The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America (32 page)

On the set and off, Gertrude became Shirley’s watchdog, fiercely defending her daughter’s interests but also shielding her from the pressures of moviemaking. Contending as she did that “making movies is chiefly play-acting and make-believe to Shirley,” she declared, “I make it my job to keep it that way, to smooth away any feeling of tension or excitement.” She also shielded her from effusive praise, believing “no one is pleasant with a superiority complex.”
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Yet inevitably, in extending the emotional ties between mother and daughter from the privacy of home to the glare of the studio, they became intricately braided. Emotions are the stuff of acting, and the simulation and evocation of emotional effects is a key job of the child actor. In preparing Shirley at bedtime for a role, Gertrude meticulously rehearsed the script, acting out all of the parts, feeding Shirley her individual cue lines, and then having Shirley recite her lines for the next day’s shooting while Gertrude played the other roles. In this fashion they ran through the script three times before kissing each other good night. Although Shirley Temple Black maintained that her mother entrusted to her minor refinements, Gertrude mapped the emotional terrain of each film, drilled Shirley in her role, and also communicated her emotional investment in her daughter’s success.
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On at least one occasion, a director yanked the emotional ties between mother and daughter for the sake of a dramatic effect. When Alexander Hall needed Shirley to cry in a scene for
Little Miss Marker
, he told her, “I want you to think that you’ll never see your mother again. Think hard, she’s gone, gone for good. She’ll never, never, never come back.” Gertrude Temple was furious, not only at the emotional manipulation but also because she considered her daughter an accomplished crier.
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Beyond all the emotional demands involved in satisfying directors and others on the set, Shirley sought to satisfy her mother. Stage and screen mothers are notorious for living through their children, their daughters especially, and the most fiercely determined of them from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century make a formidable roll call: Mary Ann Crabtree, mother of Lotta; Jennie Cockrell Bierbower (later Janis), mother of Elsie Janis; Charlotte Smith, mother of Mary Pickford; Rose Hovick, mother of June Havoc and Gypsy Rose Lee; Lela Rogers, mother of Ginger; Ethel Gumm, mother of Judy Garland. Gertrude Temple was never as ruthless and controlling as some in this list, but she was proudly and single-mindedly devoted to her daughter and keenly jealous of any rival for her success. Virtually every substantial description of their relationship emphasized Mrs. Temple’s stern protectiveness, and the emotional control she demanded from her offspring. Gertrude’s pet name for her daughter was “Presh,” short for Precious, and the last words of Shirley Temple Black’s memoir
Child Star
, published a decade after her mother’s death in 1977 and dedicated to her, are “Thanks, Mom.” Yet she also observed that her mother was “no namby-pamby. . . . Always inside that velvet glove was a hard hand,” demanding obedience. Less affectionately, director Allan Dwan, who worked with Shirley on
Heidi
,
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
, and
Young People
, observed, “Shirley was the product of her mother . . . the instrument on which her mother played.”
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Her daughter’s success, Gertrude admitted to reporters, transformed her life almost as much as Shirley’s. Previously, she followed a “pleasant routine” that included household duties, bridge games, women’s clubs, lectures, and frequent evenings out with her husband. All that changed overnight. “I must be with Shirley all day at the studio, and at night I go over her lines with her for the next day’s work. Although she is in bed early I hate to leave her alone with the boys and the housekeeper. George goes out alone sometimes now to the pictures, but I am usually too tired for that, anyway.”
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Despite Shirley’s celebrity, her mother insisted, by no means was her child permitted to run the Temple household. Mrs. Temple did not shrink from the task of disciplinarian. The consensus of the burgeoning advice on child rearing in the 1920s and 1930s discouraged or condemned punishment. “A punishment never has the effect to correct or improve,” declared the psychiatrist Benzion Liber in
The Child and the Home
. “Usually it has the contrary effect, leaving, besides, a more or less pronounced feeling of rancor or hatred against the physically stronger person who orders or executes the punishment.” Gertrude Temple disagreed. Some child psychologists frowned on corporal punishment, she acknowledged, “but it works.” In
How I Raised Shirley Temple
, she stated, “I believe firmly in the old maxim, ‘spare the rod and you spoil the child.’ I think a child must feel that you are willing to back up your demands with force if necessary. This conviction gives you moral support as far as the child’s thoughts are concerned. And I do not believe a spoiled child is ever a happy one.” “Discipline is enforced relentlessly by her mother,” a reporter declared approvingly. Ordinarily, a word sufficed, but “on at least two known occasions a more solid punishment under the dainty lingerie was administered.” When in 1936
Time
magazine published an admiring story on Shirley, its cover bore not a beaming portrait of the child star but a candid photograph of Mrs. Temple disciplining her child on the film set. Clearly, the dominant concern was not that Shirley was treated too harshly but too leniently.
