Shirley Temple How She Won Hearts BUT LOST EVERYTHING

THE MILLIONS SHE EARNED AS A CHILD VANISHED BEFORE HER 22ND BIRTHDAY

- LOUISE A. BARILE

With unemployment high and the American economy still reeling from the 1929 stock market crash, President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to lift the country’s spirits. “As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right,” he said. “It is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles.”

From 1935 to 1938, Shirley, the child star with the dimples and 56 corkscrew curls, remained the undisputed queen of the box office. Her upbeat, feel-good films, including The Little Colonel, Curly Top and Wee Willie Winkie, grossed millions and saved her film studio from bankruptcy. For several years, Shirley also earned more money annually than anyone in Hollywood except MGM boss Louis B. Mayer — but by the time she was 22, it would mostly be gone.

Gertrude Temple’s longed-for daughter arrived in the spring of 1928. “When Shirley was in her crib, her mother started training her,” Shirley’s childhood friend and movie stand-in Marilyn Granas tells Closer. “She would say, ‘Sparkle, Shirley!’ and Shirley would sparkle.”

At 2½, Shirley began dance lessons. By 4, she was appearing in comedy short films doing parodies of Mae West and Marlene Dietrich. “That was my starlet period,” recalled Shirley, who noted that by the time she was signed by Fox for $150 a week, “I really knew a lot about the craft [of acting].”