Tag Archives: Shirley Temple

Little Miss Sunshine

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Shirley Temple and Bill Robinson

Little Miss Sunshine

By

Dawn Pisturino

Today, when film buffs pay homage to Hollywood in the 1930s, they gush over glamor stars like Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, and Jean Harlow. But the big superstar from 1934-1938 was a precocious little girl with golden ringlets named Shirley Temple.

Born April 23, 1928 in Santa Monica, California, Temple went on to appear in 29 films between the ages of 3 and 10. But as her childhood waned, so did her shining star, and she retired from films in 1950 at the age of 22.

The Great Depression was in full swing in the mid-1930s, and the federal government had asked powerful studio moguls in Hollywood to embark on a mission of “cheering Americans up.” Shirley Temple, managed by her practical and astute parents, fit that role to a tee.

She was a natural born actress who played the role of the little savior in low-budget comedies and melodramas that pitted rich against poor and hard-hearted, miserly crooks against loving, generous saints. She often played the role of an orphan, which accurately reflected the plight of so many of America’s children at that time.

Popular actors like Gary Cooper, John Boles, James Dunn, Victor McLaglen, Randolph Scott, and John Barrymore played opposite the feisty little girl. She charmed them with upbeat childhood ditties like “Animal Crackers in My Soup,” “On the Good Ship Lollipop,” “You Gotta Eat Your Spinach, Baby,” and others. These songs became classic childhood fare for later generations.

But her most memorable performances occur with vaudeville dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in films such as “The Little Colonel,” where he teaches her the staircase dance. Under his guidance, Temple became an accomplished tap dancer.

Popular culture embraced the dynamic childhood star with nationwide sales of dolls, toys, clothing, and other items bearing the Shirley Temple image and name. Temple became a wealthy young lady, thanks to the financial management of her parents.

By the time of her death on February 10, 2014, Temple had enjoyed an extensive career as a child entertainer, radio host, TV producer, and a U.S. Ambassador. But she will always be remembered as the darling little girl with the golden ringlets who laughed and cried and sang and danced her way into people’s hearts.

August 17, 2021

Movie stars I love

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Here is a group of actors that seem the sort of people you’d want to know. People who don’t seem pretentious or vacuous. Actors that seem to have a little human decency. Aren’t generally alcoholics or drug addicts. Everybody is different in their tastes. There’s not a person on this list who is a “current” movie star. Someone you are going to find a feature on in this month’s People Magazine. That in itself say two things. One is a giveaway of my generation. The other is that modern film making has absolutely no appeal to my generation. The youngest actor here is 73, the rest are dead. 

Various stages of filmdom reflect the various stages of America. The most obvious example to me was the late 60s. Times they were a changing. What appeared in westerns was a strange character known as the “antihero”. Unheard of before in our horse operas. Another strange period was the vapid nature of a good number of late 20s and 30s films. Come to think of it, the 2 periods I just named were right before and right after the period largely controlled by the 2 Film Standards boards (1 protestant & 1 Catholic). They ran between 1935 an 1965 pretty much. Hollywood’s “Golden Age“.   

Sure the Duke had a ton of faults like the rest of us. He also had a ton of smarts. He made a documentary on the Vietnam War  that was one for the ages: ‘No Substitute for Victory‘. The picture was one of my favorites and one of his first, ‘Stagecoach’.

Richard Widmark was kind of an “everyman” actor. Spellcheck doesn’t even recognize his last name. This shot is from ‘The Last Wagon‘, the one I consider his best.

More than a siren. Sophia Loren was an actress. I did a series of “most beautiful” posts of actresses through all the years. She wasn’t on them. The women I put on those lists were generally classified as actresses, but to be honest a lot of them weren’t. She is. I find this photo one of her best, even if it wouldn’t be classified as “glamorous”.

petersellers

Peter Sellers as his alter ego Inspector Clouseau. Like so many actors his life was  a brief one. But funny. Made me laugh.

John Rambo was my favorite Sylvester Stallone character. I chose him over Schwarzenegger, Norris, Seagal. He could make a ‘guy’ movie. Nobody grunts better.

Pluck! That’s what Shirley Temple had! And lots of it. Her kid movies were great of course, its her adult ones that left me in awe.

“The stuff that dreams are made of.” That’s what Sam Spade said. And I believe him.

Audie Murphy, he the man.

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Roy Rogers
I feel bad for the kids who never got a chance to watch the best. Actor, role model.

He could a been somebody, I’m telling you. My favorite of Brando’s, On the Waterfront. That cast. Rod Steiger, Lee J. Cobb, Eva Marie Saint? That’s what believable is.

Hollywood is simply a collection of people who are work averse and want to get others to pay for their extravagant life styles while they pretend to do the “serious” work of playacting! 

There may be good movies made today, its just how would you ever know? There is so much crap out there it would obscure the gem. That brings up an interesting question though: How many movies were made in 1933? How many are made today? Okay after a little digging I come up with roughly 420 films made in 1933 according to Wikipedia. There were 876 films in 2018 according to The Numbers website. 90 years later. Twice as many films. I suppose by combining the reviews of Rotten Tomatoes critics review and audience review, that would give you a pretty good indication of which ones you want to see.

