Link (http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/11/showbiz/hollywood-shirley-temple-death/)

(CNN) -- Shirley Temple Black, who rose to fame as arguably the most popular child star in Hollywood history, died late Monday night, her publicist said.

She was 85.

Temple Black, who also enjoyed a long career as a diplomat, died of natural causes at her Woodside, California, home. She was surrounded by family and caregivers, a statement from Cheryl Kagan said.

She began acting at age 3 and became a massive box-office draw before turning 10, commanding a then-unheard of salary of $50,000 per movie.

Her first film of notice was in 1932 when she played in "War Babies," part of the "Baby Burlesks" series of short films.

For about 18 years, she sang, tap-danced and acted her way into the hearts of millions. Her corkscrew curls were popular with little girls from the 1930s through the 1970s.

Early years

Her star shone brightest as a toddler, and 20th Century Fox cranked out a series of feature films with the adorable, talented little girl. Her hits included "Little Miss Marker" (1934), "Curly Top" (1935) and "The Littlest Rebel" (1935).

At the box office, she beat out the great adult stars of her day, such as Clark Gable and Bing Crosby. Her popularity spawned a large array of merchandizing items, such as dolls, hats and dresses.

She was the top box-office star four years in a row, from 1935 to 1938. Her career was at its peak as the country was suffering the effects of the Great Depression, and her films offered uplifting moments.

But as she got older, the pace of movies slowed, and by 1939, her popularity was fading. She and 20th Century Fox terminated her contract early in 1940, just before she reached her teenage years.

U.S. diplomat

She retired from filmmaking at 22 and married Charles Black, changing her last name from Temple to Temple Black.

But she did not fade from the public eye.

She embarked on a new career as a foreign diplomat: She served in the U.S. delegation to the United Nations from 1969 to 1974 was U.S. ambassador to Ghana from 1974 to 1976, and U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992.

"We salute her for a life of remarkable achievements as an actor, as a diplomat, and most importantly as our beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and adored wife of fifty-five years of the late and much missed Charles Alden Black," a statement said.

Enduring icon

She remained a cultural icon for decades after stepping down from the silver screen.

In 1958, she made a comeback as an entertainer, this time on television, in an hourlong show, "Shirley Temple's Storybook."

She later received two lifetime achievement awards for her performing career.

In 1972, Temple Black successfully battled breast cancer.

Funeral arrangements are pending. A remembrance guest book will be set up online at shirleytemple.com.

Oh, I just loved her. She had to be the absolute cutest little girl, and so much talent at such a young age. She led a full and fruitful life. God bless her soul. We loved you Shirley.

She helped America get through the great depression! Thank-you Shirley!
:rip: Shirley Temple Black

My mother is the same age as Shirley and Shirley was her idol throughout her childhood. She had a Shirley Temple doll which was left behind in an attic when the family home was sold. My grandma tried getting the doll back but the new owners claimed that the doll wasn't there.:rolleyes: So it was lost forever. She also had an old victrola in that attic but they said it wasn't there either! It was a lie of course. That doll would be worth a lot of money today! Anyway, So sad to hear of her passing. She was an adorable child and a classy lady. RIP Shirley:(

So sad. I was a big fan. I have all her movies on video. She really did help America take their minds off their troubles during the depression years. R.I.P. Shirley. :(

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2014/02/11/shirley-temple-appreciation/5388551/

Shirley Temple cheered up Depression era-audiences

The curly-haired girl became the very definition of Hollywood child star.

She wasn't Hollywood's first child star, but Shirley Temple, who died Monday night at age 85, became the one to which all others would forever be compared. A cinematic elixir during the depths of the Depression, from 1935 to 1938 Temple was the nation's top box-office draw.



It all began with her mother, like someone out of Central Casting. Gertrude Temple, a housewife in Santa Monica, Calif., already the mother of two sons ages 9 and 13, couldn't escape the thought that if she just had a daughter, she could make her a movie star. She persuaded her husband, banker George Temple, to roll the dice, and on April 23, 1928, Shirley Temple was born.

From her earliest days in the crib, the infant was taught to sing, sway to music and mimic voices. Gertrude curled the girl's hair in the style of a young Mary Pickford, and enrolled her at age 3 in Ethel Meglin's celebrated dance school (9-year-old Frances Gumm, the future Judy Garland, was a student there). Then she started making the rounds of casting directors.


