Shirley Temple

by Anne Edwards

  The basic ingredients of her film formula were changed by Zanuck. Her naturalness and naïveté were encouraged , but with preadolescence approaching, the baby innocence was no longer acceptable. When the Temples traveled to Bermuda on the Queen of Bermuda for a holiday late in 1937, the great English star Gertrude Lawrence was also on board. Shirley tells the story that Miss Lawrence came in to dinner one evening wearing a dress with long, full sleeves, the vogue at the time, and kept pushing them up while dining. Shirley, wide-eyed, “in all the innocence of my nine years . . . announced to the table at large [they were both seated at the captain’s table], ‘My, that dress doesn’t fit you very well, does it.’” There was deadly silence. Eventually Miss Lawrence laughed at the incident, but she also commented to a friend, “That Temple child should be taught some manners.” What might seem guileless in a six-year-old child appeared rude at nine.

  Zanuck’s idea was to bring out Shirley’s tomboy quality and to present her in a film with larger production values and more background activity, much as Metro had done with Mickey Rooney and Freddie Bartholomew in movies like Captains Courageous, Ah, Wilderness and The Devil Is a Sissy. He increased the budgets on her films and turned to top directors. For Wee Willie Winkie, the feminization of the old Rudyard Kipling hero, he chose John Ford, who had won the Academy Award two years before with The Informer. Ford, on contract to Zanuck, accepted the assignment good-naturedly. As he remembered, “One day Darryl said, ‘I’m going to give you something to scream about. I’m going to put you together with Shirley Temple.’ He thought that combination would make me . . . howl. I said, ‘Great’ . . . I remembered the story from Kipling, and it was just great . . .”

  Ford and Zanuck had at best “a quarrelsome relationship.” Ford thought Zanuck ran the studio like a “Versailles Court,” and refused to become one of “Zanuck’s flunkies.” According to him, Zanuck “lacked artistic integrity . . . he was more interested in making safe commercial pictures.” Yet each man had a grudging respect for the other. Ford admired Zanuck’s promotional instincts, and Zanuck believed Ford was a consummate director—and after all, Shirley was Twentieth Century-Fox’s most valuable asset. Ford put together a supporting cast of actors he knew well: Victor McLaglen (who had won the Best Actor award for The Informer), C. Aubrey Smith and Cesar Romero. McLaglen’s Scottish character was killed halfway through the film. “I’d like to keep him,” Zanuck told Ford after seeing the rushes. Ford said the story could not work otherwise. “Well, we have all those bag pipes. Can you give him an impressive military funeral?”

  Shot in sepia to enhance the exotic Indian background, the Kipling story with its new sex-change was an adventure yarn about a young American widow (June Lang) and her daughter (Shirley) who journey to India in the latter part of the nineteenth century to join the child’s maternal grandfather (C. Aubrey Smith), a colonel of a Highland regiment stationed on the frontier. The menace of native insurrection and massacre provided the melodramatic suspense. “When open warfare is threatened between the territorials and the natives, the little girl on a peacepleading mission is delivered into enemy hands. She is the means of reconciling the two factions.”

  The story was simple, but Ford gave the production realistic backgrounds, and his handling of the principals, the crowds and the cavalry was excellent. The New Yorker critic, who was not generally a Shirley Temple aficionado, wrote, “Under John Ford’s expert hand, Shirley has become something more than just a pretty puppet. The child is growing up, seems to understand the emotions she is portraying and there is a definite expansion of personality. She is developing the same appeal, puffed sleeves, the ability to smile-through-tears, that made Mary Pickford ‘America’s Sweetheart.’ Zanuck is very wise in planning to star Shirley in Mary’s early vehicles.”

