell) the girl friend of hardened underworld boss, Big Steve (Charles Bickford), persuades Sorrowful to stage a medieval pageant to restore Marky’s belief in fairy tales. With Big Steve away, his gang take over a nightclub and dress up as Knights of the Round Table. Marky is riding Dream Prince around the dance floor when Big Steve walks in. Dream Prince, who fears the gangster, rears, and Marky is thrown. Unconscious and suffering internal bleeding, the child is rushed to the hospital and saved by a transfusion from Big Steve, the only person to have her unusual blood type. Sorrowful and Bangles find love and a ready-made family, and Big Steve softens.*

  For the scene where she was thrown from the horse, Shirley (who had never before ridden one) was wired to an overhead crane, not visible in the final print. When the horse bolted, she flew off and was carefully lowered by the crane, which controlled the wires to the ground. Only one rehearsal and one take were required.

  “Shirley Temple, the greatest child actress, or actor, for that matter, yet to be seen on the screen, takes this picture, wraps it up and walks away with acting honors . . . she seems to have the ability of a grownup combined with a delightful, childish charm,” Louella Parsons enthused.

  “What took Mom off her feet,” Shirley later commented, “was the . . . Variety headline, saying ‘Temple Holds ’Em Three Weeks’ [at the Paramount Theater in New York].” Gertrude’s Shirley was now a star—but she was only being paid $ 150 a week at Fox. Paramount offered to buy out the contract and pay Shirley $1,000 a week. Gertrude went to see Mr. Sheehan, who agreed to tear up the original contract. New terms were made. Shirley’s salary would begin at $1,250 a week and rise in yearly increments of $ 1,000 a week for seven years. Shirley would make only three films a year. Gertrude, as her “coach,” would receive $150 weekly, a figure that would rise by $100 increments yearly during the time Shirley was under contract to Fox.

  Sheehan claimed Gertrude was an astute business woman (within a year, she renegotiated the contract with the legal assistance of attorney Loyd Wright and got four thousand dollars a week for Shirley, five hundred dollars for herself and a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus per film with the same yearly raises as had been designated in the previous contract).* However, Sheehan could afford to be generous. Shirley’s fan mail was tremendous. Fox had spent almost nothing to develop her, but already they were being offered handsome contracts for the use of Shirley’s name in the manufacture of children’s dresses, toys, books and a list of other, less child-related items. (Gertrude was shortly to win back this franchise as well.)

  Shirley made three films (for Fox) from July to December 1934: Baby, Take a Bow, Now and Forever and Bright Eyes. This brought the total to three shorts and nine features filmed in one year. No fewer than fourteen magazine covers carried her photograph. Dozens of articles about her with pictures appeared in all the film-oriented or women’s magazines. Her exposure was extraordinary. Many of these stories carried the name and branch of George’s bank. He was sought out by depositors (Shirley claimed children’s accounts in this branch went up 500 percent when it was announced that her father was handling her financial affairs). George was given a raise and a bonus.

  The house in Santa Monica was too cramped for the Temples’ new life. They moved to a larger, but fundamentally middle-class, house, a few blocks away. Gertrude hired a housekeeper (Katie), and the studio supplied a car (a black limousine) and a chauffeur.

  “I first met Shirley on Christmas day, 1934, when I was seven,” Nancy Majors Voorheis recalls. “We [the Majors family] lived on Twenty-First Street in Santa Monica, and Shirley had just moved into a rambling California ranch-style home on [259] Nineteenth Street. Because it was Christmas, my little sister, Marion, and I had three [small] cousins visiting from Berkeley. We’d all seen Shirley’s latest great hit, Bright Eyes, and we were all in love with Shirley. . . . Our most exciting
Christmas present was our Shirley Temple dolls, which we carried everywhere.* Without any adult and dressed in some long costumes made by an aunt, we walked the two blocks to Shirley’s house determined to play with our new idol [a neighbor had told the Majorses which house was now occupied by the Temples].

