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Shirley Temple knew she was a rarity: a child megastar who later lived a happy, fulfilled adult life. As she told her biographer Anne Edwards—author of the highly entertaining Shirley Temple: American Princess—“I think people are surprised I did not become ‘Baby Jane.’”
Throughout her long life (1928-2014), Temple would boast many accomplishments. She was America’s top box office draw in the 1930s, the youngest person ever to receive an Oscar (albeit a noncompetitive one), a mother of three, a delegate to the United Nations, a candidate for California’s 11th Congressional District, an environmental activist, the first female chief of protocol of the U.S. (an officer overseeing the diplomatic corps), and a two-time ambassador. She was also, in the words of one observer quoted by Edwards, “smart as paint, tough-minded, and highly professional, with the devilish charm of a cunning Lucifer-child asking to stay up till nine.”
Shirley’s mother, Gertrude—grand, imposing, and business savvy—decided to capitalize on her daughter’s perfect pitch and dancing ability when she was still a toddler. “I was allowed to be a baby for about two years,” Temple recalled, per Edwards. “So I had a couple of years as a lazy baby. I thought every child worked, because I was born into it.”
Working right alongside her was Gertrude, who served as her acting coach and fierce protector. “When Shirley was in bed, Gertrude would read any lines she had to say the next day. Shirley would repeat them ‘word for word five or six times,’” Edwards writes. “She might say, ‘You’re supposed to feel very happy when you say this line, Presh’…or ‘You’re supposed to be eating a thick sandwich while you’re saying these lines,’ and Shirley would practice this bit of action.”
Her mother was also right off camera as Temple shot her scenes, calling out, “sparkle, Shirley, sparkle,” before the camera rolled. Gertrude and her husband, George, a banker, made sure Shirley was cloistered from other child actors. She also ensured that any young thespians who might upstage her daughter had their parts substantially cut. These imperious actions won her few friends in Hollywood. But actor Slim Summerville was one of the few who dared to openly slight Gertrude, when he quipped, “so you’re the goose that laid the golden egg.”
With a tested IQ of 155, Temple was a remarkably quick learner. “Tap dancer Bill Robinson…taught her a soft-shoe number, a waltz clog, and three tap routines. She learned them without looking at him, by listening to his feet,” Time magazine marveled in a 1936 cover story. This precociousness meant that with the exception of Gertrude, Shirley was virtually unafraid of adults (she called studio executive Darryl Zanuck “Uncle Pipsqueak”) and happy to correct them. Frequent costar Robert Young recalled to Edwards one incident on the set of the 1934 film Carolina, when Temple dared cue the legendary actor Lionel Barrymore:
Perfection was demanded of her fellow child actors well. On the set of Heidi (1937), Temple spent so much time reteaching and correcting the other children that director Allan Dwan gave her a badge labeled “CHIEF.”
“I had a bunch of little badges made with ‘SHIRLEY TEMPLE POLICE’ stamped on them. Every kid who came on the set had to wear a badge and join the force and swear allegiance to Shirley,” Dwan told Edwards. “If I had to leave the set, I’d tell her, ‘Shirley, now you take charge of things,’ and she did. She strutted around giving orders, like ‘I want you to take that set down and put up a castle.’ The grip would pretend to carry out her instructions, satisfying her, going along with the game.”
Adults placed a heavy load on Temple’s tiny shoulders. Credited with helping save Fox from bankruptcy during the Depression, her box office appeal was also the catalyst for its merger with Twentieth Century Pictures in 1935. “They didn’t buy the Fox studio,” Fox executive Winfield Sheehan said. “They bought Shirley Temple.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt even recognized her importance to America’s morale, stating, “As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right.”
Although she worked six days a week to crank out the content Americans so desperately needed, Temple still found time to be a (somewhat) normal kid. Writer Diana Serra Cary, a former child star known as Baby Peggy, recalled meeting Temple in her studio bungalow. “There was a daybed with a white phone beside it,” Cary recalled. “Pretending she was her mother (which I am sure fooled no one!) she ordered ice cream sent in from the Chez Paris,” the studio commissary.
Temple got into even more mischief when her family was invited to a cookout with the president and first lady at their Hyde Park home. According to Edwards, as staunch Republicans, her parents were initially wary of accepting the Democrats’ invitation. They eventually gave in and were won over by the charming Roosevelts, with Temple perhaps getting a bit too comfortable.
“Mrs. Roosevelt was bending over an outdoor grill cooking some hamburgers for us,” Temple remembered, according to Edwards. “I was in my little dress with the puffed sleeves and white shoes and had this very feminine lace purse—which contained the slingshot I always carried with me. When I saw Mrs. Roosevelt bending over, I couldn’t resist. I hit her with a pebble from my slingshot. She jumped quite smartly, and the Secret Service men assigned to her were extremely upset for a while. But no one saw me do it except my mother, and she didn’t blow the whistle on me until we got back to the hotel. Then she let me have it in the same area I’d attacked the first lady.”
