by Anne Edwards
“I went over to look at the room in the railway station [Union Station] that was going to be [the site of the inaugural ball for foreign diplomats that evening] where we were all to wait for the President and Vice President to arrive. This was a big, drafty old place . . . and it had one bathroom. I had some 300 people [due to come]. . . . Well, I had them all meet me in the lobby of the Department of State before we went to the ball, and I said, ‘Don’t drink anything. Eat crackers.’”
Later, dressed in flowing chiffon, she returned to the colorfully decorated Union Station to make certain her diplomatic charges were well tended.
“All the ballrooms were packed,” Mrs. Carter wrote. “There was virtually no breathing room, much less dancing room, and a human wall had to be formed down the aisle to hold back the cheering crowds as we made our way to the platforms.
“ ‘Are you having a good time?’ the new President asked. ‘Yes!’ came back the cheers. ‘Do you believe in America?’ The cheers grew louder. ‘Are you going to help me?’ The response was a roar! . . .
“At each party Jimmy and I waltzed a turn under the spotlights while the band played a romantic piece; then it was time to move on to the next ball, and the next and the next. It was a night of pure magic. . . .”
Perhaps this was true for the president and the First Lady, but not necessarily for the ballroom guests at Union Station. “I’ll tell you,” Shirley reminisced, “we had the best behaved diplomatic corps in the world. Sober as can be. Thirsty, full of Fritos and potato chips. The President and his party came at about a quarter to ten, and of course, breezed right through in about 15 minutes. Then, I told everyone they could have a drink and they said, ‘I think we’d rather just go home.’ So everyone went home, and as soon as they left, I left.”
A few days later, Shirley was invited to the White House for breakfast with the president’s mother, Miss Lillian; the wife of the president of Mexico, Mrs. López Portillo (whom Shirley had been escorting during the inauguration); and a few other members of the diplomatic community. The ham-and-grits breakfast was to be one of her last official appearances as chief of protocol. On January 29, she received notification that President Carter had accepted her resignation. She was to be replaced by Evan Dobelle, former mayor of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, whose appointment, since he was a Republican, raised already arched eyebrows in Washington political circles.
The Blacks made immediate plans to return to Woodside. In an interview before departing Washington in February on a “leisurely” cross-country drive home, she praised Carter. “I like him. He’s very personable, very direct. He had a good sense of humor. I would give the same description of his wife. And I like Miss Lillian very much.” Then she added, “I would like another Ambassadorship to a third world country . . . I empathize with the third world people. I feel I can assist. I think it’s just my nature.”
Not long after Gertrude’s death and Shirley’s return to Woodside, Nancy Majors Voorheis, her sister Marion and their mother were visiting in the San Francisco Bay area, and on invitation drove down to see Shirley.
“Well, we arrived at their beautiful home, and Shirley greeted us very warmly,” Voorheis remembered. “She was wearing the huge solid-gold jewelry that she had collected when she was ambassador to Ghana. Her help, whoever it might have been, was off for the day, so we had the simplest lunch—little sandwiches and soup—and I helped Shirley bring it out from the kitchen. We all sat down in her quite formal dining room, this small group, and Shirley said, ‘Now wait a minute,’ and she reached out and she took the hand of whoever was seated next to her, and she said, ‘Let’s hold hands. I would like to say a blessing.’ She bowed her head and she just said, ‘Thank you, God, for this time, this special time, for old and dear friends and for all your blessings. Amen.’ I was absolutely astounded, because I had no idea that Shirley had a sense of [religion]. It was a very beautiful, moving moment, and we held it a very long time.
“We talked and talked for hours and hours about old times. Shirley kept looking at the door and looking at her watch. She was waiting for her dad to come home from playing golf. He must have been near ninety at the time, and she grew terribly nervous . . . Finally, George walked in and Shirley jumped up and her face just lighted. He was just as full of fun and as funny as he had always been.”
