Shirley Temple
Page 1
SHIRLEY TEMPLE
American Princess
Books by Anne Edwards
BIOGRAPHY
Sonya: The Life of Countess Tolstoy
Vivien Leigh: A Biography
Judy Garland: A Biography
Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell
Matriarch: Queen Mary and the House of Windsor
A Remarkable Woman: A Biography of Katharine Hepburn
Early Reagan: The Rise to Power
Shirley Temple: American Princess
The DeMilles: An American Family
Royal Sisters: Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret
Streisand: A Biography
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The Inn and Us (with Stephen Citron)
Leaving Home: A Hollywood Blacklisted Writer’s Years Abroad
NOVELS
The Survivors
Shadow of a lion
Haunted Summer
Miklos Alexandrovitch Is Missing
The Hesitant Heart
Child of Night
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
P.T. Barnum
The Great Houdini
A Child’s Bible
SHIRLEY TEMPLE
American Princess
ANNE EDWARDS
Guilford, Connecticut
An imprint of Globe Pequot
Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK
Copyright © 1988 by Anne Edwards
First Lyons Paperback Edition 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
The Library of Congress has catalogued an earlier hardcover edition as follows:
Edwards, Anne
Shirley Temple: American Princess
Cinema films. Acting. Temple, Shirley, 1928-
Title
791. 43’028’0924
ISBN 0-00-217988-1
ISBN 978-1-4930-2691-3 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-4930-2692-0 (e-book)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
FOREWORD
AT THE 1998 KENNEDY CENTER HONORS, where Shirley Temple Black was one of the honorees, President Bill Clinton, grinning mischievously, said: “Shirley Temple had the greatest short career in movie history and then retired to—as we well know—the far less strenuous life of public service.” It earned a hearty laugh from the stellar audience of diplomats and Washingtonians gathered there, who were all too familiar with the pressured ordeal of public service.
As she rose to generous ovations, the woman who, indeed, had been the most famous child star of all time, smiled and waved to the audience below from the balcony that held the president and the other recipients being honored. Queen Elizabeth could never be more regal or beloved. She was an icon who, during the darkest days of the Great Depression, had brought light to many. As Franklin D. Roosevelt had declared in 1935, “As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right. When the spirit of the people is lower than any other time during this Depression, it is a splendid thing that just for 15 cents, an American can go to a movie, look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles.”
She was like no other child performer, an icon throughout her childhood and early youth; so natural a performer she immediately became real. If “Little Shirley” could persevere and survive for the good of all, so could the country. However, when she flowered into full womanhood her career wilted and fell from the vine. No one wanted to see her, in a sense, lose her purity. Her movies failed and she ostensibly retired.
Only, she did not.
She married twice, had three children, and in her late twenties as Shirley Temple Black (her second husband, Charles Black, was a California businessman known for his work in aquaculture and oceanography) turned all her attention to politics and social issues. Perhaps, to the surprise of many, her knowledge, intelligence, and dedication to public service won her a place early on in her country’s history. It was this dramatic second life, coming from where she did, that made me eager to know more about her. Out of that enthusiasm came this book.
It was said that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger when attending a fund raiser in the early 1970’s that Shirley also was at, overheard her speaking passionately about the problems facing the South African country of Namibia whose people were engaged in a bitter guerrilla war for independence. He immediately intervened, speaking with her, and found her knowledge on the situation surprisingly informative. The chance meeting led to her being appointed Representative to the United Nations General Assembly where she acquitted herself well, speaking up and fighting for many difficult issues. President Ford made her United States Ambassador to Ghana; and she served as United States Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) during some of the harshest days of the Cold War and that country’s hard-fought battle against Communism.
She seemed fearless, never at a loss for words to get her ideas over, never backing away from controversy. I am unsure if those in this small African nation knew her back story. She had retained a great likeness to her younger self. But the mature woman that country now dealt with was a politically knowledgeable, rigorous spokesperson. She was a liberal Republican, guided as strongly by her heart as she was by her chosen party. Men were not cowed by her presence, but they certainly respected her as men in Great Britain had (with some reservation) Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Yes, she made some missteps, yet her integrity was never besmirched.
President Clinton, in that tribute at Kennedy Center was to say: “She did a masterful job as ambassador [to both Ghana and Czechoslovakia]. In fact (that grin again), she has to be the only person who both saved an entire studio [Fox] from failure and contributed to the fall of Communism!” Quite an achievement!
Once my decision was made to write this book, with President Ford’s letter of introduction, I contacted her by telephone. (All our conversations were conducted in this fashion as I lived in Connecticut and she in Northern California and each of us had our reasons for not traveling at the time.) She was polite, accommodating, but only slowly forthcoming. Before our telephone conversations, I had researched and interviewed those who worked with Shirley during her adult years, and was as amazed as Kissinger had been, not at just how knowledgeable she was, but at her “Let’s get to it!” style. She plowed right into the situation, became engaged with all those around her and with the people of the country in which she was a ‘working guest.’ My many conversations with President Ford gave me a deep understanding of the woman “Little Shirley” had become. She had told me, during one phone call that she always saw herself “as two people—‘Little Shirley’ and the person I am now. ‘Little Shirley’ is buried somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain. She ghost walks at times. But she is no longer me.”