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At least one observer testified to Mrs. Temple’s firm hand. George Hurrell, who conducted a number of photographic sessions with Shirley at the studio and at her home, always in her mother’s presence, later observed, “Shirley was often sharply disciplined. I tried to intervene once—and only once, because Mrs. Temple snapped, ‘Tend to your photography, Mr. Hurrell, and I’ll attend to my daughter!’ ”
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In the eyes of the public, the vindication of Mrs. Temple’s method was Shirley’s personality. Both male and female journalists repeatedly marveled over her poise, charm, serenity, good humor, and docility—qualities especially prized in a little girl. Scrutinizing her in 1936, a reporter could find no hint of affectation: “The sunniness she radiates on the screen belongs not to ‘Bright Eyes’ nor ‘Curly Top’ nor ‘Little Miss Marker,’ but lies deep in the disposition of Shirley Temple.” “She has been described widely as a precocious youngster,” a reporter for the
Boston Globe
added in 1938, “and yet there is nothing of the precocious about her. In spite of her accomplishments and the intense consideration that surrounds her, she is still just a little girl, fond of dolls, exactly like a number of pretty and attractive 9-year-olds in any neighborhood in every respect save one. She has an ability to understand and get along with grown-ups. She does exactly what she is told, and she does it with a smile and without resentment, even when she is tired and would probably much prefer to be doing something else.” In such praise, reporters enshrined a more tractable little girl than she often played in her films. She might fling mud at her grandfather in
The Little Colonel
, shove the building manager into the swimming pool in
Just around the Corner
, or dump coal ashes on her tormentor in
The Little Princess
, but this assertive spirit was less prized off the screen.
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Such testimonies to Shirley’s unspoiled character also had precedents. The most famous film child star prior to Shirley Temple had been Jackie Coogan, and he too had been acclaimed as a thoroughly natural and unspoiled child. Here too his mother was given the lion’s share of the credit. Still, the boyish qualities that she prized in him marked a significant contrast with those that Gertrude Temple and reporters praised in Shirley: “Jackie is all alive—and all boy. . . . I don’t want my son to be a Little Lord Fauntleroy. I want him to be the sort of a child that he portrays on the screen—robust and appealing and muddy—and if necessary, a little bad.”
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Shirley too could be bad on occasion, but in her case everyone contrived to overlook the matter. Even Eleanor Roosevelt did so, portraying Shirley as a model child in her syndicated newspaper column chronicling the Temple family’s 1938 visit to Hyde Park. Meeting Shirley in Hollywood the previous spring, Mrs. Roosevelt declared, she had been impressed with Shirley’s “natural simplicity and charm” and applauded Mrs. Temple’s achievement: “She had kept her a child in spite of having to make her mature in so many ways.” In fact, Shirley could be officious, and she was especially so about the Shirley Temple badges that she bestowed on visitors. She had given two to Mrs. Roosevelt for her grandchildren when they met in Hollywood with instructions that they should wear them on all occasions or pay a fine. Now, as Mrs. Roosevelt and her grandchildren hosted a cookout in Shirley’s honor, she demanded that the children produce the badges or pay the penalty. When they simply laughed and ran away, she felt thwarted and blamed their grandmother. As Mrs. Roosevelt bent over in her cooking at the grill, Shirley extracted a slingshot from her purse. Then, reprising a scene from
The Littlest Rebel
, she fired a pebble into the rump of the most admired woman in the world. Not only did Mrs. Roosevelt placidly ignore the offense, but she concluded her column, “A well brought-up charming child is a joy to all who meet her.” One examines this sentence for a hint of irony, but there is none. Yet Gertrude Temple saw everything. When the Temples returned to their hotel in New York, she immediately gave her daughter a sharp spank. Staunch Republican that she was, she would not brook such insolence. “Brattish,” she exclaimed. “See how
you
like it.”