Travel and seeing other cultures had become a way of life for Shirley. In April 1977, she and Charles left Woodside for a three-week trip through mainland China. Though traveling as a private citizen, Shirley was unable to leave her political curiosity at home. “We had plenty of solid political talk,” she said a few days after their return, “but never an exchange. You can ask the Chinese anything you want. They were free in answering questions—sometimes clearly, sometimes inscrutably—but not in asking questions.” She told a group of Chinese university students, “Conversation is a two-way exchange, like applauding with both hands. If I applaud with only one hand, you can’t hear it. So please ask me a question.” When no one responded, she began to quiz the audience. A few moments later, a guide stepped in and said, “That’s enough, we have to move along.”
Back home, she told the membership of the San Francisco Commonwealth Club on May 13, “I need not remind Washington that it faces formidable unfinished business in the Peoples’ Republic of China. New developments and old enmities magnify the situation. Preoccupation with the rigidities of the past often obscures both problems and opportunities of the present. . . . If non-secrecy and public participation are indeed the new spirit of Washington, I detect less than a unified approach on matters related to China. . . . We seem to be losing U.S. initiatives . . . In effect, the conditions for our action have been stipulated by China. This is a poor way to play international chess.
“U.S. diplomatic recognition of China today is ill-timed. It sets the stage for miscalculation by the Soviet Union, produces only marginal incremental values for the U.S. and leaves unanswered the old hostilities of the Korean Peninsula.”
She made no secret of her hope that Carter might give her a worthy appointment, but she did not allow herself the luxury of inactivity while she waited. She remained on the board of directors of several large American corporations, the World Affairs Council of Northern California and the United Nations Association, and was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc., the National Committee on United States-China Relations, Inc., the Sierra Club and the Commonwealth Club of California. And she never stopped working for the cause of multiple sclerosis.
By the end of 1977, George Temple had developed Bell’s Palsy and required considerable personal attention. For the time, her foreign travel would be curtailed.
She received a few television offers for guest appearances. “I’ve done all that,” she commented. In her view, her acting career was part of another life, although she found it amusing that she and Minnie Mouse would both celebrate their fiftieth birthdays in 1978. When she was asked if there was ever a moment when she wondered why her life had not turned out tragically, as had the lives of so many child stars, she replied, “When you start doing anything at age three, it doesn’t seem to be different than what everybody else does. You don’t get a big head, you don’t get star struck, because this is the normal work pattern . . . [and] my mother was very wise. She made certain that when I came home every day from work, all the fantasy was left at the studio . . . she did not let me know I was a celebrity. How, I don’t know, but she really managed beautifully.”
The celebrity she had not recognized as a child had since, however, alternately shadowed and lighted her way. On December 8, 1978, the Masquers Club (Hollywood’s oldest and most respected theatrical club) recognized her legendary status by awarding her their highest honor, the Order of George Spelvin* (presented to, among others, Fred Astaire, Humphrey Bogart, Judy Garland, Laurence Olivier, Mae West and Groucho Marx). It was given to actors not for the quality of their performances, but for their contributions to the profession.
Gathered in t
he large reception room to honor Shirley were many of her adult and child co-stars. Although he did not attend, the printed program was dominated by a double-page spread containing a rather ambiguous message from Darryl F. Zanuck reading, “Success has never changed you.”
The master of ceremonies, Pat Buttram, observed that as a child performer Shirley had saved Twentieth Century-Fox and the industry in general. “I think the only thing you didn’t save was the Republican Party.”
“Just wait a while,” Shirley rejoined.
And although U.S. Senators Barry Goldwater and S. I. Hayakawa did not make their scheduled appearances at the tribute, the event “frequently sounded like a Republican party rally as bursts of applause greeted repeated references to her party ties. At one point a man in the audience protested that he was a Democrat.
