by Anne Edwards
Washington society found the near presence of Shirley Temple and her handsome navy husband irresistible.
“Louis Parsons, a vice-president of United States Steel, took the Blacks under his wing socially,” one friend recalls. “They attended and gave small dinner parties where government officials and foreign diplomats discussed the Cold War, Korea, nuclear armaments, the economy, the United Nations and the future of the world.
“For Shirley, this represented a whole new area, although Charles had long been interested in politics and world affairs.” Among the many leading Washington politicians they met were Senator Richard M. Nixon and Secretary of the Navy Dan Kimball. The energetic and colorful “Big Dan” Kimball, grandson of a steamboat captain, towering and with a deep voice in keeping with his large size, became a good friend and golf buddy of the Blacks. As former director of the General Tire and Rubber Company, he had lived many years in Hollywood. A close crony of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, Kimball had a fund of stories, laughed a lot and was never seen without a cigar stuck in his mouth.
“During the two years we were in Washington,” Shirley reflected, “I had meant to get involved only in local politics, but of course in Washington local politics are national and international politics.”
Although they knew many high-placed government officials, the Blacks were not included in the greatest Washington social event of the year, the visit of Princess Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, in November 1951, an ironic oversight, for as a child the princess had doted on Shirley Temple movies.* Shirley was at that time in the early months of her second pregnancy. The decision was made that, like most other navy wives, she should have the child at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. On the morning of April 28, 1952, five days after Shirley’s twenty-fourth birthday, a son, Charles Alden Black, Jr., was born by Caesarian section.
“They had me get up the second day and walk,” Shirley has recalled, “and the stitches broke and I eviscerated. It wasn’t discovered until my bandages were changed eight hours later.” An embolism developed in her bloodstream and entered the pulmonary artery. Shirley’s condition was critical.
Black immediately telephoned Dr. William C. Bradbury in Santa Monica, who had delivered Susan, and he boarded a navy plane and was by Shirley’s side in twelve hours. “I found her frightened,” Bradbury said, “but she was getting the very best of care, and she began to improve at once. I stayed [five days] just to give her confidence.” Daily bulletins were issued in the newspapers. Her progress was slow. On June 13, seven weeks after her son’s birth, Shirley was finally able to leave the hospital and return home.
Domesticity now occupied the center place in her life. Days as well as evenings revolved around the two children. For a few weeks after her grueling hospital experience, she employed a nurse to help with little Charlie. But then she proudly proclaimed that she had no maid or nanny and cooked, cleaned and cared for the children herself. Susan, now nearly five, continued to eat with the family and any guests. “Adults do have some adjustments to make with small fry at dinner,” Shirley wrote in an article about raising her children, “but it is an invaluable moment for our family get-together.” In a most revealing passage, she admitted, “When discipline is necessary, I use the same chin-and-hand-holding method my mother used on me. Very gently I cup her chin in one of my palms and grasp her hands with the other. This obliges her to give me her undivided attention while I explain the cause of my displeasure.”
Her daughter was “intrigued by horses and their care,” and had a natural grace and talent for the piano. She had inherited her mother’s dimples and flashing eyes. But Shirley was strong in her desire that Susan have a normal childhood, which meant no career. Susan had seen only one of Shirley’s pictures, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and, according to her mother, she was “unimpressed.” In October, Shirley entered her in the private Honeywell Foundation School in nearby Sky Meadows. As the holiday season approached, Susan was cast as a fairy in her kindergarten class’s Christmas pantomime play of Cinderella, to be given in the American University’s Glendenen Gym. Shirley herself made her daughter’s crepe-paper costume with tinsel ribbon and gossamer wings.