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Shirley herself admitted this particular bit of brattishness, albeit fifty years later. Yet an incident that was potentially far more damning to her image as a sunny, unspoiled child was related by the popular-song composer Jule Styne, who, at the beginning of his own illustrious career, worked in the late 1930s as a voice coach to Shirley and other stars for Twentieth Century–Fox. While directors lauded Shirley’s cheerful professionalism and reporters marveled at her modesty, Styne regarded her warily. “Shirley Temple?” he later said. “Listen, I was afraid of that kid. I didn’t want to get in the middle with her. From Schenck and Zanuck on down, everyone humored her.” Her moods changed unpredictably, he remarked, and the shrieks of her temper tantrums in her studio cottage pierced the lot. When the studio dispatched Styne to the Temple home to rehearse songs with her, Shirley demanded that they play badminton first. Styne chased about the court till he almost dropped. “She was tough as nails, stamina of a steam engine,” he recalled. At last Styne suggested to Shirley’s father that they get down to business. “Honey,” George Temple said, “you have to stop playing now and start rehearsing.” Her reply shattered the image of the unspoiled child: “She screamed at him, ‘Look, I earn all the money in this family. Don’t tell me what to do.’ ”
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Shirley’s colossal income fundamentally transformed the Temple family and George Temple’s position in it. Before her career took off, he could feel proud of his accomplishments. Despite his eighth-grade education, he had pushed through the ranks of white-collar workers in Los Angeles to branch manager. His appearance and personality fit well with such a position. He had an open face, hearty manner, twinkling eye, and ready laugh. Yet this affability hid a proud temperament. Easily offended by a slight or a suspicion, he had twice quit previous jobs. He knew that his chief qualification as branch manager was the business that he attracted as Shirley’s father. When the bright gleam of that reflected celebrity tarnished in time, his supervisor charged him with complacency, and George Temple resigned. His salary had been ninety dollars a week, a comfortable income in the 1930s and a considerable increase over his wages a few years earlier. Still, asked how he felt as his daughter made a thousand dollars a week, a sum that did not include her enormous licensing income, George Temple replied, “Very foolish.” His sense of foolishness was undoubtedly intensified by the knowledge that his wife’s salary from Twentieth Century–Fox for her services as Shirley’s assistant and hairdresser was roughly three times his own.
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George Temple could justify his departure from the bank by thinking that he had more important business to handle. According to the terms of Shirley’s contract with Twentieth Century–Fox, he could not formally serve as Shirley’s agent, but he could oversee her investments. With a banking associate he formed Temple-Thomason, Inc., which would manage investments for film personalities. His daughter became their first client. Try as he might to preserve his role as the pilot of the family fortune, from the age of six onward, Shirley had become its driving engine.
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Shirley felt close to her father as well as her mother, recalling that they “had long been secret best friends.” He relished their time together in evenings at home and on neighborhood excursions. Like a character in one of her films, he would take her on his lap and croon a love song, the only one he knew, “You Are the Ideal of My Dreams.” Yet Shirley’s success inevitably diminished him. Whether or not the outburst that Jule Styne claimed to have witnessed was characteristic, he knew its stinging truth: she made all the money, and he was an accessory. What the former child star “Baby Peggy” Montgomery wrote about both her own and Jackie Coogan’s fathers describes George Temple’s position as well: “In the restrictive arena where the child star’s father moved, there were no personal business triumphs, no million-dollar deals of his own to be celebrated. Without even realizing it, [such] men . . . increasingly strove to keep the approval and affection of their wives by the only means left to them—furthering their child’s career. Tragically, however, every financial victory for the child signified yet another moral defeat for the father. No matter how they tried to rationalize it, only the breadwinner earned the respect, and self-respect, proper to that role.”
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