Shortly after I read Bob Hoose’s blog on the troubled post-pubescence of Justin Bieber, I learned that Shirley Temple Black—the first and perhaps greatest of Hollywood’s child celebrities—died at the age of 85.
For those of us who’ve tracked the often sadly predictable career trajectory of many a child/teen star, it’s interesting to take a look at Temple’s own career—how it was not unlike some of the child stars of today, and yet how it turned out quite different than most.
If you’ve read any of Temple’s obituaries, you know the basics. She was born in 1928, and very early on, Temple’s mother was determined to get her young daughter into show business. In 1932 at the age of 3, Shirley Temple snagged her first movie role. By 1935, she was Hollywood’s brightest star. For four years, the little girl was the country’s biggest box-office draw.
But as Temple got older, things got weird. After a couple of flops, Twentieth Century Fox terminated her contract. MGM quickly picked up her rights, but on Temple’s first visit to the studio (according to her autobiography Child Star), a producer exposed himself to her. She had never seen that portion of male anatomy before, and she laughed—upon which the producer threw her out of his office.
She made a few more movies and, later, occasional appearances on television. But her stardom was, essentially, over by the time she turned 12. Like many childhood stars, she couldn’t navigate the transition to serious adult actress.
I’ve not heard much about her adolescence and early adulthood—only that she was smoking heavily and got married to an Air Corps sergeant named John Agar Jr. in 1945, when she was 17. They had a daughter together, but the two divorced after just four years of marriage. Perhaps, had the paparazzi been as aggressive as they are today, supermarket tabloids would’ve been awash in her salacious exploits. Or perhaps she spent most of her days listening to the radio at home. I can’t say.
But I can say that shortly thereafter, she crafted a magnificent second act for herself.
In 1950, Temple married Charles Alden Black. The two were married for 55 years, until he died in 2005, and had three children together. By 1960, she was president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. In 1967, she ran for congress. In 1972, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and became one of the first celebrities to speak forcefully and openly about the disease. In the 1970s and ’80s, she became a diplomat, serving as ambassador to Ghana and later Czechoslovakia. According to The New York Times, no less than Henry Kissinger praised Temple Black for being “very intelligent, very tough-minded, very disciplined.”
Showbiz is tough work at any age, but in some ways it’s particularly rough on children. While some childhood stars—Jodie Foster and Sean Astin come to mind—eventually make the transition to adult success onscreen, others can’t. And sometimes the difficulties they’ve suffered are so severe that it not only sinks their celebrity livelihoods but destroys their personal lives as well.
But Shirley Temple Black—exemplifying the resilience that her young onscreen protagonists always embodied—proved that life can go on, and go on magnificently.
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