  At this time, Graham Greene was to discover the dangers of film reviewing. As in his earlier critique of Captain January and his personal meeting a few months later with Shirley when she was filming Wee Willie Winkie, he found Shirley’s appeal far more sensual than her years would warrant. (He had seen her for the first time in The Littlest Rebel and kindly written, “I had not expected the tremendous energy which her rivals certainly lack.”) Greene’s review for Wee Willie Winkie, which appeared in a new magazine called Night and Day (October 20, 1937), never reached the States and was pulled from the newsstands shortly after publication in England. According to the stories in the American press, Greene wrote that Shirley was a midget with a seven-year-old child of her own. (Shirley herself believed this is what Greene had written.) No such statement appears in the banned article, but Greene does again accuse Shirley of being too nubile for a nine-year-old girl. He claims, “I had accused [in the magazine] 20th Century-Fox of ‘procuring’ Miss Temple ‘for immoral purposes.’” As soon as the review appeared (and was immediately withdrawn) a libel action was brought against Greene and his publishers by solicitor Roy Simmonds on Shirley’s behalf, and by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation (New York and Great Britain branches).*

  Zanuck’s new formula of starring Shirley in a popular classic was next applied to Johanna Spyri’s Heidi, which was perfectly suited to Shirley’s slightly more mature personality. The book had been purchased in 1923 from the author by Sol Lesser and the Baby Peggy Corporation for Baby Peggy, but had not been made.† Zanuck bought the rights from Lesser and put writers Walter Ferris and Julien Josephson on the screenplay. This time, the story remained fairly loyal (at least in essence) to the original sentimental tale of an orphaned child brought up by her elderly, hermitlike grandfather (Jean Hersholt) in a Tyrolean Alpine hut. Heidi is ideally happy with her mountain life and friends, including Peter the goat boy (Delmar Watson). Then an aunt (Mady Christians) virtually sells her to be a companion to a wealthy crippled girl (Marcia Mae Jones) in the city of Frankfurt. The child is torn between her desire to stay with the girl, her wish to return to her grandfather and her suffering under the harsh treatment of the housekeeper (Mary Nash). In the end, she returns to her grandfather and the mountains she loves.

  Allan Dwan, the director of Heidi, recalled, “Shirley hit her peak and was sliding [in 1937]. Zanuck would like to have made a trade [a loan-out in exchange for another studio’s star], but nobody was interested, and I liked to avoid children, especially those who were [aging fast]. In a kind of left-handed way he gave me Heidi and said, ‘See what you can do with it.’ Heidi’s a very down story, stiff and heavy, but Zanuck loosened the purse strings a little. We got to use Lake Arrowhead locations for the Alps and a lot of tricks. Shirley helped invent the dream sequence where she’s in Holland because she [instinctively] knew it was a good spot for a musical number.”*

  Gertrude, who now had a great deal to say about her daughter’s scripts, was the one who first came to Zanuck and asked that a musical number be inserted to liven the movie. But Heidi screenwriters have, along with Dwan, credited Shirley with the idea of the wooden shoes and the placement of the number. Her theatrical acumen seemed to be developing along with her little girl’s body. She was four feet tall, short for nine. Her golden hair had turned to dark ash blond and the ringlets brushed back into soft curls.

  Delmar Watson had been called by Dwan with about twenty other young boys to audition for the role of Peter the goat boy. Watson remembers that as they all lined up ready to go through the first weeding-out process (judging size, appearance and voice quality), Shirley and Gertrude entered.

  “Which one of these boys would you like to play Peter with you?” Dwan asked Shirley, who motioned to Watson.

  Watson recalled that “Mrs. Temple had become much more sophisticated in the years since I had worked with Shirley [1933]. Funnily enough, she seemed to have changed more than Shirley, who I found just as good-natured and, considering her position, not in the least affected. [Mrs. Temple] was now not only protective about Shirley, she allowed nothing to pass regarding her without her knowledge. But she was never unpleasant. My dad was on the set, as always. But she was not too frien
dly with him this time. Marcia Mae Jones’s mother was also on hand, and I don’t think they were that friendly. Mrs. Temple sat right by the camera during every take Shirley was in. She always wore a hat, which—since it was a very hot summer when we filmed Heidi—stood out in my mind. And she wore very smart alligator shoes and a pocketbook that matched.

  “One of the first scenes I did with Shirley involved Heidi teaching Peter the ABC’s up on the mountain. The two of us improvised a lot during it, and when it was finished, Allan Dwan, the cameraman, all the technicians were confident it would be one of the best scenes in the final picture. But then I heard it was being cut. Of course it was hard not to think that Mrs. Temple might be responsible.

  “I was never given my lines to study in advance. My dad asked Allan Dwan about this, and he said they wanted Peter to be kind of dumb, but it was the only time I was in a picture of that length where they would not give me my lines until the night before I was supposed to do a scene.”