The morning of the performance, Tuesday, December 16, the Washington Post sent photographers to take pictures of the children in their costumes. Dr. Honeywell, the headmaster of his school, claimed later that Shirley “very charmingly helped pose the children,” that she knew in advance that the photographers were coming and that she went home “apparently perfectly happy,” an assessment that seems correct, since Susan appeared in the play that afternoon with the Blacks in attendance. The next morning in the Washington Post, a photograph of Susan in her costume appeared beside a picture of Shirley at the height of her fame. A short article by drama critic Richard L. Coe accompanied the photographs: “Shirley Temple’s four-year-old daughter made her stage debut yesterday afternoon . . . The young lady is programmed as Miss Susan Black. Susan was born Linda Susan Agar, the daughter of Mrs. Charles Black and her first husband, John Agar. The Honeywell Foundation’s Christmas Pantomimes are an annual event, a reminder of the big ‘pantos’ which are underway by the score throughout the British Isles this time of year. . . . Mrs. Black is restrained about the future of her daughter’s career and observes that no record of the debut should overplay her daughter’s appearance by ignoring other children in the play.” Coe then listed the names of the twelve other children appearing in the pantomime, an invitation-only affair for parents and friends, and ended by noting the performances would be repeated at seven-thirty that Thursday evening, December 19.
Upon reading the coverage, an “incensed” Shirley drove directly to the school and pulled Susan out of her class. Charles then telephoned Honeywell to confirm that Susan had been removed. Later that afternoon, Shirley issued a statement to the United Press that “My only desire is to be retired and left alone,” and that she was “appalled that the Honeywell school would attempt to capitalize on Susan’s presence in a childish class exercise.” She added, “I consider the action of the school authorities a break of faith and am withdrawing Susan immediately from any association with the school.
“It’s a sad commentary that Susan must be parted from her good little friends at Christmas time, but I have not and will not allow anyone to commercialize on my daughter’s presence.”
Both Coe and Honeywell were “staggered” and “baffled” by Shirley’s dramatic action and her statement. “To me,” Coe said, “it was going to be a nice little story. I don’t see anything sensational in it and can’t see why anyone else would either.” Honeywell replied to Shirley’s accusations, “If we were trying to commercialize on Linda Susan’s appearance we would have given her a leading part . . . Can I help it if the newspaper played up the appearance of Mrs. Black’s daughter?”
The entire incident seems to have been blown out of proportion, but it revealed some of Shirley’s fears and emotions, the possibility that the Honeywell establishment might have benefited from the publicity given Susan’s “stage debut” being the least of these. Although there was a minor charge for tickets, the pantomime performance was “invitation only,” and the presence of Shirley Temple’s daughter could not greatly have affected its attendance. In government-conscious Chevy Chase, the enrollment of an offspring of a politically powerful parent was far more prestigious to a school than the daughter of a former film star. Clearly, the newspaper had seen “a human interest story” and was simply catering to a reading audience curious about Shirley Temple’s daughter.
The ever-present fear of kidnapping (she had maintained a bodyguard for Susan at the time of the divorce) was a main reason why the article incensed Shirley, for the Washington Post story pinpointed the child’s identity and her whereabouts at certain hours. Agar was also to be considered. Susan had been registered at school as Black, and that is how Shirley wanted it. Agar was to have no part in the child’s life. Within a few weeks of this time, he would be sentenced (January 21, 1
953) in a new splash of adverse publicity to 120 days in jail for yet another case of drunken driving and violation of probation.
Shirley was not the only one of the Temple family involved in problems dealing with a child from a previous marriage. Sonny had married twice, first to Florence Bruce, a ballet dancer and the mother of his son, Richard Temple. When they divorced two years later, “little Butch,” as the boy was called, was adopted by his maternal grandparents, Virginia and Howard Bruce. His second marriage, to Patricia Ruth Temple, ended in a bizarre divorce action that named another man as the father of the estranged Mrs. Temple’s five-month-old daughter, Kelly Ann. About this time, Sonny began to show the classic symptoms—double vision, unsteady gait and problems in coordination—of multiple sclerosis, a chronic, often progressive disease of the central nervous system.
Along with then-Senator John F. Kennedy, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra, Shirley pitched in to help raise funds for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. This was the first time she had become involved with a national campaign of any sort, and she discovered how good she was at it. Life became more stimulating; and as the 1952 presidential race accelerated, the Blacks worked for the success of the Republican ticket headed by General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his running mate, Senator Richard M. Nixon.
