Shirley Temple, 1938
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Elsie M. Warnecke
Cottey College student Mackenzie Green is back with
another post about a child star. Thanks Mac!
A woman
nearly killed child star Shirley Temple in 1939. She took aim with a loaded gun
while seated in the front row of the audience as Temple performed on a radio
program. The woman claimed that Temple had stolen her daughter's soul and hoped
that the assassination would release it. Eleven-year-old Temple continued to
sing as the woman was subdued and arrested. The young star survived many
threats including a crowd she remembered in Boston that “reached
up to claw along my bare legs, tug at my shoes, and pull at my dress hem” showing her that “no
matter its human brilliance or how remote its location, any star can be
devoured by human adoration, sparkle by sparkle.”
In her autobiography she described most of the threats as more comical than serious. The FBI arrested a teenager in the Nebraska field he had directed $25,000 to be dropped in by plane. He had threatened to harm Temple but she noted that all he was carrying was a hoe. She continued that
“a different tack was taken by a fourteen-year old girl who addressed a postcard to my mother from her little mining hometown in Pennsylvania saying, ‘Bring $320,000 to the below address if you ever want to see Shirley.’ When the FBI knocked she too readily confessed, explaining she only wanted money to buy things. It was her second extortion try. The first was her note to her grandparents, residing in the same house, demanding 10 cents.”
Some fans thought they could fly the Good Ship Lollipop to fortune like Temple had. Shirley started to carry a slingshot and a purse filled with pebbles.
Temple joked
but the adults around her took the situation seriously. The Lindbergh baby had
been killed in an abduction attempt only a few years earlier. The family moved
to a bigger house behind fences and protected with electronic surveillance
equipment. Her film studio hired a bodyguard.
Obviously, being
a young star was not all fun and games. In all ways, Shirley lacked any kind of
normal childhood. Apparently she stopped believing in Santa Claus when she was
six years old. Her mother had taken her to see
him in a department store and he asked for her autograph. Shirley’s mother
pushed her into show business at the age of three in 1931. She made forty-three movies between 1934
and 1940 and she was the top box office draw for four of those years. As
a teenager, she found it much harder to land roles and her movies were not as
successful. Americans hated to see the little girl with curls grow up. In 1950,
at the age of twenty-two,
Temple decided to give up acting.
Unlike other childhood stars, Temple does not seem to have been damaged by her early celebrity or by the threats. She wrote in her autobiography that
"to be hoisted on laps, pinched by incredulous strangers, to occasionally get my curls tugged, to be cooed at, photographed, and quoted—all this was part of the job. Even in my more mature years, to be assessed, discussed and rumored rarely bothered me. Hem length, nail color, and physical measurements were served up willingly."
While she
carried that slingshot, she remembered being fairly unmoved by threats to her
safety. She felt that “neither bravado nor escape from reality
were involved in my attitude. Risks had always been weighted carefully, and
danger sidestepped where possible.”
As she got
older she was able to attend school and have a love life. At
the age of 17, Temple went against her parents and married Jack Agar, a former
US Army Air Corpsman. She had a daughter, Susan before divorcing him in 1949. Then
when she was on vacation, she met businessman Charles Alden Black and married
him in 1950. They had two children together, Charles Jr. and Lori. They would
spend 55 years together until Charles' death in 2005.
In addition to being a mother, she continued a
public role. Instead of just disappearing like other child stars who retired,
she became interested in politics. Temple started out just stuffing envelopes
and joining the League of Women Voters, but then ran for a seat in Congress in
1967. Temple was the last to enter the race but ended up coming in second in
the primary. She said she thinks she would have won if it was not for the
international attention for being Shirley Temple. The media only showed the
child star not Shirley Temple Black. From 1969 to 1970 she served as the US
ambassador to the United Nations. Then in 1974 she became ambassador to Ghana.
Then two years later she became chief of protocol of the United States and
would hold this position until 1977. In 1988, Temple became an honorary U.S
Foreign Service officer and would be the only person to achieve this rank. She also
served as ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992.
Temple was aware that her whole adult life could
have been prevented from happening by the woman back in 1938. She wrote in her
autobiography: “Why the woman did not pull the trigger before being roughly
seized by the two men is hers to answer and mine to bless.”
Sources and Further Reading
Black, Shirley
Temple. Child Star: An Autobiography. New
York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1988.
“Boy Free on
Bond in Temple Threat.” Evening Star [Washington,
D.C.] August 2, 1936. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1936-08-02/ed-1/seq-4/#date1=1777&index=2&rows=20&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&words=extortion+Extortion+Shirley+Temple&proxdistance=5&date2=1963&ortext=&proxtext=&phrasetext=shirley+temple&andtext=extortion&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1
Kornhaber, Spencer. “Shirley
Temple, the Child Star Who Wasn’t a Cautionary Tale. The Atlantic Feb.
12, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/02/shirley-temple-the-child-star-who-wasnt-a-cautionary-tale/283747/
Miller, Bill. “Murder Shirley Temple?” The Mail Tribune June 3, 2019. https://www.mailtribune.com/lifestyle/murder-shirley-temple/
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