How Shirley Temple saved a Hollywood studio from bankruptcy

In December 1933, five-year-old Shirley Temple signed with a nearly-bankrupt Fox Studios. In History looks back at how she revived the studio’s fortunes – and became a superstar.

“The lesson was ‘time is money’, and ‘it’s work not play’. And I learned that before I became a star.”

When Shirley Temple was interviewed on the BBC in 1988 about her superstar childhood, she was enjoying a remarkable second act in her career as a US diplomat. Despite being at one time Hollywood’s best paid star, she had to work because most of her millions were long gone.

“You also saved 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy, didn’t you?” chat-show host Terry Wogan asked the woman who was by then known by her married name, Shirley Temple-Black. “I think so,” she replied.

In 1933, Fox Studios was nearly bankrupt. Founded by William Fox in 1915, it thrived during the silent-movie era. By the time the Great Depression arrived, it was operating at a loss, owed millions and share prices had plummeted. To the rescue: one blonde, curly-haired little girl.

Two weeks before signing her contract with the studio, she had been cast in Stand Up and Cheer! alongside James Dunn, who was to play her father. While their parts were relatively small, the pair made such an impression that they were immediately cast in more films together. Shirley Temple became a household name.

Temple’s first foray into showbusiness came when her mother took her to dance classes, aged two and a half. She told the BBC: “I had so much energy – and wouldn’t take a nap – that she put me in a neighbourhood dancing school that was less than two miles from our house. And I would work out there, you know – learn the rumba and the tango.”

It was in that school where she was discovered by director Charles Lamont, and cast in a series of short films called Baby Burlesks. She was paid a total of $10 for every day she was filming but rehearsals were unpaid, and Temple was not complimentary about the production. She said: “He wasn’t a great producer. He was a very cheap producer. It was part of a lot in Hollywood called ‘Poverty Row’.” 

Lamont, along with producer Jack Hays, worked for the Educational Films Corporation. The then three year old starred in eight films, but the set was not a pleasant place for Temple or the other child actors there. She described a punishment for misbehaving: “They had two sound boxes on our set. One of them had a big cake of ice in it, and when any 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.” She added: “I got a lot of earaches, I got a lot of styes, I got a lot of problems from that. I was in the box several times.” 

Also, parents weren’t allowed on the set with their children. Instead, Temple’s mother made costumes, gave her acting lessons and styled her hair every night into distinctive ringlets.

The topics of the films, nowadays, seem incredibly inappropriate. Temple described them as “take-offs of adult movies”. One of the first characters she played was named Morelegs Sweet Trick, a pun on film star Marlene Dietrich. War Babies featured a three-year-old Shirley dressed in an off-the-shoulder blouse and a nappy held with a comically large safety pin, dancing for other children playing soldiers, who fight over her and give her lollipops. In Polly Tix in Washington, she is a “strumpet” sent to seduce a “senator”. In her first scene, she wears a bra and is filing her nails. She later turns up to the senator’s office wearing strings of pearls, and tells the toddler playing the senator she’s been sent to “entertain” him. Temple noted in her autobiography, Child Star, that the films were “a cynical exploitation of our childish innocence” and also “occasionally were racist or sexist”.

The next step was a series of small roles under contract with producer, writer and director Jack Hays. When he went bankrupt, her father bought back her contract, having realised how bad it had been in the first place. Not long afterwards, Temple was spotted dancing in a lobby by a songwriter who worked for Fox. She was asked to audition for Stand Up and Cheer!, a film that was currently shooting. She got a small part, which meant two weeks’ pay.

The film’s premise is that the Great Depression is the result of a lack of “optimism”, so auditions are held to find entertainers to cheer people up. Temple and James Dunn were partners in a dance sequence. There wasn’t enough time for her to learn new choreography, so she taught Dunn a dance that she had learned for a different performance. Immediately after filming, she was offered a one-year contract, with a potential seven-year extension, for $150 a week. Her mother was also paid to accompany her on set. They signed the contract on 21 December 1933. In her autobiography, Temple called it “the first in a series of clouds to hover darkly over the next seven years”.

Temple and Dunn’s next film was Baby, Take a Bow, which premiered in April 1934. She was also loaned out to other studios for thousands of dollars, many times what she was being paid. Later that year, Bright Eyes came out. Written specifically for the pair, the film featured a song that would become her signature tune: On the Good Ship Lollipop. 

But Fox Studios had been struggling ever since the stock market crash of 1929, and in 1934, Fox merged with 20th Century Pictures to become 20th Century Fox. According to Vanity Fair, Fox executive Winfield Sheehan said: “They didn’t buy the Fox studio, they bought Shirley Temple.”

In her first year with the company, she appeared in 10 films. That year was so notable that at the 1935 Oscars she was presented with the first Academy Juvenile Award – and she remains the youngest person to have been awarded one. 

Temple proved to be a big box-office draw for Depression-era audiences who wanted to see optimistic, happy films in theatres. President Franklin D Roosevelt said of her, “During this Depression, when the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time, 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.”

As her films became more lucrative, her pay also increased until she was the best-paid star in Hollywood – all by the age of 10. Her work schedule may have been intense, but as an adult she looked back on it fondly. After signing the contract with Fox, her mother was always on set with her. One notable thing that separated Temple from other child stars is that she had a close relationship with her parents. She dedicated her autobiography to her “loving mother”. Other child stars weren’t as lucky.

In 1939, California passed the California Child Actor’s Bill, commonly known as the Coogan Act, after Jackie Coogan. Coogan, born 13 years before Temple, became one of the first child stars when he appeared with Charlie Chaplin in the 1921 hit movie, The Kid. He earned millions of dollars, but it was spent by his mother and stepfather, whom he sued in 1938. The legal battle led to California passing a bill that specified working conditions, and ensured that 15% of a child actor’s wages would be set aside in a so-called Coogan account.

Temple’s good luck with her parents only went so far. Because her father had worked in a bank, he became her business manager. However, as she told the BBC, “he left school right after the seventh grade”, and was coaxed into making bad investments. “Out of the $3,200,000 that I had earned from everything – doll sales, books, and clothing and so forth – I had $44,000 left in a trust account,” she said. 

Many aspects of her films didn’t age well. Temple told the BBC that, while she and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson were the first on-screen interracial dance partners, any scenes in which they touched were often cut. Meanwhile, off-screen, Hollywood was often a sinister place for young actors. Long after her film career ended, Temple would recount predatory behaviour she endured when she was as young as 12.

She retired from films aged 22; her last film being A Kiss for Corliss in 1949. It did not mark the end of her interesting career, though – she went on to work in international relations, and to serve in the US government as an ambassador to both Ghana and Czechoslovakia. In their interview, Temple told Wogan that the ambassadorship to Ghana “was the best job of my whole life”.

Wogan asked her: “Are you fed up with that Good Ship Lollipop song?”

“No,” Temple replied. “It’s gotten me a long way.”

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