Shirley Temple Survived Being the Biggest Child Star of All Time With Wit and Grace
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be child stars. Not, that is, unless you wish for them an adult life—presuming they live so long—stamped by professional failure, revolving door rehab, and psychiatric counseling with no expiration date.
There are few exceptions to the downward spiraling after the age of 12, but the biggest would have to be Shirley Temple Black, who died Monday at the age of 85. (If, like me, you did a double take when you saw her age—only 85?—it took a moment of mental math to figure out that her movie career began when she was barely able to walk and ended, more or less, before she started high school.)
Shirley Temple was the supreme child star. From 1935 to 1939, she was not just the most popular child star in Hollywood but the most popular star in Hollywood, period. Trainloads of ink have been spilled explaining that phenomenon, but the most frequent answer is probably the one she liked to go with: she made people in the Depression forget their troubles. “People in the Depression wanted something to cheer them up, and they fell in love with a dog, Rin Tin Tin, and a little girl,” she said.
How she did this is a more interesting question. She was adorable, of course, and she could tap dance. But unlike, say, Judy Garland, she wasn’t a great singer, and she wasn’t an especially great actress, at least not if realism is the yardstick—if you want to see kids being kids in the movies, go watch The Little Rascals. Have you ever in your life met a child as cheerful, spookily intelligent, unselfish, or indomitable as little Shirley? But that was her character, and she played it perfectly. To ask for realism in the bargain would be like asking Superman to leap tall buildings in a single bound and obey the laws of physics at the same time.
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