The dark details of the life of the actress who broke all box office records
Google paid tribute to the actress, singer, dancer, and activist Shirley Temple. The search engine created a doodle inspired by the anniversary of the special exhibition of the Santa Monica Museum of History, which each year presents a collection of the memorabilia of the "golden girl" of Hollywood. Behind the overwhelming success of the child star was hidden a life of secrets and sacrifices: from the controversial beginning of her career and the bad finances of her parents to a truncated first love.
The artist was born on April 23, 1928, in California, and at the age of three, she began to take dance classes. Her mother, Gertrude Amelia Temple, dreamed of her daughter becoming a famous ballerina, but the road to the golden age was stumbled upon by her.
A dark debut by Shirley Temple
Little Shirley had her great debut in a series of shorts called Baby Burlesks (1932-33), whose content was disturbing: boys between three and five years old recreated scenes from well-known movies, but their image was S- with inappropriate outfits for their age. and double-meaning arguments.
Temple herself referred to that stage as "a cynical exploitation of childish innocence." However, the real success that catapulted her to fame came in 1934, in the musical Stand Up and Cheer, where she acted, sang and danced alongside her adult peers.
She then followed dozens of movies and a very fast pace of recordings: she came to film five productions a year for a decade. All this had double merit in a complicated international context: the 1930s were marked by the Great Depression and the public bet on the cinema as an escape valve.
At that time she was featured in the films Bright Eyes (1934), Poor Little Rich Girl (1936), Heidi (1937), and Little Miss Broadway (1938). The "Temple phenomenon" did not last as long as her family had hoped: by 1940, viewers' tastes had changed, and the girl had become a likable 12-year-old pre-adolescent.
From stardom to oblivion
In addition to the bad streak that the child star was experiencing, the effects of World War II were added; job opportunities were fewer and fewer. In those desperate times, she turned to MGM (Metro Goldwyn Mayer) with her mother in search of a proposal that would save her fame and her career.
“We went with my mother to a meeting with Cecil B. De Mille to talk about a project, but they separated us. She went to Mr. De Mille's office while I went to producer Arthur Freed's,” Temple recounted years later. “I thought he was a producer, but he was also an exhibitionist; he dropped his pants in front of me, and I was 12 years old, until that moment I had not seen anyone N-.
“When we got back in the car I told my mom and she replied: ‘And you don’t know what happened to me. De Mille had wanted to harass her too, ”he concluded, recalling the aberrational experiences he faced with her when her popularity waned.
Personal battles of an icon
At the age of 16, Shirley met Air Force Sergeant John Agar and fell madly in love with his "Prince Charming", as she defined him. Five months after her 17th birthday, she married who she thought would be her lifelong companion.
Her wedding coincided with an unexpected economic crisis due to mismanagement of finances by her father. “Of the US$3,400,000 that he had invoiced, I only had US$44,000 left in my account. That was all. It was a shock”, admitted the actress in different interviews. As if that were not enough, during their coexistence she discovered that her husband was an alcoholic, aggressive, and unfaithful man.
Temple filed for divorce in December 1949, alleging "psychological violence, alcoholism, and assault," and custody of their daughter born in 1948, Linda Susan Agar. Within a few months, she met Charles Black, her second husband, and the true love of her life: they had two children and she also gave little Susan her last name.
When the lights on the big screen went out, the actress began to internalize international relations and she was appointed United States representative to the United Nations in 1969. Three years later she faced another personal battle, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. mother.
She had a mastectomy and she was one of the first celebrities to tell it to inspire other women to do preventive studies. In 2006, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) presented her with its Lifetime Achievement Award, the organization's highest honor. Shirley remembered as the "golden girl," died on February 10, 2014, at age 85, of natural causes at her California home.
