Shirley Temple Black was an American actress, singer, dancer, businesswoman, and diplomat. She was Hollywood’s number one box-office draw as a child actress from 1934 to 1938. As an adult, she was named United States ambassador to Ghana and to Czechoslovakia. She is 18th on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest female American screen legends of classic Hollywood cinema.
About Shirley Temple in brief
Shirley Temple Black was an American actress, singer, dancer, businesswoman, and diplomat. She was Hollywood’s number one box-office draw as a child actress from 1934 to 1938. As an adult, she was named United States ambassador to Ghana and to Czechoslovakia, and also served as Chief of Protocol of the United States. She is 18th on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest female American screen legends of classic Hollywood cinema. Temple was the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Kennedy Center Honors and a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. She appeared in 29 films from the ages of 3 to 10 but in only 14 films from ages of 14 to 21. She retired from film in 1950 at the age of 22. In 1958, Temple returned to show business with a two-season television anthology series of fairy tale adaptations. She made guest appearances on television shows in the early 1960s and filmed a sitcom pilot that was never released. She sat on the boards of corporations and organizations including The Walt Disney Company, Del Monte Foods, and the National Wildlife Federation. She died of a heart attack on December 11, 2011. She had been diagnosed with cancer of the liver and kidney since the early 1980s. She also suffered from breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and stomach cancer. Her funeral was held on December 14, 2011, at the UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica in Santa Monica, California, the third child of homemaker Gertrude Temple and bank employee George Temple.
Her mother encouraged Shirley to develop her singing, dancing, and acting talents, and in September 1931 enrolled her in Meglin’s Dance School in Los Angeles. In 1932, Temple was spotted by Charles Lamont, who was a casting director for Educational Pictures. Lamont took a liking to Temple, and invited her to audition; he signed her to a contract in 1932. Temple arrived on the screen for the movie Stand Up and Cheer Up and was signed to a USD 150-per-week contract that was guaranteed for two weeks by Fox Film Corporation. The role was a breakthrough for Temple; she was a breakout star of this series, and Educational promoted her to 20-minute comedies. She played Mary Lou Rogers, the baby sister in a contemporary suburban family. To underwrite production costs at Educational Pictures, she and her child co-stars modeled for breakfast cereals and other products. The juvenile cast delivered their lines as best they could, with the younger players reciting phonetically. The Runt Page was a pastiche of The Front Page. Glad Rags to Riches was a parody of the Mae West feature She Done Him Wrong, with Shirley as a saloon singer. Kid ‘n’ Africa had Shirley imperiled in the jungle. The Most Most of the Most of James Dunn was a song-and-dance number she performed with James Dunn. Her films were inexpensively made at 200,000 or USD 300,000 apiece.
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