The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America (40 page)

44
William R. Weaver, review of
Little Miss Broadway
,
Motion Picture Herald
, July 9, 1938, 2, 8.

45
“What the Picture Did for Me,”
Motion Picture Herald
, October 15, 1938, 47.

46
“What the Picture Did for Me,”
Motion Picture Herald
, November 12, 1938, 58.

47
“What the Picture Did for Me,”
Motion Picture Herald
, October 22, 1938, 55; August 13, 1938, 8.

48
Solomon,
Twentieth Century–Fox
, 218.

49
Just around the Corner
, Twentieth Century–Fox Scripts Collection, USC. The phrase “just around the corner” achieved still greater currency after Irving Berlin incorporated it into his famous song “Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee” (1932).

50
William R. Weaver, review of
Just around the Corner
,
Motion Picture Herald
, November 5, 1938, 36, 38.

51
Frank S. Nugent, review of
Just around the Corner
,
New York Times
, December 3, 1938, 11.

52
Howard Barnes, review of
Just around the Corner
,
New York Herald Tribune
, December 3, 1938, 8.

53
“What the Picture Did for Me,”
Motion Picture Herald
, January 7, 1939, 46.

54
Black,
Child Star
, 221.

55
Black,
Child Star
, 255.

56
Darryl F. Zanuck, signed advertisement,
New York Times
, March 9, 1939, 19. Film costs are notoriously difficult to calculate accurately, especially in this period. Shirley Temple Black reports the cost of
The Little Princess
as $1.3 million, six times the budget of her early movies for Fox. Black,
Child Star
, 252. Aubrey Solomon reports the cost of
Stowaway
at $500,000,
Heidi
at $600,000,
The Little Princess
at $700,000, and
The Blue Bird
at $1,000,000. Solomon,
Twentieth Century–Fox
, 240.

57
Nelson Bell, review of
The Little Princess
,
Washington Post
, March 24, 1939, 12; Mae Tinee, review of
The Little Princess
,
Chicago Daily Tribune
, March 22, 1939, 15.

58
Black,
Child Star
, 263.

59
Review of
Susannah of the Mounties
,
Time
, July 3, 1939, 37; review of
Susannah of the Mounties
,
Variety
, June 21, 1939, 16; Frank S. Nugent, review of
Susannah of the Mounties
,
New York Times
, June 24, 1939, 20.

60
What the Picture Did for Me,”
Motion Picture Herald
, August 26, 1939, 78; September 9, 1939, 67; September 23, 1939, 62.

61
Black,
Child Star
, 274, 277.

62
Hubbard Keavy, “Shirley Temple at Crucial Stage in Her Career,” [Baltimore]
Sun
, July 30, 1939, sec. SM, 6; “Studio Pays $200,000 for New Movie Stories to Put Shirley over Age Barrier (She’s 10!),”
Atlanta Constitution
, July 30, 1939, 12.

63
Keavy, “Shirley Temple at Crucial Stage,” 6.

64
Black,
Child Star
, 274–75. Black quotes Zanuck’s remark that “specialists never last long” but omits his additional remark that she was “the exception to the rule.”

65
“20th Outbids Disney for Bluebird,”
Variety
, April 26, 1939, 5; Maurice Maeterlinck,
The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Five Acts
, trans. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (London: Methuen, 1910).

66
Black,
Child Star
, 288 (ellipses in original).

67
Black,
Child Star
, 289–90.

68
Black,
Child Star
, 291.

69
Black,
Child Star
, 289.

70
“ ‘Blue Bird’ Lures Industry’s Top Executives to Premiere,”
Motion Picture Daily
, January 20, 1940, 1, 9; Black,
Child Star
, 292.

71
Edwin Schallert, review of
The Blue Bird
,
Los Angeles Times
, January 20, 1940, sec. A, 7.

72
Review of
The Blue Bird
,
Motion Picture Herald
, January 27, 1940, 50.

73
Howard Barnes, review of
The Blue Bird
,
New York Herald Tribune
, January 20, 1940, 6; Schallert, review of
The Blue Bird
, 7.

74
Frank S. Nugent, review of
The Blue Bird
,
New York Times
, January 20, 1940, 15; Nugent, review of
The Wizard of Oz
,
New York Times,
August 18, 1939, 16.

75
“What the Picture Did for Me,”
Motion Picture Herald
, April 20, 1940, 51; April 27, 1940, 71; May 25, 1940, 59 ; August 24, 1940, 74.

