Shirley Temple Debuts: America's Littlest Star Is Born

Shirley Temple appeared in Stand Up and Cheer! in 1934 and became, at age six, the most bankable movie star in America during the worst economic crisis in the nation's history. Fox Film Corporation signed her to a contract after the film's April release, and within months she was saving the studio from bankruptcy. Her combination of dimpled charm, tap-dancing skill, and preternatural performing ability made her the top box-office attraction in the country from 1935 through 1938, ahead of Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, and every other adult star in Hollywood. Temple's appeal during the Depression was no accident of entertainment. President Roosevelt reportedly said that "as long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right," though the attribution is uncertain. Her films, including Bright Eyes, Curly Top, and The Little Princess, followed a consistent formula: an adorable orphan or semi-orphan whose infectious optimism softened hard hearts and solved adult problems through charm alone. Depression-era audiences, many of them unemployed and desperate, found temporary relief in stories where a child's goodness could fix a broken world. Her mother Gertrude managed her career with a stage parent's intensity, setting her hair in exactly 56 pin curls each night and coaching her performances. Fox paid Temple $1,250 per week, a fortune in Depression America, though her parents spent much of her earnings. The studio earned millions from Temple merchandise, including dolls, clothing, and a non-alcoholic cocktail that still bears her name. By age ten, she had appeared in more than twenty feature films. Temple's star power evaporated with adolescence. By twelve, her box-office appeal had faded, and she retired from acting in 1950 at age 22. Her second career proved more enduring than her first. As Shirley Temple Black, she served as U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia, and as the first female Chief of Protocol of the United States. She was one of the few child stars who survived Hollywood with her sanity and dignity intact, dying in 2014 at age 85, seven decades after a six-year-old had made a broken country smile.