by Anne Edwards
Wayne turned to Agar and said, “Well, you can relax now, he’s found another whipping boy.”
Agar had found something himself—the burly Wayne, a good buddy and hearty drinking companion. His ill-treatment at the hands of Ford had also brought him the sympathy and instant friendship of the men in the company. A Ford film set always had a strong clubby, masculine atmosphere to it. For Agar, it took him back to his happier days in the Air Corps. He fit in well. Shirley, on the other hand, was pretty much excluded from most location activities.
“Every night the company gathered outside the dining room at Goulding’s,” Dan Ford wrote, “and waited for [Ford] to enter. Then the dinner bell was rung and everyone obediently filed in. After dinner [Ford] and a select group of actors and stunt men adjourned to his room, where a green felt cover was spread over the table and they had their game of pitch.”
Fort Apache was “a vigorous, sweeping Western adventure drama done with the eye for shocking dramatic effect and spectacular action sequences.” Some reviewers found the film more entertainment than art. It was a resounding commercial success, returning its $2.8 million final cost in six months, and eventually grossing double that amount. The personal reviews went to the veteran male actors—Fonda, Wayne, McLaglen and Bond. The Agars’ romantic qualities were noted in the Los Angeles Times, which stated that “Shirley Temple and John Agar do not find much scope for their talents here,” but predicted “fans will want to witness this pairing which will eventually become a permanent screen team.” But their lack of acting skill was not glossed over by The New Yorker, whose critic wrote, “In a picture like Fort Apache, which consists mostly of gallops up and down a remarkably good-looking mesa, lovemaking, unless conducted at an implausibly brisk clip, seems boring. . . . The romantic doings in the piece feature the acting—and I’m using the word loosely—of Shirley Temple and John Agar.”
Shortly before dawn on January 29, 1948, in Santa Monica Hospital, where Gertrude had given birth to Shirley not quite twenty years before, Linda Susan Agar was born.* Two weeks earlier, Jack and Mimsy Temple had become parents of their second son. The birth of Linda Susan should have elated George and Gertrude, but Shirley’s marital problems were of great concern.
The last five months of Shirley’s pregnancy had been fraught with situations that her naiveté and youth made even more stressful. Still under contract to Selznick, Agar continued his acting and singing lessons. His appearance in Fort Apache had not generated much industry excitement, and no film offers came his way. His ego was at low ebb, and Shirley made it clear that perhaps he had chosen the wrong profession. Within a short time, “[John] began not coming home for dinner,” she later confessed. “First he would start coming home around 8 o’clock. After a couple of weeks, it became 10 o’clock. . . . [Then] . . . he stayed out nights until 2, 3, even 6 A.M. and . . . so intoxicated that he fell downstairs.”
Since their return from Monument Valley five months earlier, John had been drinking steadily. His association with John Wayne on Fort Apache had encouraged his growing reliance on alcohol. Wayne had taken him under his protection, and soon the Duke, as Wayne was called, and John were “drinking buddies.” Agar says defensively, “I didn’t drink any more and probably a lot less than John Wayne, Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Bing Crosby and others.” Quite likely, that was true. All these men were prodigious drinkers. Tracy’s, Gable’s and even Wayne’s drunken escapades were legend in the industry. These men, however, were major film stars who made millions of dollars for their studios. Any one of their names insured the success of a picture. They had publicity departments to cover up their drinking forays, and payoffs to keep away unfavorable press were common. Had Shirley still been big box office, either Selznick or RKO might have covered up for Agar to protect her name. But Agar was not a star, and was fair game to the press’s vociferous appetite.
With his drinking, the situation on Rockingham Road became even more difficult, as Gertrude once again took charge of her daughter. Gertrude announced the selection of her granddaughter’s name to the reporters waiting at Santa Monica Hospital the night Linda Susan was born, and then she added cautiously that, of course, “Shirley and John will have to talk that over a little first, I guess.”
John had been by Shirley’s side when the baby was born, and for the next few months managed to curb his appetite for liquor and seemed especially happy to be a father; it was quite evident that Shirley enjoyed motherhood.