76
Rudy Behlmer, ed.,
Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck: The Golden Years at Twentieth Century–Fox
(New York: Grove Press, 1993), 36

77
Behlmer,
Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck
, 36–37.

78
Black,
Child Star
, 298–99.

79
Grant Hayter-Menzies,
Charlotte Greenwood
(Jefferson, NC: Macfarland, 2007), 8.

80
“Shirley Temple Leaving Screen, Mother States,”
New York Times
, May 12, 1940, 47; “Shirley Temple, 11, Leaves Film Stage,”
New York Times
, May 13, 1940, 16.

81
Howard Barnes, review of
Young People
,
New York Herald Tribune
, August 24, 1940, 6; Richard L. Coe, review of
Young People
,
Washington Post
, August 31, 1940, 14.

82
Bosley Crowther, review of
Young People
,
New York Times
, August 24, 1940, 16.

83
“What the Picture Did for Me,”
Motion Picture Herald
, October 19, 1940, 61; November 23, 1940, 58.

CHAPTER SIX: WHAT’S A PRIVATE LIFE?

1
Julia Grant,
Raising Baby by the Book: The Education of American Mothers
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), esp. 115, 153.

2
Amy Gajda, “What if Samuel D. Warren Hadn’t Married a Senator’s Daughter? Uncovering the Press Coverage That Led to ‘The Right to Privacy,’ ”
Michigan State Law Review
, Spring 2008, 36–60.

3
Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, “The Right to Privacy,”
Harvard Law Review
4 (December 15, 1890): 195, 196, 206.

4
Warren I. Susman, “Personality and the Making of Twentieth-Century Culture,” in
Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century
(New York: Pantheon, 1984), esp. 277, 280, 282–84.

5
Ida Zeitlin, “The Private Life of Shirley Temple,”
Modern Screen
, June 1939, 34.

6
Samantha Barbas,
Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity
(New York: Palgrave, 2001), 19–20. The quotations are from an IMP advertisement in
Moving Picture World
, as quoted in Barbas, 19; and “Ovation for Film Star at Union Station,”
St. Louis Times
, March 26, 1910, 3.

7
Barbas,
Movie Crazy
, 169; Alexander Woollcott, “The Strenuous Honeymoon,”
Everybody’s Magazine
, November 1920, 36.

8
“Crowd Surges at Theater,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 27, 1923, II1.

9
Barbas,
Movie Crazy
, 169–70; “Many Injured in Crush to View Valentino Bier,” [Baltimore]
Sun
, August 25, 1926, 1; “Thousands in Riot at Valentino Bier, More than 100 Hurt,”
New York Times
, August 25, 1926, 1, 3.

10
Harold Hefferman, “Hollywood Today: Shirley Temple Hidden by Thoughtless Stars,”
Atlanta Constitution
, July 5, 1937, 11.

11
Marsha Oregeron,
Hollywood Ambitions: Celebrity in the Movie Age
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008), 102; Barbas,
Movie Crazy
, 31, 138.

12
Gertrude Temple, “Bringing Up Shirley,”
American Magazine
, February 1935, 92; Shirley Temple Black,
Child Star: An Autobiography
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988), 51. On fan letters and the movies, see Barbas,
Movie Crazy
, passim; on letters from radio listeners expressing personal bonds with radio personalities, see Bruce Lenthall,
Radio’s America: The Great Depression and the Rise of Modern Mass Culture
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 68–76.

13
Robert Eichberg, “Lines to a Little Lady,”
Modern Screen
, February 1935, 48, 74ff.; “Deluge of Mail Surprises Tiny Shirley Temple,”
Washington Post,
December 16, 1934, MB2.

14
Temple, “Bringing Up Shirley,” 92; Thornton Sargent, “New Slant on Shirley!”
Screenland
, March 1935, 82.

15
“Crowds End Vacation of Film Child,”
Los Angeles Times
, August 25, 1934, A1.

16
Sargent, “New Slant on Shirley!” 81; Rod MacLean, “Letters,”
Time
, August 20, 1934, 6; “Shirley Temple Draws to 2 Kinds of Windows,”
Variety
,
July 24, 1934, 1.

17
Black,
Child Star
, 59, 51; Sargent, “New Slant on Shirley!” 82; Dorothy Calhoun, “Shirley Temple—One Year Later,”
Movie Classic
, July 1935, 66.

18
David Gebhard and Robert Winter,
A Guide to Architecture in Los Angeles & Southern California
(Santa Barbara, CA: Peregrine Smith, 1977, 104; Black,
Child Star
, 120; “Shirley Temple Home Listed for $1.75 Million,”
Los Angeles Times
, April 23, 1983, L1.