Footnotes
*Selznick wrote, “While I was not personally involved in the obligation [outstanding loans] the sole ownership [of the stock in my company] imposed upon me—according to my lights—I had a personal moral obligation.” Se1znick repaid the loans with interest in full within five years time.
*Among his many public and social associations, James Byers Black (1890–1965) was also chairman of the board of management at the San Francisco Golden State International Exposition, a director of the New York World’s Fair Corporation (1939), an appointee on Harry S Truman’s Advisory Board on the Merchant Marine and to the National Labor-Management Panel (1947); he was a director of the San Francisco Symphony Association and of the San Francisco Ballet Association for twenty-three years. His younger son, James Byers Black, Jr., was a partner in the San Francisco branch of the investment banking firm of Lehman Brothers. Kathryn Black, his only daughter, married Joseph Burk of Gladwyn, Pennsylvania, the crew coach for the University of Pennsylvania.
*Anne Jackson understudied the role, but she was soon replaced in the part by Barbara Baxley. When the show went on tour, the role was played by Joan McCracken, who had scored a great success in Oklahoma!.
*Robert R. Gros was Nancy Majors’s first husband. She was later to marry Phillip Voorheis.
*The Los Angeles Times went so far as to report that Shirley “had bacon and eggs. Black had a cracked crab and two seafood cocktails.”
*The morning papers had announced that Thomas Dewey had won the election. When all the votes were in, Truman emerged the winner.
*Agar’s film credits from 1950 included The Magic Carpet with Lucille Ball, Along the Great Divide with Kirk Douglas (1951), Bait (1954), Frontier Gun (1958), Johnny Reno (1966), The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre with Jason Robards (1967), The Undefeated (1969), Chisum (1970) and Big Jake (1971), all with John Wayne, and the remake (in a small role) of King Kong with Jessica Lange (1976). He also engaged in several business enterprises, from insurance to vending machines, and was well known in television for a series of commercials he did as Mr. Clean, with head shaved and a gold earring in one ear.
*A comparable house in that area in 1988 would cost from $500,000 to $550,000.
† As Shirley had matured, her hair darkened. While she made films, it had been tinted ash blond. She no longer camouflaged the natural color, which was not black but dark brown, still a shock to anyone who recalled the fabled golden-haired child.
*“We’ve just had a visit from a lovely young lady and her personable husband,” wrote President Truman to King George VI. “As one father to another we can be very proud of our daughters. You have the better of me—because you have two!” Also duly recorded was the meeting of Truman’s mother-in-law, the elderly Mrs. Wallace, and the royal couple. Mrs. Wallace reportedly said to Princess Elizabeth, “I’m so glad your father’s been reelected.”
12 THROUGHOUT THE FIRST THREE MONTHS of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency, his major effort was drafting an acceptable plan for an armistice to halt the Korean War. Six weeks before his election, he had visited Southeast Asia and proposed to end the hostilities through the introduction of tactical nuclear weapons, “even if it led to making atomic attacks on military bases inside China.” But by now, Russia and China were as war-weary as the United States, and the president put forth considerably more moderate terms to end the Korean conflict: “a restoration of the status quo ante-bellum and the return of prisoners of war.”
Peace might yet have been delayed many months had Stalin not died in March 1953. Three weeks later, an agreement had been reached on the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners. An armistice was finally signed on July 27 at Panmunjom, and Lieutenant Commander Charles Black, along with thousands of other reserve officers, was relieved of active duty. The Blacks would have to leave Washington, a place Shirley had come to love. “It has such a small-town air about it. Everyone whispers and looks so important,” she confessed, adding later, “I was pregnant most of the time, or so it seemed. When I look at pictures of myself at Embassy parties, I get bigger and bigger and bigger.”
Black was offered a position as business manager at ABC-TV Los Angeles, and the family returned to California as soon as was feasible. With the two children, and a car packed with those things they considered too valuable to send by truck, they set off on the long drive cross-country, staying at small hotels and eating picnic lunches on the roadside.
