Shirley Temple described as 'antidote' to Depression era
Any review of films released during the 1930’s-40’s must include Shirley Temple since she is – for all practical purposes — unavoidable. She has been referred to as the perfect antidote for those times, since her popularity coincided with the years of the Great Depression (1929-39).
She was the world’s Top Box Office Star in the mid-30’s, surpassing Clark Gable. In the mid-1930’s, when the average annual household income in the US was around $1,700, Shirley Temple earned well over $3 million dollars in a career that began when she was age 3 and ended when she turned 22.
She left the movie business behind after making 39 feature length films from 1932 until 1949. In 1934 alone, when she was 6-years-old, she appeared in seven films. A full list of her movies can be found at the Shirley Temple Movieography website.
Born in 1928 – one year before the crash of the Stock Market — she was 3-years-old when her film career began, appearing in one-reeler shorts. By age 5, she was making full length features with the approval of her parents. The roles changed as she aged, but the general public seemed to collectively remember her as the tossled haired moppet, smiling and trusting.
She wrote her own story, “Child Star: An Autobiography,” in 1988, published by McGraw-Hill. In it she refers to at least two incidents during her career when older Hollywood types made inappropriate advances.
In her telling, she escaped both unharmed. She also recounted early abuse by directors. If the work was not going well on set, a favorite punishment was sitting on a block of ice in a small, enclosed room.
She married for the second time in 1950 to businessman Charles Alden Black, adopting his last name. By 1967, Shirley Temple Black had joined the Republican Party and ran for a congressional seat. She failed to win, but it began a long career in politics. She was appointed US Ambassador to Ghana (1974) and to Czechoslovakia (1989). She died in 2014 at the age of 85.