The next time you choose to eschew alcohol, think of how the namesake of the signature teetotaler drink may have really needed one.
Way before Drew Barrymore ever froze at the sight of a snowy television screen, back when her relatives John, Lionel and Ethel commanded Hollywood, Shirley Temple was America’s sweetheart. Per Wikipedia, Shirley Temple Black (born Shirley Jane Temple; April 23, 1928 – February 10, 2014) was an American actress, singer, dancer, and diplomat, who was Hollywood’s number-one box-office draw as a child actress from 1934 to 1938.
If you’re of a certain age, you likely have seen her work. She was an institution and inspiration way before puberty. I even sold a package of her movies, ancient even at the time they were being peddled, to independent television stations early in my career, that earned strong ratings decades later. She showed remarkable range and depth. Think Jenna Ortega with dimples and a safer script. Many couldn’t believe it. As today’s Hollywood Factoid explains:
As Shirley Temple gained fame for films like Baby Take a Bow and Wee Willie Winkie, some people grew skeptical that such a mature and talented child could even exist. They also found it suspicious that she was never seen on screen with missing baby teeth.
A rumor spread across Europe that Temple was actually an adult with dwarfism. For some reason, the Vatican’s newspaper saw fit to investigate the matter itself, and sent Father Silvio Massante to pay Temple a visit. After a thorough quizzing—which included going through a book of Old Master paintings, for an unknown purpose—he was satisfied that she was actually a child. As for the case of the missing baby teeth, filmmakers had filled the holes with any number of items deemed camera-ready, including temporary dentures.
Shirley Temple also experienced a method of keeping child actors in line that would definitely be illegal today: the black box. In the early 1930s, she and a couple dozen other kids starred in Baby Burlesks, in which the child actors would parody scenes from adult movies. Temple’s roles in the film were originally played by Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, and Dolores del Río.
If Temple or any of the other pint-sized stars misbehaved, they’d get shut into a cramped sound box cooled by a big ice block—which also happened to be the only place to sit. As Temple later wrote in her memoir Child Star, “So far as I can tell, the black box did no lasting damage to my psyche. Its lesson of life, however, was profound and unforgettable. Time is money. Wasted time means wasted money means trouble.”
How ironic that someone who was often subjugated to seeing black ultimately married someone with that name. And later rose to prominence as an adult as an ambassador to Ghana and a war-torn Czechoslovakia. Plenty of blackness there, too.
But she also put lots of Hollywood in the black financially. And effectively set the tone for the industry we love today.
So raise that drink, alcohol-free or not, to a truly special and deserving legend.
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