[Side note: Its as a director that Clint Eastwood shines for me. Top 3. I enjoy his work as an actor, but I swear he doesn’t come into his own until the last 10 years, where he is alone in his ability.]

Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)

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What a delightful movie! Two of my favorite people, Cary Grant and Shirley Temple (not to mention Myrna Loy). ‘Susan’ becomes enamored of a visiting lecturer, ‘Dick Nugent’. Loy’s ‘Judge Margaret Turner’ “sentences” the suave artist to be Susan’s beau until she gets over the crush. Hilarity and hijinks ensue. As with Ginger Rogers in The Major and the Minor, you have to suspend belief a wee bit, but they are both loads of fun. In this one Loy is supposed to be Shirley’s sister, despite the 23 year difference in ages (Shirley is 19 here, Loy 42). Why Shirley’s movie career would end at age 21 is completely beyond me. She had become quite the ravishing young woman.

Like I said in a previous post on Shirley, when she went to her dad after turning 21 and asked, “Okay, where’s my over $3,000,000 in earnings?” He had to explain he’d squandered it all. What she got for a lifetime in showbiz was $30K.

Gross![25613]

The 10 Most Beautiful Women of the 40’s & 50’s

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What a generation of women that was! The 40’s & 50’s surprised the heck out of me. That was my parent’s generation, WWII, the fifties. I thought I would be hard pressed to find 10 women I knew of. I really thought my favorite would be the Grace Kelly or Rita Hayworth type. Who knew it would be the grownup version of the most famous child star of all, Shirley Temple (circa 1948 age 20)! Aside from the beauty she grew up to be, she also struck me as an unbelievably nice person. I ended up having so many great photos of the women of this era, I put the extras in this post. The photography back then was so much better. Lighting, background, composition, color, the use of B&W.

Another surprise was Janet Leigh, who as far as I could tell never took a bad photo! It was amazing, winner after winner after winner… I have this vision of Grace Kelly from Rear Window and I don’t think anyone ever photographed her as well before or since. Loretta Young had 1 exceptional photo and left me mystified as to what was going on the rest of the time. I couldn’t find 1 decent color Myrna Loy shot. I ended up taking Betty Grable out of the post. She strikes me as a really nice/down to earth person. Who had zero sex appeal. I don’t know what it was. I replaced her with someone I hadn’t known until recently, Dorothy Malone. Like Gene Tierney, I hadn’t known they existed until this past year.

Two others that were nearly devoid of good color photos were Julie Newmar and Ava Gardner (In fact the choices for them were so bad I ended up removing them). Photographers captured about 1/10th of the sultriness that was Gene Tierney. One thing I did notice that was different from the more modern decades was the classic style, beauty and grace that the photographers captured in this era. While the few candid photos stand in stark contrast to the formality of the day, there was definitely something to be said for the ‘old school’. It was never so clear as in the post mentioned above where I used the surplus 40s/50s photo, modern day photographers are such hacks. And it wasn’t because of the advent of digital photography, that didn’t start in earnest until the late 90s or 2000s. By the 1960’s photography was quickly becoming a wasteland. [Here is a great link, “Bullet Bra Ladies of the 40s & 50s”. Awe inspiring.]


Shirley Temple

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Grace Kelly

Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth – This picture is a good example. The first one I’d used was a simple indoor photo of Rita in a blue sweater next to yellow drapes. It worked really well with the  redhaired beauty. It was small and Rita was sporting a rather ‘canned’ smile. This photo is easily 4 times as big and Rita has a very natural contemplative expression, and mostly natural lighting. It also shows how simple a good photo can be. She’s standing in the yard leaning up against a telephone pole wearing a simple blue dress with a corsage on the belt as the secondary subject. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have the finest subject in the world either. There’s that.


Janet Leigh


Gene Tierney  (*great story below)


Loretta Young

dorothy malone 3
Dorothy Malone

fort apache 1948
Fort Apache was on TCM this morning starring Shirley Temple. That 1 year later at the age of 21 she should make her last movie (A Kiss for Corliss) just seems criminal! Quite.

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Shirley has a wonderful interview on YouTube with Larry King from 1988 when she was 60 years old. Great stuff about the pervs at MGM and how when she asked for her money at age 22, the $3,000,000 plus she’d earned as a child was gone. Poof! (I took out some photos of Miss Temple so my crazed obsession would not be quite so obvious.)

*Gene Tierney had the most heartbreaking story that really is apropos in this time of pandemic. She was volunteering in 1943 at the Hollywood Canteen for soldiers on their way overseas. A high school girl who was a fan thought she’d show what a hero she was, and broke the rubella (German measles) quarantine she was under to visit Tierney at the canteen. The disease she gave the pregnant Tierney caused her daughter to be born deaf, blind and retarded and have to be institutionalized the rest of her life. Luckily her medical expenses were paid for by Howard Hughes and her ex-husband  Oleg Cassini. In a final bit of irony, years later she met the very same fan again that had destroyed her daughters life. She bragged to Tierney about breaking the quarantine to show how devoted a fan she was.

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