Back in December 1933, a star was “born” in the cinema and she was only 5 years old. Shirley Temple that year signed a contract with the -almost-bankrupt Fox Studios and saved them from certain collapse. “The lesson was that ‘time is money’ and ‘it’s work not play’. And I learned this before I became a star”she had declared as an adult about the time she worked big on the big screen.

Shirley Temple had given an interview to the BBC in 1989, talking about her childhood as a superstar. Then, after her successful film career, she had a second career as a US diplomat.

Despite the fact that she was once the highest paid star in Hollywood, she had to work because her millions were long gone. “You saved 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy, didn’t you?”presenter Terry Wogan then asked her. “I think so,” she had answered him.

As reported by the British network, in 1933, Fox Studios was almost bankrupt. Founded by William Fox in 1915, they flourished during the silent film era. By the time the Great Depression hit, it was operating at a loss, millions in debt, and stock prices had plummeted. Saved thanks to a little blonde girl with curls.

Two weeks before signing her contract with the studio, Shirley had been cast in the film Stand Up and Cheer! alongside James Dunn, who would play her father. Although their roles were relatively small, the two of them made such an impression on the public that they immediately took part in more films together. Shirley Temple then became famous.

The -difficult- beginning of a brilliant career

Shirley first entered the entertainment industry when her mother took her to dance lessons, in age 2.5 years. She told the BBC: “He put me in a neighborhood dance school that was less than two miles from our house. And I was working there, you know – I was learning rumba and tango.”

It was at this dance school that director Charles Lamont discovered her and cast her in a series of short films called Baby Burlesks. She was paid $10 for each day she was on set, but rehearsals were unpaid and she was not satisfied with the production. “He wasn’t a great producer. He was a very cheap producer. He was part of a lot in Hollywood called ‘Poverty Row,'” she had said herself.

Lamont, along with producer Jack Hays, worked for the Educational Films Corporation. The then-3-year-old starred in eight films, but the set was not a pleasant place for her or the other children there. They punished them.

“They had two boxes on our set. One of them had a large block of ice in it, and when one of us misbehaved we were sent one by one into the black box to cool off and think about it. In the dark, with the door closed,’ Shirley remembered. “I have a lot of earaches, I have a lot of pimples, I have a lot of problems from it. I had been in the box several times”he noted.

In fact, back then, parents were not allowed to be on the same set as their children. Shirley’s mother made her costumes, gave her acting lessons and styled her hair every night into her signature curls.

Sexualization

The films in which he starred today are considered highly inappropriate and sexualized. She herself described them as “adult movie imitations”.

One of the first characters he played was called Morelegs Sweet Trick, a pun on the movie star Marlene Dietrich.

War Babies featured 3-year-old Shirley dressed in an off-the-shoulder top and a diaper held up by a comically large bib. He was dancing for other kids who were acting troopswhich are fighting over her and her they gave out lollipops.

Shirley Temple

In Polly Tix in Washington, she played a “prostitute” who made her seduce a “senator». In her first scene, she wears a bra and gets her nails done. She later appears in the senator’s office wearing pearls and tells the toddler impersonating the senator that she was sent to “have fun». Shirley noted in her autobiography that the films were “a cynical exploitation of our childhood innocence” and also “occasionally they were racist or sexist”.

Her next professional step was in a series that had small roles. She was contracted to producer, writer and director Jack Hays. When he went bankrupt, her father bought back her policy after realizing how bad it was in the first place.

A short time later, he was dancing in a lobby of a lyricist who worked for Fox. She was asked to audition for the film Stand Up and Cheer! which was being filmed at the time. He got a small role, which meant two weeks’ pay.

The premise of the film is that the Great Depression it is the result of a lack of “optimism”, so auditions are held to find entertainers to entertain the crowd.

Shirley and James Dunn were partners in a dance sequence. There wasn’t enough time to learn new choreography, so he taught Dunn a dance he had learned for another show. Immediately after the filming, her offered a one-year contractwith a possible seven-year extension, for $150 a week. Her mother was also paid to accompany her on set. They signed the contract on December 21, 1933. In her autobiography, Shirley called it “the first contract in a series of clouds that would hang darkly over the next seven years.”

Shirley and Dunn’s next film was Baby, Take a Bow, which opened in April 1934. It was loaned out to other studios for thousands of dollars. More money than she was earning herself.

Later that year Bright Eyes was released. Written specifically for the two of them, the film featured a song that would become its signature song: On the Good Ship Lollipop. But the Fox studios had been struggling since the stock market crash of 1929, and in 1934 Fox merged with 20th Century Pictures to become the 20th Century Fox.

According to Vanity Fair, a Fox executive said: “They didn’t buy the Fox studio, they bought Shirley Temple.”

A gold mine

In her first year with the company, she appeared in 10 films. That year was so remarkable that at Oscar of 1935 she was awarded the first Academy Award for Youth – and remains the youngest person who has been awarded.

Shirley proved to be a big box office success because Depression-era audiences wanted to see upbeat, happy movies in theaters.

The president Franklin Roosevelt even had one he said of the little blonde girl: “During this depression, when people’s spirits are lower than at any other time, it is wonderful that for only 15 cents an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles of”.

As her films became more profitable, her pay increased, until she became the highest paid star in Hollywood. And he managed all this at a young age 10 years old.

Her workload may have been enormous, but as an adult she remembered that time fondly. After she signed the contract with Fox, her mother was always on set with her. One notable thing that sets Shirley apart from other child stars is that she had close relationship with parents her. She dedicated her autobiography to her “loving mother”. Other kids who became stars weren’t so lucky.

Then, in 1939, California passed a child actor bill, known as Coogan’s lawnamed after Jackie Coogan. Coogan, who was born 13 years before Shirley, became one of the first child stars when he appeared alongside Charlie Chaplin in the 1921 hit film The Kid.

He won millions of dollarsbut the his mother and stepfather spent everything, whom he sued in 1938. This litigation, unprecedented at the time, led California to pass a bill that defined working conditions and ensured that the 15% of a child actor’s salary would enter the edge in a so-called Coogan account.

How he lost millions

And Shirley’s good times with her parents ended there.

Because her father worked in a bank, became the person responsible for managing its finances. However, as she told the BBC, “her father had dropped out of school right after the seventh grade” and had made bad investments. “Of the $3,200,000 I had earned from selling dolls, books, clothes, etc., I had $44,000 left in a trust account”he said.

Many times, however, her films did not do so well. Shirley told the BBC that her scenes were often cut, while off-screen Hollywood was often an inauspicious place for young actors. She herself, at the age of 12, had experienced abusive behavior, as she had revealed.

Shirley Temple

The best job of her life

From the big screen retired at age 22 and her last film was 1949’s A Kiss for Corliss.

But her career did not end but continued in another field. He worked in international relations and served in the US government as ambassadress both in Ghana as well as in Czechoslovakia. In their interview, he had said that the embassy in Ghana “it was the best job of my life.” But she never forgot her career as a child.

Edited by: Anastasia Kitsikosta