The adult Shirley I spoke with possessed a distinct authorial tone. At times I suspected something unsaid stirred within her and she would add an amusing comment on herself—never at the cost to someone else. “I think people are surprised I did not become ‘Baby Jane,’ (as in the horror movie, ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.’) In my case, ‘Little Shirley’ grew up to be a woman who cared about the world and who can’t really recall that other young person. Not in depth, anyway. (Pause) I can’t think of anyone I ever hated. Disagreed with—yes. Lots of those folks. I’ve always been determined to win them over. It’s not always a win. But it’s
not always a loss either!”
We talked about the courage she had shown as the first woman to speak openly about her breast cancer and the mastectomy that she underwent in her thirties. “I wanted to show other women facing the same diagnosis as I, that they did not have to fear for their womanhood. I thought I could be an example to them,” she explained.
Her political achievements are impressive for the difficulties she faced and the truly dangerous circumstances she encountered. On one mission to Prague before she became Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, her stay coincided with the day that Soviet forces invaded that city. She was stranded in a hotel where she had come to meet with the country’s leader, Alexander Dubcek. Tanks had sieged the city. Shirley and a number of Dubcek’s party had sought refuge on the roof as heavily armed Soviet troops stalked the streets and the lower floors of the building they were in. (Dubcek had not yet arrived and so their search was useless.)
“From my high perch—and careful not to be seen—I managed to look out through a slit in the railing. A woman on the street was unmercifully gunned down as she ran for shelter—an image I have never rid myself of,” she confessed.
Shortly after this, she was made United States Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, remaining there during the entire revolution. In her role (perhaps, the best she ever played, this being real life-and-death) she worked to help bring down the Communist regime by openly sympathizing with the dissidents, and establishing formal diplomatic relations with the new government.
She retired from government service soon after her stint in Czechoslovakia, but served on many boards, employing her extraordinary energy to the National Wildlife Federation (a great passion of hers). In the early nineties she was diagnosed with severe pulmonary disease caused by her lifetime addiction to smoking—a habit she kept carefully hidden through the years for fear of the negative image it might project if publicly known. She smoked, she had confessed to those close to her, to cover her nervousness during the hard times and decisions she had “to face throughout the years of stressful living.” Her ‘cover-up’ greatly disturbed her. She felt she had not been straight with the public. In looking back, she thought cigarettes “might well have caused my early cancer.” Of course, that might not have been the case. However, her pulmonary problems would become dangerously obstructive and on February 10, 2014, after years of top medical care, it finally cost her her life.
The ghost of “Little Shirley” was hopefully at rest, as well, but it is doubtful that she will ever be forgotten, thanks to the art of film preservation and those glorious uplifting images—especially in the movies she made from 1934-1938 when “Little Shirley” was at the height of her fame. During those years she was the heart, the face, the light, the spirit of optimism the country, indeed—the entire Western World during those long, dark years, needed. But the woman she became was equally remarkable, broke barriers for her sex, overcame a kind of childhood that has taken down many less dedicated, intelligent women, a childhood that had made her the most famous child star EVER—better known worldwide during those years than Great Britain’s two little princesses—Elizabeth and Margaret. Who else but royalty could Shirley be compared to?
“Little Shirley” remains alive and well on masterly restored film—dimpled, bright-eyed, twinkle-toeing up and down a staircase with the great black dancer, Bill Robinson (breaking race barriers there), over-coming a dozen hurdles that would have suffered most other orphaned or lost children of whom she portrayed, singing in an unforgettable voice—childish, yet sure. Happy endings were possible she sang, be optimistic. She was the young hope for a tomorrow devoid of pain or sorrow. “Little Shirley” was of the people, by the people and for the people whatever their color, race, or gender. She became a remarkable woman, even to those who did not vote her ticket, for her personal humanity and her care for our planet that overrode politics. Her last years were devoted to the peril to our oceans, our animal species, the land and growth on it.
I learned a lot while writing this biography. I also gained a friend in President Gerald R. Ford, who I later called upon many times during my two volumes on President Ronald Reagan. Of “Little Shirley” he said: “When I was a young fellow, she even made an awkward kid like I was believe I could dance. It was the happiness she spread.”