  Coy Watson blamed the studio. “They’re not being fair to the boy,” he complained to his family when he and Delmar returned home in the evenings. “They’re changing his dialogue right on the set. It’s almost like they’re making him stumble over his lines to make Shirley look better.”

  Marcia Mae Jones, who was cast as Clara Sesemann, the crippled girl in the film, had no such feeling about the studio or about Gertrude. “I do remember that Mrs. Temple always had on a hat, gloves and a purse . . . and that she was always on the stool sitting next to the camera. Mrs. Temple was always lovely to me—she would invite me in the afternoon to come into the dressing room with Shirley, where she would give each of us a piece of Hershey [chocolate] at four o’clock. It was instead of having tea . . . My mother [Freda Jones]* was on the set at the same time as Mrs. Temple, and they seemed to get along fine. But my mother never intruded on anyone—she spoke to Mrs. Temple when Mrs. Temple spoke to her—and I guess they had some conversations together. I couldn’t tell you what they were about—but I know my mother liked Mrs. Temple and never had any complaints.”

  Like the Watson family, the four Jones children—Marcia Mae and her two brothers and a sister—were all in the movies. But only Marcia Mae had become a child star. Her debut had been made at the age of six months in the Dolores Costello silent film The Mannequin (1924). By the age of seven, she was playing strong, dramatic roles in major films such as the potent Night Nurse (1931), starring Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck, and These Three (1936—based on Lillian Heilman’s The Children’s Hour). Then there had been persuasive performances in The Garden of Allah (1936) and The Life of Emile Zola (1937). Marcia Mae was a sensitive and talented actress, and Gertrude appeared respectful of her abilities. And perhaps because she was thirteen when she made Heidi, four years older than Shirley, Gertrude did not consider the role Marcia Mae played in the film competitive.

  “The movie was made during the summer,” Marcia Mae recalls, “and an enormous tent had been set up on the back lot and inside there was a complete street scene with the Sesemann house and so forth. They used a great big machine to create the snow, and it was very, very hot in there. It wasn’t the best conditions at that time [no air conditioning], and the artificial snow sometimes got in your eyes and your mouth—but . . . I loved the clothes . . . I wore a royal-blue princess coat with an ermine collar and shoes to match with ermine on the boots—and, oh, my dear, I cried when I had to leave that [at the studio].

  “I had my own dressing room . . . but I used to love to eat in the commissary, because at that time I was madly in love with Tyrone Power, and it’s my understanding that they told him, and he would smile and wave at me and my heart would just go pitter-patter . . .

  “Allan Dwan—well, he didn’t seem to give any direction. I remember my mother talking to me when I had to get up and pretend like I was trying to walk, and I was told just to get up and do it. I was really quite frightened, because not being crippled I didn’t know how to do it, so I imagined—on my own—what it would be like—which is the key to acting . . .

  “Poor Jean Hersholt was extremely uncomfortable throughout the film. As I said, the tent was stifling, and he had to wear tremendous padding to make him heavier, and a beard and longish hair to make him look older [and more like a hermit]. Unfortunately, he had a lot of [action scenes] and one day he collapsed from heat exhaustion.”

  The heat was difficult for all the cast and crew, including Shirley, who tripped on an electric wire, sprawled head first and received a cut over her eyebrow. The eye began to discolor quickly. This was a Saturday, and the film was already two days behind schedule. The makeup artist on the film covered the discoloration and the abrasion, and Shirley completed the day’s scenes. A few days later, the artificial snow had caused her throat to close up, and the crew was forced to shoot around her for two days. Despite these problems, Heidi was one of Shirley’s favorite movies. Her old sidekick Arthur Treacher was also in the film.

  “He was marvelous to all us children,” Marcia Mae says. “We just loved him.”

  For the Swiss Alpine scenes, shot on the slopes of Arrowhead Peak, the members of the company either lodged in Arrowhead Village’s single hotel or had rooms in private chalets. Shirley was given her own trailer home “parked on the side of a hill.” Watson claims, “She was there all the time with [Grif] and, of course, her mother. Only a few studio people were allowed up there. . . . She had a stand-in [Mary Lou Islieb] for the sound and lights. Then, when everything was set, she’d . . . come down at the last minute, we’d do our scene together, and when it was finished, she would be escorted back up the hill and disappear into her trailer.