By that summer, a year had passed since either one of them had worked. RKO had bought an original story by Lesser Samuels and Christopher Isherwood,* a variation of the old story of the teenager whose individuality brings trouble to her conservative family. Robert Young had been cast as the minister father. Shirley was offered the role of his daughter, and Agar the part as a young man she is constantly getting into trouble. Neither one wanted to work together. Shirley was resentful that she had to work at all. She could have refused the film loan-out; but because that would have meant Selznick had acquitted himself of his contractual obligation for one film, her decision was to accept the assignment. There was also one other, strong consideration—Agar’s role in the film was better than his part in Fort Apache, and it seemed logical that his career might benefit. She talked about retiring soon from the screen altogether and having two more children.
The picture, titled Adventure in Baltimore, proved to be a pleasant working experience. She enjoyed being reunited with Robert Young (who had last played her adopted father thirteen years earlier in Stowaway) and with Richard Wallace (who had directed her in the successful Kiss and Tell). Robert Young found her “as confident and professional as she had been as a child.” A member of the crew who had also worked with her on Kiss and Tell adds that “Young and Shirley had a great rapport, and Dick [Wallace] played to it. Also, she was treated like a princess by both these men. I think she felt very comfortable. Agar worked like a son-of-a-gun. Always asking people for opinions of the way he played a scene. I thought of the two, he had the better chance at the time and probably needed to get away from working with her. He had a leading-man quality about him. Maybe he was a bit too good-looking, but he had the kind of square-jawed William Holden good looks front face and a really striking profile. He was a better light-comedy personality than a dramatic actor. But I remember thinking then that with the right pictures he could be a star. He liked the camera, smiled easily, wasn’t stiff—and the camera liked him. Fact is, I thought he seemed more comfortable [on] than off-camera.”
No sooner had photography ended on Adventure in Baltimore (which would be received coolly by critics and moviegoers) than the Agars were each offered separate film assignments. Agar was re-teamed with Ford and Wayne in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and returned to location at Monument Valley. Shirley was to make Mr. Belvedere Goes to College, with Clifton Webb in the lead as a character that he had made famous in Sitting Pretty. Shirley was to find Mr. Belvedere Goes to College a traumatic experience: The picture was to be made at Twentieth Century-Fox.
Footnotes
*Temple’s bridesmaids were: Joyce Agar, Katharine Ferguson, Phoebe Hearst, Mary Lou Islieb, Betty Jean Lail, Constance Webb and Nancy Majors. The ushers were James Agar, Thomas Gallagher, Ernest Greff, John Hereford, John McNeill, George Temple, Jr., and Sergeant Frank Walters. Jack Temple was Agar’s best man, and his wife, Miriam Temple, matron of honor. George Temple gave his daughter away in marriage.
*This child, a girl born prematurely, died shortly after birth, while Reagan was still filming That Hagen Girl.
†Two years later, in a dispute over a role in Ghost Mountain he wanted that Warner gave instead to Errol Flynn, Reagan telegraphed Warner: [HOW COULD YOU DO THIS] WHEN I’VE ALWAYS BEEN GOOD AND DONE EVERYTHING YOU'VE ASKED—EVEN THAT HAGEN GIRL.
*The attending physician was Dr. William C. Bradbury.
*Isherwood was the author of a series of stories that were the basis for the John Van Druten play I Am a Camera, which
was itself later the basis for the Broadway musical and film Cabaret.
10 WHILE SHIRLEY and Agar were waging their own private war, the people of the United States “were engaged in a conscious attempt to become the greatest nation in history.” The ambition was breathtaking “—to outshine Greece in its glory, Rome in its grandeur, France in its various phases of greatness, and Britain at the height of its power.” Americans at Christmastime, 1949, dreamed of being “the richest, the most powerful, and, were it possible, the most accomplished people in history.” And they attempted to take the lead in almost every important human endeavor. This pursuit of the American dream had three major objectives—“liberty in a world of tyrannies, peace in a world tom by wars, abundance in a world of scarcity.” In the wake of the nuclear age, with atom-bomb drills at schools and bomb shelters an accepted fact of life, films dealt with man’s—and woman’s—need to secure their own, and their nation’s, loftiest dreams, and with his will to destroy any obstacles in the way of that goal.