—ANNE EDWARDS
Footnote
* Quotes in this foreword can be found in the President Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan and in the Anne Edwards Archives at UCLA.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction
With Gertrude
On Her Own
Appendices
Chronology: Shirley Temple Black
Trial Transcript of the High Court of Justice
Review of Wee Willie Winkie in Night and Day, October 28, 1937
Movie Chronology: Shirley Temple
Television Credits: Shirley Temple
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
TO MOST OF THE WORLD, Hollywood from 1934 to 1939 was the Enchanted City, where dwelt numerous queens who came and went, but only one princess—Shirley Temple. True, her position rested on publicity, not ancestry, but she was as well known and beloved in her own country as Britain’s little princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, were in theirs. Hers was the most recognizable face in a world that included Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Wallis Simpson, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo and three kings—George V, Edward VIII and George VI. Throughout her seventh to tenth years, wherever movies were exhibited, she was the top box-office star.
Her childhood was lived amid unprecedented adulation. Her ebullient spirit and child’s innocence helped America come through the Depression, and reminded a world on the brink of war that there had been more innocent times. Obediently, the cherubic face had refused to age or change much. But the girl who bore it grew into adolescence and then womanhood and, like Peter Pan, was not permitted to grow up—at least by her public.
Then, on a particularly balmy August day in 1967, Shirley Temple Black, age thirty-nine, a housewife and mother, confronted a bevy of newsmen at a press conference in a San Mateo, California, motel dining room and explained why she should be elected to Congress. Her audience was not exactly disrespectful, but even for the most hardened reporter among them there was an unwillingness to let go of the fantasies that prevailed. And so Shirley Temple Black found herself “in mortal combat” with her own “larger-than-life child of the past.”
A frown masked the fabled dimples. The golden ringlets had been replaced by a severe, darker hairdo more reminiscent of a Victorian matron than a sixties political candidate. The small, onetime petulant mouth was set grimly. The figure in the neat, burnt-orange executive-type suit, once so childishly guileless, was full-bosomed and wide-hipped. Yet, with its own defiance, the child’s face that had given Shirley Temple such celebrity refused to be camouflaged.
“Little Shirley Temple is not running for anything,” she said sharply, in a low, resonant voice that had disconcertingly lost its youthful timbre. “If someone insists on pinning me with a label, make it read Shirley Temple Black, Republican independent.”
Memories of a dimpled, curly-topped child sitting on the knee of that most famous of all Democrats, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, danced tantalizingly before the eyes of the estimable Fourth Estate. Not only was Shirley Temple declaring her candidacy for Congress, she was entering the highly competitive arena of eleven male candidates, which included three other Republicans and eight Democrats. By the end of that press conference, no one in the room doubted either her dedication or her tough-mindedness. The question in the minds of many of those attending was when and how this amazing transformation from America’s little princess to hard-edged political advocate had taken place.
What follows is not only a biography of an American phenomenon. It is the story of a child who was raised to rule, and then, when she reached womanhood, had crown,
scepter and power seized from her possession.
With Gertrude
1 SOME PEOPLE are able to make themselves believe their own fantasies. George Francis Temple understood that his wife was one of them. In 1927, Gertrude was convinced that she was not just an ordinary housewife, married to a bank clerk, and the mother of two sons, Jack, age twelve, and Sonny, age eight, but a woman who would one day find worldwide love and adulation. George considered her a dreamer and blamed the matinee movies she attended, the crooning love songs she played on their gramophone, and the radio dramas she listened to religiously. Nonetheless, he humored and indulged these romantic pursuits. Whatever else she might be, Gertrude was attractive, a loving wife, a good mother and a careful manager. George also knew that Gertrude had married him at the age of seventeen to escape a difficult home situation, but that she had not been able to abandon her youthful dreams.
Gertrude Amelia Krieger was born in Chicago, Illinois, July 15, 1893. Her father, Otto Julius Krieger, was born in Germany in 1864; and his wife, Maude Elizabeth McGrath, in St. Joseph, Michigan, in 1875. Shortly after Gertrude’s birth, the family moved to Elgin, Illinois, also the site of the Elgin Watch Company, where Otto was employed as an experienced technician. Following the birth of Gertrude’s younger brother Ralph, the Kriegers returned to Chicago, where Otto opened a small jewelry and watch-repair store at 2049 Adams Street, establishing living quarters for his family above the store. But the Chicago winters proved too harsh for Otto, who had developed lung congestion, and in 1903 he sold his business, and the Kriegers boarded a train to relocate in booming Los Angeles, California, where the sun shone most of the time.
As she journeyed west with her family, the ten-year-old Gertrude’s first dreams were born. Being the eldest in her family, and a girl, had hastened her maturity. She had always been a courteous, reliable child, and so, during her father’s illness and the difficulties of selling a business and moving a family, the Kriegers had expected her to help in the care of her brother, Ralph, who was four years her junior. Gertrude possessed an exotic beauty. Olive-skinned, dark-haired, with large, wide-set amber-brown eyes and a smile slow to come but dazzling when displayed, she was her father’s favorite. But Krieger’s authoritarian personality had turned Gertrude into a shy, fairly reticent girl, and except for her closeness to her family, a loner. Her consuming passion was her love of books. To entertain Ralph, she would read to him by the hour, often repeating the same story three or four times, embellishing the romance and adventure each time, pretending she was the characters about whom she was reading.