Shirley Temple, the dimpled, curly-haired child star who sang, danced, sobbed and grinned her way into the hearts of Depression-era moviegoers, has died, according to publicist Cheryl Kagan. She was 85.
Temple, known in private life as Shirley Temple Black, died Monday night at about 11 p.m. at her home near San Francisco. She was surrounded by family members and caregivers, Kagan said.
“We salute her for a life of remarkable achievements as an actor, as a diplomat, and most importantly as our beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and adored wife for fifty-five years of the late and much missed Charles Alden Black,” a family statement said.
A talented and ultra-adorable entertainer, Shirley Temple was America’s top box-office draw from 1935 to 1938, a record no other child star has come near. She beat out such grown-ups as Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper and Joan Crawford.
In 1999, the American Film Institute ranking of the top 50 screen legends ranked Temple at No. 18 among the 25 actresses. She appeared in scores of movies and kept children singing “On the Good Ship Lollipop” for generations.
Temple was credited with helping save 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy with films such as “Curly Top” and “The Littlest Rebel.” She even had a drink named after her, an appropriately sweet and innocent cocktail of ginger ale and grenadine, topped with a maraschino cherry.
Born in Santa Monica to an accountant and his wife, Temple was little more than 3 years old when she made her film debut in 1932 in the Baby Burlesks, a series of short films in which tiny performers parodied grown-up movies, sometimes with risque results.
Among her later films were “The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer,” with Cary Grant, and “That Hagen Girl,” with Ronald Reagan. Several, including the wartime drama “Since You Went Away,” were produced by David O. Selznick. One, “Fort Apache,” was directed by John Ford, who had also directed her “Wee Willie Winkie” years earlier.
Her 1942 film, “Miss Annie Rooney,” included her first on-screen kiss, bestowed by another maturing child star, Dickie Moore.
Temple married Army Air Corps private John Agar, the brother of a classmate at Westlake, her exclusive L.A. girls’ school, in 1945. He took up acting and the pair appeared together in two films, “Fort Apache” and “Adventure in Baltimore.” She and Agar had a daughter, Susan, in 1948, but she filed for divorce the following year.
She married Black in 1950, and they had two more children, Lori and Charles. That marriage lasted until his death in 2005 at age 86.
In 1972, she underwent successful surgery for breast cancer. She issued a statement urging other women to get checked by their doctors and vowed, “I have much more to accomplish before I am through.”