“There are no Democrats here,” Buttram retorted. “Only Republicans can afford $25 a plate.” When a congratulatory telegram from former President Ford was read, Buttram remarked, “I liked it when Gerald Ford was President. It was nice having a president that wasn’t our fault.”
On the dais with Shirley were David Butler, Alice Faye, Cesar Romero, Lois Wilson, George Montgomery and former child stars Jane Withers, Marcia Mae Jones, Sybil Jason and Jerome Courtland, giving the ceremony the appearance of a Twentieth Century-Fox alumni party. Later, they all signed each other’s programs as members of a graduating class might do, writing short personal notes to one another. Shirley, using red ink, inscribed only “Shirley Temple Black” in her graceful left-slanted hand.
The next year was taken up caring for George. His palsy had progressed to a stage where he was unable to feed himself or swallow solid food. Shirley cooked his meals, pureed them and then spoon-fed him. She seldom left Woodside. On September 4, 1980, George took a sudden turn for the worse and was moved to a hospital in Menlo Park, where he died on September 30 at age ninty-three. A few weeks later, Shirley’s first grandchild, Theresa Lyn Falaschi, was born. The press found Shirley Temple becoming a grandmother astounding.*
About this time, Dickie Moore, who had bestowed on Shirley her first kiss in Miss Annie Rooney, arranged to see her in Wood-side. He was then writing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, part memoir and part history of Hollywood’s child stars. She greeted him at the doorway, “wearing a bright print dress made from fabric she had bought ten years before in Ghana . . . the impish gaze was still level and direct, the hazel eyes were even more knowing . . . She pointed to the left side of her face: ‘Kiss me here on the cheek, like last time,’ she said.”
They talked, but Moore could not get her to speak freely about the past. He noted that she herself served him a sandwich and salad for lunch and that she had no maid. She told him she personally cooked and cleaned the house, which she remarked “looked like the kind you used to draw in school.
“I don’t have many early memories of other [film] children or their parents,” she confessed to him, “because I didn’t socialize with my peer group at the studio.”
“You were really isolated, weren’t you? Far more than any of us,” Moore remarked.
“ ‘Yes,’ she said, after a moment of reflection, ‘but I turned out alright.’”
He noted that on his departure she showed him the consul flag she had taken from her office in Washington. Being an ambassador, she told him, was the proudest achievement of her life.
With Republican President Ronald Reagan occupying the White House, Shirley’s hopes were raised that she might yet be assigned a challenging government position. He did send her to Paris as his representative during the inaugural celebrations of Americans abroad. But—perhaps because Shirley had championed his then-rival George Bush in the early days of the 1980 presidential race—no ambassadorship or high-government office was offered to her.
When Lenore Annenberg resigned as chief of protocol in December 1981, rumors abounded that Reagan would reappoint Shirley. “Frankly, I don’t believe in looking back,” she said when the post went to Selwa Roosevelt, and then added, “It’s not a substantive job.” She did accept the State Department’s offer for her to be named vice-president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, and to assist in the training of new ambassadors, a job that gave her a chance to spend considerable time each year in Washington and to keep herself attuned to the political climate of the country.
The house in Woodside that had once been decorated in ‘Pacific-Oriental’ was now a place for display of her souvenirs from her travels and diplomatic life, notably the time spent in Ghana. She remained outspoken about her convictions and opinions on foreign affairs, frequently voicing her views on the “abhorrent practice of apartheid.” “I think she’s one of the most unusual women who ever lived,” Charles said of his wife of thirty-five years. “Her whole life has been spent in various types of public service, either by entertaining people or by serving them.” Then, his voice growing softer, he added, “I think she’s some sort of deity . . . and I support her in everything she does.”
On the evening of May 20, 1985, the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave “A Tribute to Shirley Temple” in Hollywood at the Samuel Gold-wyn Theatre. Clips from many of her films were shown and interspersed with commentary from Jane Withers, Sybil Jason, Marcia Mae Jones, Darryl Hickman, Jerome Courtland, Cesar Romero and Shirley, with Robert Osborne as moderator.