Rejected for a spot in the popular Our Gang comedies, Shirley was cast in a series of shorts called Baby Burlesks, which were meant to compete with Our Gang, but never did.

Two years of bit parts (and one year shaved off her age) later, her mother secured a contract (as well as one for herself as Shirley's "coach") with 20th Century Fox, then trying to bolster its star roster to compete against MGM and Warner Bros.

Shirley filmed some small roles, then was loaned out to Paramount for her first starring role in Little Miss Marker. But before that movie came out, Fox's Stand Up & Cheer was released, in which the 5 (really 6)-year-old triple threat stole the show.


That year – 1934 – things really took off. Temple filmed nine shorts and three features (Including Bright Eyes, where she sang On the Good Ship Lollipop), appeared on 14 magazine covers and was the subject of dozens of articles. By the end of the year, merchandise in the form of Shirley Temple dolls, books, dishes, clothes, etc. was flying off the shelves. By then she had difficulty going out in public, for fear of being mobbed or kidnapped.
AP Film Five Most


Shirley worked six days a week, and when not filming she had endless photo shoots and costume fittings, greeted famous visitors and fit in her schoolwork. Her mother supervised everything, helped her memorize her lines and sat next to the director on set, calling out, "Sparkle, Shirley, sparkle!" when filming would begin. The studio built Shirley a bungalow with furniture scaled to her size to accommodate her long days.

Gertrude kept tight control over everything, keeping Shirley away from fellow child actors (and most other children, too) and oblivious to much of the world beyond what was right in front of her.

Just a year later, Hollywood expressed its gratitude to her by awarding her the first Juvenile Academy Award in 1935.

Shirley's distinctive curls, pout and precocious manner and the feel-good, tried-and-true plot lines brought moviegoers to the theaters in droves. Her movies followed a formula: Shirley almost always played an orphan whose adorability melts the heart of a crotchety old man. In her films, goodness (in the form of Shirley's character) always triumphs over evil, and in the end all is right with the world.

As biographer Anne Edwards summed it up, "Her success [was] the combination of her own charm, Gertrude's ambition, the world's condition, good exposure and film stories that had accidentally placed the child in a position of being 'Little Miss Fix-It' in the lives of adults."

In 1935's The Little Colonel Lionel Barrymore plays the gruff older man, but the film is best known for the "stair dance" she performed with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. He would co-star in three more of her films: The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Just Around the Corner.

Shirley was among the very highest paid actors in 1937, at $307,000; she made 15 times that in endorsements and licensing that year.
Shirley Temple, the most popular child star in movie history, has died at the age of 85. AMC

And she made her cultural mark in other ways. In the late '30s it's said that a bartender at Chasen's in Beverly Hills mixed ginger ale and grenadine, garnished with a maraschino cherry, and served it to the young actress. Forever after known as the "Shirley Temple," the sweet, pretty-as-pink concoction became the gateway cocktail for generations of kids.

But the life of a child star could also be fraught. For the studio's diminutive gold mine, the loss of a baby tooth was a potential disaster. According to Edwards, a dentist made porcelain copies of Shirley's teeth, and if one fell out during filming, it was replaced with a replica in a plate that Shirley wore in her mouth.

In 1938, her movies started to do less well, and in 1940, despite having made them $30 million in profits from 22 films, Fox cut her contract.

With less-than-attractive offers from other studios, Shirley enrolled in the 7th grade at L.A.'s exclusive Westlake School for Girls. She enjoyed the novelty of mixing with kids her own age, and she was happy to leave her film career behind.

But Gertrude wasn't ready to give up her dream just yet, so Shirley continued to make the odd movie, none of which became hits. As a young teen, she was being eclipsed by Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood and Judy Garland, whom audiences found easy to follow into adulthood.

In what seems clearly a bid for independence, at 17 Shirley married John Agar, a serviceman she barely knew. Four years and one daughter later, they divorced.




Shirley continued to occasionally make movies, but she by then she had banished Gertrude from the set, and her preparation suffered as a result. Gertrude was brought back in for That Hagen Girl in 1947, but the film still flopped.

Her final film was The Story of Seabiscuit in 1949. The former child star would have a second act, though, in politics and diplomacy.

Shirley married Charles Black in 1950 and moved to the Washington, D.C., suburbs, where he was stationed in the Office of Naval Operations and where she became interested in Republican politics. They moved back to Los Angeles in 1953, then to Northern California for good, and had two children.