Despite her assault of the first lady, Temple would later claim Eleanor as one of her childhood heroes: “I think she influenced me, got me interested in human rights and human dignity for all people.”
After a short marriage at the age of 17 to actor John Agar, Temple wed San Francisco blue blood Charles Alden Black in 1950. At a press conference to announce the marriage, she declared that after 19 years, she was quitting movies. “That’s long enough. My only contract is to Mr. Black,” Temple quipped, according to Edwards. She then gave her husband a hug, and the press a knowing wink. “And it’s exclusive.”
The couple would forge an enormously successful marriage, which lasted until Black’s death in 2005. “Her whole life has been spent in various types of public service, either by entertaining people or by serving them. I think she’s some sort of deity…and I support her in everything she does,” Black said, per Edwards. He was especially proud of Temple’s entry into politics in the 1960s, leading wags to dub him “the consort.”
But Temple would soon find the world of politics and diplomacy just as tough as the movie business. Temple’s toughest critic would be legendary Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. According to Edwards, after Gerald Ford named Temple ambassador to Ghana in 1974, Kissinger quipped he had always wanted to “get movie stars into a position where they had to come when I called them, and now that I’ve solved the problem, I’m married.”
Temple only offered a wry smile. She claimed her childhood had more than prepared her for a life in diplomacy. “On a publicity tour, a mayor had accidentally slammed a car door on three of her fingers,” Edwards writes. “The door was immediately opened, and Gertrude whispered, ‘Don’t cry!’ … It was an early [diplomatic] lesson.”
Her tenure as ambassador to Ghana would be cut short due to a snafu with Kissinger. In 1976, she insisted he come to Accra, the capital of Ghana, while on an African tour. But at the last minute, the Ghanaians insisted a mere secretary of state could not meet with their ruler, Ignatius Acheampong. Kissinger refused to meet with a government lackey, and the Ghanaians, in a huff, rescinded their invitation. Shortly after, Temple was summoned to meet an ill-tempered Kissinger in Liberia. She was soon recalled from Ghana and given the job as chief of protocol in D.C. to soften the blow.
But Temple was still subject to Kissinger’s control at her new job. “I don’t think she liked working under Henry,” one staffer told Edwards. “She liked people to be straightforward with her and she would reply in that same manner.” Although Temple would eventually win Kissinger’s praise—she was, according to him, “very intelligent, very tough-minded, very disciplined”—it’s doubtful she much cared.
“I’m durable,” Temple told a reporter when discussing Kissinger’s toughness. “I don’t damage easily.”
In 1989, President George Bush named Temple ambassador to Czechoslovakia. It was a particularly sensitive post to a Communist country just as Communism was crumbling all over Eastern Europe.
Temple was well suited to it. She had been to Czechoslovakia in August of 1968 to meet with the country’s reforming leader, Alexander Dubček, on behalf of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies, of which she was cofounder. The country was in the midst of the Prague Spring, with citizens protesting for freedom from the strict repression of the USSR.
Asleep in her hotel room in Prague, Temple was “was soon awakened by a hammering at her door,” Edwards writes. “Outside, there was ‘the shriek of a low-flying jet plane…distant shouts in the street and a rattle of gunfire.’ A member of the hotel staff had come to warn her of the invasion. ‘Tanks and troops are entering Prague!’ he shouted.”
The Russians had arrived to crush the uprisings. Temple was trapped in the hotel. “From my high perch—and careful not to be seen—I managed to look out through a slit in the railing. A woman on the street was unmercifully gunned down as she ran for shelter—an image I have never rid myself of,” she recalled, per Edwards.
Temple and other Americans were eventually rescued by a driver from the American embassy. They joined a convoy of dozens of cars fleeing to the safety of the West German border. “Shirley returned home the next morning…to San Francisco, where her family and nearly a hundred newsmen met her,” Edwards writes. “Then she…held up a record. ‘It’s the Czech national anthem,’ she said. ‘They are not playing it anymore.’”
Twenty years later, as ambassador to Czechoslovakia, Temple delicately advocated for democracy and the dissolution of militarized rule, noting wryly that “nothing crushes freedom as substantially as a tank.” Months after she became ambassador in 1989, the Velvet Revolution occurred, and the Communist government was eventually toppled, much to Temple’s delight.
“Shortly after Communism fell in Czechoslovakia, a seated Ambassador Black called her senior staff together into a private, closed-door meeting,” an entry on the official website for the U.S. Embassy in the Czech Republic notes. “Looking them sternly in the eye, she told them, ‘I’m only going to do this once, just once.’ And with that, she stood up, smiled, and pranced around the room singing, ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop.’”
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