  “There seemed to be lots of activity around the house—cars coming and going, people going in, then out—but a conspicuous lack of children. There was an air of excitement as we little girls stood on the sidewalk in costume, each holding her Shirley Temple doll. . . . We were terribly excited, scared but determined to meet Shirley. We three older girls prevailed on the youngest to do our ‘dirty work.’ We knew she was by far the cutest, with her enormous brown eyes and little lisp.

  “We pushed her to the door, stood over her until she’d knocked, then withdrew. We could hear her lisp, ‘Could Shirley come out and play with us?’”

  George answered Marion’s knock and invited the unusually dressed group in, where they stayed and played with Shirley for two and a half hours.

  The Majors sisters were the daughters of Helen (née McCreary) and Cort Majors, a leader in the paper industry. For Gertrude, their appearance on the Temple doorstep was most opportune. She had been determined that Shirley’s life would be as “normal” as she could make it, given the extraordinary circumstances. The Majorses were a good solid family, and the sisters provided two playmates not in movies, which meant the competitive edge was avoided. Helen and Gertrude also became friends, and would talk on the telephone “for an hour at a time,” Nancy relates. The Majors sisters were now invited (and expected) to play with Shirley on Sundays, her only free day. Except for Mary Lou Islieb, Shirley’s stand-in at the studio, she was not exposed to many other children for fear that she would contract a contagious childhood illness, and to prevent her from becoming dissatisfied with the abnormal pressures of performing.

  Nancy Majors Voorheis’s earliest recollections of Gertrude are of “a very handsome woman—tall, fine bones, patrician features . . . forever straightening up either Shirley or the house: ashtrays, pillows or a misdirected curl on Shirley . . . nothing escaped her need to make it perfect. George was jolly . . . always joking with us. He was as outgoing and nonserious as Gertrude was withdrawn and so serious. Shirley looked and was more like her Dad, with his warm brown eyes, long eyelashes, olive skin and twinkle. She had a mischievous nature, a sense of humor, but she did not seem to mind Gertrude’s fussing over her, and Gertrude’s stern ‘Be good, Shirley’ always brought her straight up to attention.”

  David Butler, who directed Shirley in Bright Eyes (and three other films), said, “Gertrude had a firm hold on her all the time.” Columnist Sidney Skolsky observed that Gertrude “monitored Shirley’s entire existence.” And Allan Dwan, who also directed her in three films, commented that “Shirley was the product of her mother. Shirley was the instrument on which her mother played. I don’t know why the mother was like that—but I’d seen it before with Mary Pickford and her domineering mother.”

  “I wouldn’t stand for any funny business [from Shirley],” Gertrude once declared. “I never coddled or babied her . . . [or] allowed her to be rocked or petted too much. . . . If she ever offered to rebel against my wishes I would use force to see that she did what she was told. I have spanked her soundly upon three or four occasions when she was slow about minding me, but I do not find it necessary to use force often . . . I believe children should really be seen more than heard.”

  Allan Dwan was to observe, “The mother was very alert and would listen to all the instructions that were given. Absentmindedly I would tell Shirley something I wanted her to do and she would say, ‘Yes Sir,’ and hurry away.* If she didn’t go over to her mother, who would repeat to her what was to be done and take her off to a corner and rehearse her a little bit, she wouldn’t do it right. She would do it her own way or whatever she made up, and so we were constantly having the mother come up and convey to her what we wanted. You knew better than to go up to Shirley and [give instructions]. You talked to the mother . . . the mother had her strictly controlled at home, and so she could control her in the studio.”

  Baby, Take a Bow, which followed Little Miss Marker, also had Shirley reforming a gangster (James Dunn, her father in this one). The title came from the song Shirley had sung in Stand Up and Cheer. She worked well with Dunn, who would be teamed with her in several films, Shirley always receiving the top credit. A pleasant, sentimental film, Baby, Take a Bow had very little other than Shirley to recommend it at the box office. Yet her appeal was so great that the picture did as well as the Will Rogers classic David Harum, released about the same time.