Shirley became involved in fundraising for a cure for multiple sclerosis, which her brother had.

In 1967 she ran for Congress on a platform to increase U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, cut government waste and environmental conservation, but lost in the Republican primary to anti-war candidate Paul "Pete" McCloskey, who went on to win the general election.

After campaigning for Richard Nixon in 1968, Temple was rewarded with an appointment to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations.

Back home in 1972, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy. She spoke openly about it, then wrote about the experience in McCall's.

In 1974 President Gerald R. Ford appointed her Ambassador to Ghana. "Her ambassadorial style was a unique blend of show-business know-how and serious dedication to her job," wrote Edwards in Shirley Temple: American Princess.

Toward the end of the Ford administration she was appointed the chief of protocol, and under President George H.W. Bush she served as Ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

Temple received numerous awards and honors in her lifetime, including the Kennedy Center Honors in 1998 and the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.

Charles Black died in 2005. Shirley Temple Black is survived by her children, Linda Susan Agar, Charles Alden Black, Jr., and Lori Alden Black.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLLSqpYyPD8

Rest in peace, she was such an adorable child actress and I loved watching her movies.

RIP :(

I'm so sad that we've lost a national treasure, but look at the life this woman led! Childhood stardom; which has sadly become the kiss of death to so many young souls, was just a chapter in her life. This woman broke the huge taboo regarding discussing cancer (ESPECIALLY breast cancer) in the very early seventies and then went on to serve not one, but two terms as a US Ambassador?

They don't make them like that anymore.

Number one at the box office for four years in a row... just phenomenal.

She was adorable, talented and unspoiled. Don't see that combination very often.

It's true that she was rejected when she auditioned for "Our Gang" (aka the Little Rascals). The time line for this happening is somewhat obscured by history, but I believe she was already making those horrible "Baby Burlesks" and since neither she nor her mother liked those BB films, they tried moving on to a better (infinitely) film series. Our Gang had their "stars" but that wasn't really what the series was all about (Mickey Rooney also got rejected for Our Gang).

In 1936, "Our Gang" leading lady Darla Hood had to have her hair dyed blonde for a role in a movie, and while at the beauty shop having that done, she and Shirley met for the first (and only time).

I think my favorite dance number she did was "Military Man (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaT4KLql9zo)" with Jack Haley and Alice Faye. A few of the steps in the routine were a little to fast and intricate for Shirley, but she hung in there.

She also did some nice numbers with Buddy Ebsen ("Captain January") and George Murphy ("Little Miss Broadway"). And of course, Bill Robinson.

Shirley did indeed live a wonderful and accomplished life.

RIP to a truly great American.

RIP.

Just a couple of weeks ago I saw one of her earliest movies, Bright Eyes, on TCM.
TCM will be having a tribute to Shirley Temple on Sunday, March 9.

Also, in the year 1934 two other Shirley's were born.
I know Shirley Jones is named after Shirley Temple. Anyone know if Shirley MacLaine is?

I am sick. What a lovely woman and phenomenal achiever. The biggest child star ever, and then a beloved mother, grandmother, wife and deft political service. And charming and self-effacing to boot. They just don't make them like Shirley anymore. We truly lost a national treasure--on many fronts. I'm glad I have seven of her childhood movies--I think I'll watch one tonight in her memory. And I have The Bachelor And Bobbysoxer--one of the last she made before retiring from films.

Some of the earliest childhood memories I have are watching Shirley Temple movies on tv. :( R.I.P. Shirley.

I really enjoyed her in the movie "Captain January" from 1936.

Comidian Sid Ceasar passed away today, :rip:

Comidian Sid Ceasar passed away today, :rip:
I read about that this afternoon. Although there really should be a separate thread about Sid.

I read about that this afternoon. Although there really should be a separate thread about Sid.

There is...

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=322102

Digging through my Mill Creek "Shovelware" Collection I found I had a Shirley Temple Movie in the lot, I am watching it tonight as my latest "Tribute to a Fallen Star" - Shirley Temple. :rip:

Every Obit I have read which wasn't many didn't list if she had brothers or sisters. I see one poster mentioned she had two older siblings. I wonder how they felt about their sister. Was there jealously?
The I read Ralph Waite passed away.

Very sad about her passing. She was a legend.