This was the year of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, of Pinky, Champion, All the King’s Men, Adam’s Rib, Home of the Brave, The Great Gatsby, On the Town, The Heiress and a great number of excellent English films made in 1948 and released in the United States the following year—Olivier’s Hamlet and Carol Reed’s The Fallen Idol among them. All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard, The Men, The Third Man and The Asphalt Jungle were all in some phase of production. Independent producers were gaining footholds. The big studios were beginning to lose their power, and television had reared its channeled head. The Depression era, which had given rise and royal trappings to little Shirley Temple, was ancient history.
In this atmosphere of aspirational fallout, Fox’s Mr. Belvedere Goes to College was made and released.
Zanuck still “ruled supreme” at Twentieth Century-Fox. Of the films made there in the late forties, Zanuck said, “Every creative decision was either authorized, or okayed, or created by me. Every script! There was no individual, no executive between me and the back lot. I was The Executive. I decided whether we made something or didn’t make it.” Which indicates he must ultimately have been responsible for the decision to borrow Shirley from Selznick for Mr. Belvedere Goes to College. Shirley’s return to the studio where she had gained worldwide acclaim was marked by a “Welcome Home” party attended by many actors and crew members with whom she had worked. Zanuck breezed in and departed a few minutes later after a photo had been taken of him and Shirley.
She had asked if she could have the use of her old bungalow. “The studio couldn’t oblige. Only a year before . . . a dentist moved in,” publicity head Harry Brand recalled. “But Shirley managed to get some use out of the place, anyway. She visited the bungalow and had a wisdom tooth extracted.”
She was to play a young war widow with a three-year-old son who returns to college. Once she was signed, Samuel Engel, the producer, began to worry that she looked too immature for the role. Speech lessons to lower the pitch of her voice were begun, and her hair was cut in a short bob.
The first scene was shot on the same stage where sixteen years earlier she had made her Fox debut in Stand Up and Cheer, and Mary Lou Islieb Hurford (who had recently married) had been signed as her stand-in for the new picture. Some exterior scenes were shot on the University of Nevada campus.* But for most of the picture, Shirley was at her old lot, with Clifton Webb receiving the star treatment. The script had been written around him, and directed toward his earlier, brilliant interpretation of Mr. Belvedere, the middle-aged genius who knew all about everything in the wildly successful Sitting Pretty.
“Our main objective,” explained producer Engel, “is to make the two Belvedere stories so completely different, except for the amusing idiosyncracies of the character, that exhibitors could show both films on a double bill without lessening the entertainment value of either.” Clearly, from the outset, this was to be Clifton Webb’s movie.
Film comedy sequels are seldom as good as their originals, and Mr. Belvedere Goes to College was no exception. The screenplay by Richard Sale, Mary Loos and Mary McCall, Jr., was bright, “fast-paced; the lines witty, the situations amusing.” The plot, which was too obviously contrived, presented the problem. “Our hero, somewhat overage for a freshman, finds it necessary, for some complicated plot reason, to get his college degree—a slight matter he had neglected to attend to in his youth,” one reviewer began his synopsis of the story. “In characteristic fashion, he sets about acquiring his B.A. in one year instead of four. Whereas this might be a formidable challenge to most people, Mr. B. takes it in stride—with enough time and energy left over to straighten out the college president and board of trustees on the proper method of running a college, the local editor on how to gather news, and the sorority mentors on how to teach their bobby-soxers manners, music, proper English and civilized cooking. Along the way, Mr. B. also gets into a number of scrapes, lands in jail, and patches up a romance between young war widow Shirley Temple and her undergraduate admirer Tom Drake.”