  Paramount claimed her services (they had a second-film option clause in the Little Miss Marker contract) for a Gary Cooper-Carole Lombard* film, Now and Forever. Once again, she reforms a criminal father (Cooper). She received third credit, but in print of equal size to her co-stars’ names. The script managed to find a place for her to sing “The World Owes Me a Living.” Louella Parsons marveled “at the ease with which she reels off her lines, saying big words and expressions. There is nothing parrot-like about Shirley. She knows what she is talking about.” Despite the weak script, Shirley Temple fever had spread. While Paramount reaped a large profit, Fox reaped the benefit, and Shirley’s fan mail, which numbered four to five hundred letters a day, had to be delivered to the studio in huge mail sacks.

  A secretary, Dorothy Drum, was hired just to answer the letters for Shirley, who was now an international sensation. Paramount, Warners and Metro offered to buy her contract from her home studio, Fox, which was suffering substantial losses. Stockholders demanded action—better pictures or a sellout to Joseph M. Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck, who were “hungrily eyeing” the studio. Sheehan took a train to New York to appear before his gloomy board of directors.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, opening his briefcase and extracting some papers, “here is ten million dollars. Here are the offers and the figures to prove we have such an asset in this five-year-old child.”

  Sheehan returned to California with a new and better contract for himself and money to complete work (begun years before) on an eighteen-million-dollar studio located on Pico Boulevard in the Beverly Hills Westwood area with 250 acres of land far from any high-rise office or housing development (originally, this acreage had been used as a “location” for cowboy-star Tom Mix’s westerns). The site provided the ideal locale for the “permanent” outdoor sets of the movie company and the construction of much-needed film stages and offices. The top-budget pictures were made at this studio, the B films, or companion features, on the old Fox Movietone Western Avenue studio. English musical-comedy star George Grossman claimed the new studio looked “rather like an Earl’s Court Exhibition” and beautifully described the old studios on Western Avenue where he was employed:

  On the one side of the Avenue there are four huge stages which look like Zeppelin hangars or a series of Paddington Stations . . . At the other side of the Avenue are the executive buildings, the bungalow offices, the projection rooms, which are like miniature theatres, the make-up department, which resembles the laboratory of a modern hospital, the rehearsal rooms and Writers’ Row. This last consists of a beautiful garden kept in perfect order by a Japanese gardener and surrounded by the bungalows of the scenario writers . . . The garden is crossed by four little streets or paths, each with a signpost painted . . . “Broadway” . . . “Piccadilly” . . . “Rue de la Poix” . . . and . . . “Unter den Linden.”

  Stand Up and Cheer and Baby, Take a Bow had been filmed on this lot. As if to recognize Shirley’s star status, Bright Eyes, her next film, was not only written and developed especially for her, it was shot at the new studio. (While with Fox, she would never again film on Western Avenue.) She was given the English actress Lilian Harvey’s dressing-room bungalow, La Maison de Rêves (Dream House), which had its own garden and a fence around it. Harvey had failed in her bid for Hollywood stardom and, after three badly rece
ived films, had returned to Europe. Shirley ate and napped in the bungalow. She rehearsed her dance numbers on an empty sound stage. “Mom always went with us [the dance director and co-performers]. She just sat on the side and watched. When I looked over at her, she smiled. If I did a wrong step, she shook her head a little.”

  Winfield Sheehan was “very anxious that I shouldn’t become spoiled,” Shirley recalled, “because if I started admiring myself, it would be sure to come out on the screen. ‘It would show in the eyes,’ said Mr. Sheehan. No one was allowed to ask me to dance or recite, and no one was supposed to congratulate me on my work except the director.”

  When Gertrude read the script of Bright Eyes for the first time, she was alarmed. The story included another little girl, Mary Smythe, the rich, mean, snobbish opposite to Shirley’s winsome, lovable character. Recalling Delmar Watson’s reviews in To the Last Man, she went to see Sheehan to convince him that the second child’s role should be considerably cut. Sheehan held fast, believing that the contrast of the two children would add sympathy for Shirley’s character.

  David Butler called in thirty girls to audition for the role of the obnoxious Mary Smythe. After interviewing eight-year-old Jane Withers, he sent the rest home. While Withers was not pretty, she had a memorable speaking voice, mischievous charm and boundless energy. She had made only one feature film, but had performed in vaudeville and on the radio from the age of four, and was extremely professional. Gertrude hovered closer than ever over Shirley. Withers remembered that