The night was one for reminiscing. Cesar Romero remembered how he used to prevail upon Jane Withers to perform her Temple impression behind Shirley’s back. At this point, Withers rose and stepped forward to do the imitation with her voice an amazing likeness to Shirley’s in the years of her childhood stardom. The audience applauded, and Shirley quipped into the microphone, “That’s why we only did one movie together.”
Then the important moment of the occasion arrived. Gene Allen, president of the Academy, stood on the podium beside Shirley and presented her with a full-sized Oscar to replace the miniature she had been given in 1935. Shirley held it in her hands for a moment, and then, looking over the heads of the audience, said, “This is really for my mother, Gertrude Temple, and this evening a tribute to her.”
Footnote
*Charles Black, Jr., was employed in 1988 in Washington in the Commerce Department as confidential assistant to Joseph F. Dennin, the assistant secretary for international economic policy.
*Shirley had been a guest at the inauguration of Truman, Eisenhower and Nixon.
*George Spelvin was an imaginary actor born (in the theater) in 1904 when a performer playing a policeman in the first act of a play adopted the name for a different role in the third act. In one 3-year period during the 1920’s, “George Spelvin” appeared in 210 different roles. Many famous theatrical names were linked with his. William Gillette first used him as a “double” in Secret Service. Jacob Adler of the Yiddish Theatre frequently employed the pseudonym. The Moscow Art Theatre once listed the name “Gregor Spelvinovich” on their programs.
*Roberto Falaschi had been re-posted to the United States, and the child was born at the Stanford Medical Center on December 21, 1980. The Falaschi marriage ended in divorce a few years later.
Appendices
CHRONOLOGY: SHIRLEY TEMPLE BLACK
1928, April 23 Born
1932, January First short made
1934, February 9 Signed Fox Films contract
Presented with miniature “Oscar” (Academy Award)
1935, February 27 Meets President Franklin D. Roosevelt
1940, Autumn Enters Westlake School for Girls
Twentieth Century-Fox contract ends
1943, Spring Signs with Selznick International
1945, Spring Graduates Westlake School for Girls
September 19 Marries John Agar
1948, January 30 Birth of Linda Susan (Agar/Black)
1949, January 20 Attends President Truman’s inauguration
1950, December 5 Divorces John Agar
1950, October Contract with Selznick International
ends
1950, December 16 Marries Charles Black
1951, May Moves to Maryland
1952, April 28 Birth of Charles Alden Black, Jr.
1953, June Visits President Dwight D. Eisenhower
1953, July Moves to Los Angeles, California
1954, April 9 Birth of Lori Alden Black
Moves to Atherton, California
1958, January 12 First Shirley Temple’s Storybook (television)
1960 Campaigns for Richard Nixon’s losing presidential race
1961 Shirley Temple Theater (television)
Moves to Woodside, California
Co-founder of the National Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies
1965 San Francisco Health Facilities Planning Association (board member)
Travels to Russia for International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies
1967 California Congressional campaign
1968 Awarded Dame, Order of Knights of Malta, Paris
Travels to Prague for IFMSS
Campaigns abroad for Richard Nixon
1969 Director, Bank of California
Director, Firemen’s Fund Insurance Company
Director, BANCAL Tri-State Corporation
Member, California Advisory Hospital Council
1969–70 Representative to 24th General Assembly of United Nations (appointed by President Richard M. Nixon)
1972–74 Special assistant to chairman, American Council on Environmental Quality
1972 Representative, UN Conference on Human Environment in Stockholm (appointed by Secretary of State William P. Rogers)
Delegate treaty on environment U.S.S.R.-U.S.A. Joint Committee, Moscow
Breast cancer (mastectomy)
1973 Member U.S. Commission for UNESCO
1974, May 28 Elected Director, Walt Disney Productions