Shirley’s parents had recently sold the large house on Rockingham Avenue and had bought from their daughter the converted playhouse, which they now occupied.* The Blacks, shortly after their arrival in Los Angeles, moved into a mountaintop house at 2200 Bowmont Drive overlooking Beverly Hills, larger than the Chevy Chase house and with just the right combination of privacy and space. Shirley set about decorating it herself. The children, the house, her work on behalf of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and a course she was taking in interior decoration kept her well occupied. Sorely missed, though, were her Washington activities and political involvement.
Life in Los Angeles was unsettling. Agar, out of prison and now happily remarried, wanted to see his daughter. The court had given him visitation rights, but Shirley did not welcome his presence in either her own or Susan’s life.
“On [January 30] Linda Susan’s sixth birthday,” Agar says, “I made an appointment to take her a gift. When I arrived, Shirley met me at the door and said Linda Susan was asleep. I could hear a little girl and a man giggling in the background. I called that night to wish Linda Susan a happy birthday. When she came to the phone, she said, ‘Hi, Agar! I am sorry I didn’t see you, but I was completely exhausted after my birthday party.’ Quite a vocabulary for a six-year-old.” Shirley, he implies, was bitter and vindictive about their failed marriage and his troubles, although his personal problems had not altered the regularity of his support payments.
“When Shirley divorced me,” he adds, “my half of the community property went into a trust for Linda Susan. As a matter of fact, the only things I took when I was asked to leave by Shirley’s attorney were my personal belongings. Wedding gifts from my family and friends were all left behind. After we both remarried, I thought about the sterling-silver flatware my mother had given us. I called Shirley and asked if I could have it, since the initial A was on the silver and Shirley’s last initial was now B. Shirley said no, that she had changed the initial.”
The previous September, she had learned she was pregnant again. Lori Alden Black was born on April 9, 1954, at Santa Monica Hospital, by Caesarean section. Dr. Bradbury was in attendance. This time, Shirley had a normal recuperation. But neither she nor Charles was satisfied with life in Los Angeles. Agar’s nearness r
emained disconcerting. Susan considered Black her father, and that was how Shirley wanted it to be.* It seemed providential therefore that Charles preferred the more stable environs of San Francisco to Los Angeles.
California has always been a polarized state, divided into North and South almost as the nation was once. Historically Republican, northern California held more to conservative politics and Old World values. Black was hired as head of business administration for the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California, a short distance from San Francisco. Within months after Lori’s birth, the Blacks packed up again, this time heading to Atherton, “an aggressively upwardly mobile, upper middle-class area” twenty-eight miles south of San Francisco, which boasted some palatial estates along with newer homes on one-acre subdivisions. The house the Blacks purchased for fifty thousand dollars was one of the latter and still under construction. This gave Shirley free rein on the decoration, and since her family was domiciled in small quarters at a local inn while the work was being undertaken, she proceeded at a whirlwind pace.
The result of her marathon project was a handsome Japanese-modern (known as “Pacific style” for a number of years after the war) redwood ranch house with furnishings of Orientaldesign. The house spread out in T-formation from a center hall floored in sand-colored tile. An enormous tropical planter stood on either side of the ceiling-high glass pane beside the front door. A sliding glass wall in the living room looked out on a beautiful little Japanese garden, complete with stream and small bridge. A monochromatic decorative plan was followed: floors, carpets, walls, the stone fireplace and ceilings were beige; natural raw silks were used for the upholstered pieces, with jewel-toned pillows added for color. A brilliant five-foot silk canvas depicting Oriental mythology hung over the fireplace. Framed vivid antique obies (pieces of Polynesian fabric) decorated the other walls. The ships’ lanterns Shirley had brought with her from Washington had been converted into two massive lamps that stood on large, square off-white marble tables. Often, in the evenings, Shirley and the children would don Japanese robes in keeping with the general decor. “The children love dressing-up, just as I loved my costumes when I was a little girl,” Shirley commented.