  “Once, I was playing horseshoes right after lunch with the lighting guys, and she came out of her trailer. I said, ‘Hi,’ and she greeted me and asked if she could play. Sure, we told her. She picked up a horseshoe and tossed it. I think she missed. She played with us for exactly two minutes, and then her bodyguard came down and took her away, back up the hill into the trailer. I heard him tell her she wasn’t supposed to be there. As she left, I said to her, ‘Bye. Maybe you could do it later.’ Shirley didn’t say anything, but obediently returned to the trailer.”

  On the other hand, Marcia Mae Jones felt that a camaraderie existed between herself and Shirley. “We talked and we laughed . . . I think most of us children [who worked with her] were a little in awe of her because Shirley was always bubbling . . . I remember that at Lake Arrowhead there was a miniature golf course, and Shirley and I were playing and I think we had about seven or eight bodyguards watching us—and I know that I was uncomfortable and I just wanted them to go away and leave us alone and let us play, but it didn’t seem to bother Shirley.

  “One funny thing I remember: I was only thirteen when I made Heidi, but I had my full height then—I was extremely tall for my age—I was five feet six inches and Shirley was very tiny and very petite [she would have been eighteen inches shorter than Marcia Mae]. She had to help me out of my wheelchair . . . my God, if I had really leaned on Shirley, I would have crushed her to the floor. When I saw the film years later as a mature woman, I just seemed to get bigger and bigger as I rose from the chair, and my husband, who was with me, said, ‘My God, it’s a giraffe!’”

  Allan Dwan has recalled, “In Heidi, we had a lot of kids dressed as little Dutch girls doing a folk dance. One of the steps, a fairly intricate one, called for them to place one leg over the other. Many of them became confused and got it all wrong and would even fall down trying to do it. Shirley would bawl them out and say, ‘Look, you do it this way.’ They would argue back and forth. She was stubborn and would say, ‘No, it’s this way,’ and show them again. Well, the dancing master finally got them all together and straightened them out.

  “Since she obviously wanted to take charge . . . I had a bunch of little badges made with SHIRLEY TEMPLE POLICE stamped on them. Every kid who came on the set had to wear a badge and join the force and swear allegiance to Shirley, guaranteeing to obey her. Pretty
soon, we had almost everyone on the set wearing a badge, with Shirley sporting one labeled CHIEF. . . . She was a little big shot and loved it. If I had to leave the set, I’d tell her, ‘Shirley, now you take charge of things,’ and she did. She strutted around giving orders, like ‘I want you to take that set down and put up a castle.’ The grip would pretend to carry out her instructions, satisfying her, going along with the game.”

  Filming was completed on Heidi the first week in July.* Two days later, the Temples and Shirley boarded the Matson liner Malele for Hawaii. Jack Temple was working that summer as a second assistant director at Twentieth, and Sonny seems to have been left at home. The boys were now grown (Jack was twenty-two, Sonny, eighteen), and they appeared to love their little sister. Still, the inequity between their relationship with their parents and Shirley’s could not be disguised. Both George and Gertrude doted on Shirley (George still gave Shirley her evening bath, a ritual between them since she had been a baby and a daily occasion that did not cease until her tenth birthday). Their lives and livelihoods revolved around her, and she had been at the center of the entire household during her growing-up years. A school friend of Jack’s says, “He didn’t like to talk about Shirley. He hated for people to refer to him as ‘Shirley Temple’s brother.’”

  In her family, Marcia Mae Jones was the star, although never to equal Shirley’s celebrity. “I don’t know if I could have done as well as my mother if the tables had been reversed,” she admits, “but she did love me way too much, and it did cause trouble and jealousy with my brothers and my sister. I can understand today how they must have felt. It was always—‘Marcia Mae has to go to work, and Marcia Mae’s making the money.’. . . My mother was an orphan and . . . my father a telegraph operator and worked on the railroad, and she was just in this flat with [all of us] children. [It was financially difficult] and she didn’t know what else to do. In those days, anybody could work in pictures, so she put us all in pictures so that we could have better clothes and have things nicer. . . . I was the only one who was successful, and so all her energy and attention went into me, and the others resented it.”