A late Shirley Temple...

Excuse the pun.

This post should have gone out yesterday. But what with one thing and another, not least of all lack of enthusiasm, it just didn’t. Oh well, it isn’t as if my blog is topical or time sensitive, a day or a year here and there really makes no difference. I sometimes wonder if anything does. Yes, I’m slipping into one of those again; I can hear that black dog barking in the distance. Now where did I put that muzzle Anyway, here’s yesterdays bit of nothing.

Bye-Bye Shirley Temple, what smiles you brought to so many lips and what an extraordinary life you led - actor, diplomat, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother.

I’ve never seen a Shirley Temple film all the way through, so how is it that she’s one of those iconic creatures that everybody has heard of and that is instantly recognisable from her picture?

Shirley Jane Temple (yes it was her real name) was born in Santa Monica, California. She landed her first contract aged just 3 years old making low-budget movies -‘Baby Burlesques’ - for the Educational Pictures company. Burlesque and Educational seem to sit comfortably uncomfortably together. But then it was 1931 and minds didn’t work the same way then as they do now.

Her mother soon saw her potential and enrolled her in dance classes. Her father, a banker, became her agent and financial adviser. She was contracted to Fox and when she was 6 years old appeared in her first Hollywood feature film, Carolina. Shirley was an overnight sensation and the cute, bouncing girl with golden corkscrew curls became a top earner for the studio and her parents.

President Roosevelt called Shirley Jane ‘Little Miss Miracle’ for raising public morale in the bad times of the depression and, in the way politicians do, went on to say, ‘As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right.’

Her song-and-dance routine ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’ appeared in an almost surreal scene in 1934’s feature Bright Eyes. It brought her a special miniature Academy Award, for the ‘Outstanding Personality of 1934.’

By 1940, Shirley had 43 films under her tiny belt and then her film career was over as Judy Garland stepped into the red-slippered limelight. The adult Shirley never made it into grown-up films and followed other roads instead. From the little I’ve seen she strikes me as one of the better adjusted child stars, unless of course she was addicted to bon-bons.

Shirley Temple died aged 85. Every little girl with blonde curly hair will be forever in her debt.

I've thrown away my toys,
Even my drums and trains,
I want to make some noise,
with real live airplanes.
Some day I'm going to fly,
I'll be a pilot to,
and when I do,
how would you,
like to be my crew?

On the good ship
lollipop
its a sweet trip
to the candy shop
where bon-bon's play,
on the sunny beach
of peppermint bay
Lemonade stands,
everywhere
crackerjack bands,
fill the air,
and there you are,
happy landings on a chocolate bar.
See the sugar bowl
do a tootsie roll
in a big bad devils food cake,
if you eat too much,
oh, oh,
you'll awake,
with a tummy ache.

On the good ship
lollipop
its a nice trip,
in to bed you hop,
and dream away,
on the good ship
lollipop