I must admit, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a Shirley Temple movie. She was popular in the 1930s, when my parents were growing up. Of course, I know who she was. Her part in Hollywood history is a big part. She was a legend.
Shirley Temple
April 23, 1928-February 10, 2014
Her popularity declined as she became a teenager, she made fewer films and they weren’t as successful, and she retired from acting at 22.
Not all Hollywood stories are the same. She did not get involved in heavy drug use, her parents did not steal all her money, she was not emotionally scarred by the loss of her childhood. She married a fellow actor when she was 17, they had a daughter, but divorced after about 4 years. She married again, stayed married for 54 years, had two more kids, and went into politics.
The joke was that she was the highest ranking black (her married name was Black) in the Nixon administration. She was a U.S. representative to the U.N. and then later ambassador to Ghana and then, under the first George Bush, to Czechoslovakia. That was the time of the Velvet Revolution.
The worst thing I can say about her is that she was a Republican, but that was back before we thought all Republicans were monsters and, by all accounts, she did a decent job as ambassador. Czechs remember her well. She drove around in a car with her initials on the license plate: STB. A little joke. (The STB were the secret police)
It’s an interesting thing about death in the era of facebook. Of course, famous people have always got a lot of publicity when they died but in our era of social media it’s like a public wake, with everybody, whether they had anything to do with the deceased or not, leaving comments about their favorite memories, or just sharing the news. Perhaps they should put up an RIP button, next to the Like button.
Fair enough, is the way I see it. She was a big star. She deserves one last, final moment in the spotlight.
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