19
Anne Edwards,
Shirley Temple: American Princess
(New York: William Morrow, 1988), 87.

20
Black,
Child Star
, 121, 115–16.

21
Stanley Hamilton,
Machine Gun Kelly’s Last Stand
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 9–11; Black,
Child Star
, 121, 115–16, 80, 116–18.

22
Paula Fass,
Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 119–21, 125–26.

23
Fass,
Kidnapped
, 99; interview with Maurice Sendak,
NOW with Bill Moy
ers
, March 12, 2004, http://billmoyers.com/content/author-and-illustrator-maurice-sendak/; “Maurice Sendak, Author of Splendid Nightmares, Dies at 83,”
New York Times
, May 9, 2012, A1. Among the many books on the Lindbergh case, see esp. Lloyd C. Gardner,
The Case That Never Dies: The Lindbergh Kidnapping
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004).

24
On this point, see Fass,
Kidnapped
, 6–8, 51–56, 127–29, and passim. The phrase “public property” appears on p. 51. On ransom kidnapping in the 1920s and 1930s, see Ernest Kahlar Alix,
Ransom Kidnapping in America, 1874–
1974: The Creation of a Capital Crime
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 38–124.

25
Kathleen Norris, “Novelist Sketches the Trial Scene,”
New York Times
, January 3, 1935, late city ed., 4; see also Fass,
Kidnapped
, 126.

26
Although released in 1936,
Poor Little Rich Girl
had its first prepared treatment in October 1934. Kidnapping was an element from early on. See
Poor Little Rich Girl
, Twentieth Century–Fox Script Files, USC.

27
For threats to Withers and Bartholomew, see, for example, “Reveal Freddie Bartholomew Is Threat Target,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, November 28, 1936, 1; “Jane Withers Threatened in $50,000 Demand,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, December 31, 1936, 3

28
“$25,000 Demand on Child Star’s Father Admitted,”
Illinois Daily News
, August 1, 1936, Clippings File—Shirley Temple, MHL; “Arrested in Threat to Shirley Temple,”
New York Times
, August 1, 1936, 30; “Shirley Temple Threatened in Plea of Guilty,” [Hollywood?]
Citizen
[
News?]
, August 3, 1936, Clippings File—Shirley Temple, MHL; “Youth Free under Bond in Shirley Temple Plot,”
Los Angeles Times
, August 2, 1936, Clippings File—Shirley Temple, MHL; “Boy Pleads Guilty in Temple Threat,” [Baltimore]
Sun
, August 2, 1936, 6.

29
“Boy Admits Threats to Shirley Temple,”
New York Times
, September 16, 1936, 52; “Youth Blames Movie for Shirley Threat,” unidentified clipping, September 16, 1936, Clippings File—Shirley Temple, MHL; Black,
Child Star
, 148–49. The film that inspired the plot was apparently
Thirteen Hours by Air
(Paramount, 1936).

30
Black,
Child Star
, 148–49.

31
“Shirley Temple in Peril,”
New York Times
, August 12, 1935, 10; Black,
Child Star
, 109–13.

32
“Surging Crowd Greets Shirley Temple Here,”
Boston Globe
, August 4, 1938, 1, 8; Black,
Child Star
, 244–47.

33
Black,
Child Star
, 293–95.

34
“The Story behind Shirley Temple’s Amazing Career,”
Screen Book
, August 1934, 42, 63, 67; Edith Lindeman, “The Real Miss Temple,”
Richmond Times-Dispatch
, October 31, 1937, Sunday magazine sec., 6–7; Dorothy Spensley, “The Life and Loves of Shirley Temple,”
Motion Picture
, July 1936, 34–35, 78; Zeitlin, “Private Life of Shirley Temple.” See also Berta A. de Martínez Márquez, “Esta es la historia de Shirley Temple,”
Bohemia
[Havana, Cuba], May 12, 1935, 8, 9, 66, 80.

35
“Child Actors and the Law,”
New York Times
, December 23, 1934, X4; Edwards,
Shirley Temple
, 77–78; “Peewee’s Progress,” 88.

36
Lester David and Irene David,
The Shirley Temple Story
(New York: Putnam, 1983, 97–98; “Acting Points Given Cooper by Shirley Temple,”
Los Angeles Times
, September 1, 1934, 5; George Hurrell and Whitney Stine,
The Hurrell Style: 50 Years of Photographing Hollywood
(New York: John Day, 1976), 126.