While Shirley was caught up in the emotional situation caused by her altered status at Fox, Agar was involved in the exciting day-to-day “combat” and creativity of working on a John Ford film. This time, Ford treated him with the same mixed brand of camaraderie and tough-mindedness he used on Wayne. The picture was made at breakneck speed—in thirty-one days—and was brought in at half a million dollars under budget. All the elements seemed to mesh. The picture was filmically magnificent,* and Wayne’s portrayal of the cantankerous but kindly Nathan Brittles established him as one of Hollywood’s top mature leading men. He would, in fact, play a variation of this character in almost every picture over the next twenty-some years. In this film, Agar was Wayne’s young sidekick (and adjutant) and received co-starring credit. He handled himself well, he and Wayne had some moving moments together and his romantic scenes with Joanne Dru were most believable. Wayne liked to work with a younger man as he had with Montgomery Clift in Red River. But he never could have the same rapport with the sensitive and moody Clift that he could with Agar. Their work on a second film had further cemented their friendship. Like Ford, Wayne was most comfortable acting with performers he knew well.
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon was released about the same time as Mr. Belvedere Goes to College. It proved to be an immediate box-office success, and though not generally well received by the critics of its day, became one of the most profitable movies that year and later was revered by film buffs as one of Ford’s and Wayne’s best and most-remembered films. Its release and popularity created a new tension in the Agar marriage. Agar was now regarded as a movie star. He had his own fan club and was recognized and besieged for autographs wherever he went. And in social situations, women became more aggressive. When he and Shirley went out, he drew the stares, and often warm overtures, of women. Suddenly, the prince consort had become the power figure, and the royal princess fell back into the shadow. Agar did not handle the new situation between them well, and neither did Shirley.
He sometimes did not return home until dawn, and then he was often inebriated. According to his friends, Shirley was to blame for his distraction; according to hers, Agar provoked her hostility. But seldom is there only one injured party when marital differences occur. Agar did drink heavily; he had philandered; and his marriage to Shirley had been responsible for his career. On her part, Shirley had wanted things her way. Always a despot with her childhood and teenage friends, she had adopted the same attitude to her marriage. Childhood friends formerly had to swim or not swim when she wanted, come to her house, not she go to theirs—and on specified days—and play the games she chose. And so it was with Agar, who was expected to live within sight of Gertrude and adhere to Shirley’s rigid rules of demeanor, one of them being never to be seen drinking or smoking in public.
Both did a lot of unpleasant backbiting. Though Agar chose never to discuss it publicly, Shirley had reverted to her teenage flirtatious ways as soon as he began to flaunt his liaisons. At this t
ime, she was also, according to one close acquaintance, “a little predatory where other girls’ men were concerned,” which was said in reference to a flirtation she was rumored to have had with actress Kathryn Grayson’s husband, Johnny Johnston.
Her contract with Selznick reached an unpleasant impasse. He obviously had no intention of casting her in one of his films, and the pictures she was offered were low-budget potboilers. Her career was on a down curve. She had done very little to change her image or to improve her acting technique. She was, in fact, exploiting her own past celebrity, appearing in lackluster roles that normally would have been played by a lesser-known and less expensive actress. Producers had felt that her name would add to the budget and box office of the pictures in which she had been recently cast. By the spring of 1949, even that inducement had begun to pale. “Shirley Temple” now became a pawn in the hands of inexperienced promoters.
Colin Miller, a young man with great ambition but without any previous film-production experience (he had been a newspaper reporter and an investor in Enterprise Films, a company that had swiftly gone under), applied the old three-way shell game to make a picture deal. Starting with an idea (in this case, to do a sequel to the successful Kiss and Tell), you approached a director (Richard Wallace, who had been at the helm of the original movie) and told him you could put together almost the original package; director, star (Shirley Temple) and release (United Artists). The director then agreed that if that was so, he was in, but, of course, for a major percentage. The star was next and was informed the director was already part of the package. The star would usually hedge and agree to make the picture (also for a sizable percentage, as well as salary) if a major release could be obtained. With star and director “under the shells,” the independent met with the distributors (United Artists), telling them he had the other members of the package secured.
