Ruth Leon recommends… Shirley Temple’s innocent Lollypop
Ruth Leon recommendsShirley Temple’s Lollypop
It’s a decade since the death on February 10, 2014, of American actress, singer and diplomat, Shirley Temple.
Hollywood’s leading child star in the 1930s, she was 6 years old when she sang her best known song in the movie Bright Eyes in 1934. The idea of whether a 6 year old should have been working this hard or carry a whole movie on her name didn’t occur to ‘30s studio execs or audiences, nor apparently that there’s something unsavoury about singing this song when surrounded and manhandled by a group of men.
I prefer this second clip, which truly shows her talent, with the great Bill Bojangles Robinson from The Littlest Rebel. Of course the racism involved in this one doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone either.
Shirley Temple Black was a highly intelligent woman who outlived her movie past and grew up to be a distinguished diplomat, serving as United States ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia, and Chief of Protocol of the United States.
She was quite an accomplished individual. She was fortunate to have had parents that were supportive of her, unlike those of the silent-era child star Jackie Coogan who stole the equivalent of $50 million from him.
From Wikipedia: “President Franklin D. Roosevelt praised her performances, saying, “It is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles.””
I recently read her memoir, “Child Star”. It was the best written, most articulate autobiography I have read so far, at least of a public performer.