Shirley Temple Page 4

  Lamont and Hays slept well, feeling confident little Shirley had the nymphet appeal they needed. That night, Shirley suffered an ear infection. She appeared on the set the next morning irritable and unresponsive. By the end of the day, she was sent home and told not to bother to come back. Audrey was rehired. On the following morning, Gertrude and Dr. Madsen accompanied Shirley to the set to explain that Shirley had suffered an abscessed ear, which had been lanced the previous evening, and that she now would be fine. Audrey was kept on the sidelines as Shirley was dressed in an off-the-shoulder Mexican blouse, a diaper pinned below it. A giant rose was attached to her hair, and a frilly pink satin garter rolled up just below her right knee.

  Hammons had now decided the Baby Burlesk movies should not be dubbed. That morning, on the way to the studio, Gertrude had helped Shirley to memorize her two lines of dialogue spoken in a coy, teasing attempt at French—“Mais oui, mon cher” and “Mats oui, mon Capitaine”—as she vamped two diaper-clad, bare-chested “soldier boys” with a toss of her rounded and dimpled bare shoulder and planted a kiss on the cheek of each.

  George may have originally objected to a movie environment for his daughter but he was now as enthusiastic as Gertrude about Shirley’s career, and he personally signed as guardian the contract for Shirley to work for Educational Films, at ten dollars a day for each day of production (the shorts had four-day shooting schedules).* Because this contract predated the restrictive child-labor laws later invoked in children’s film contracts, no specification was made for the hours a child could work in a day. Nor was time set apart for lessons if the child was of school age. Shirley made four of these ten- or eleven-minute shorts for Educational in 1932, all opposite Georgie Smith, a four-year-old blond “muscle man.” The Runt Page (a spoof on the popular Ben Hecht–Charles MacArthur newspaper story The Front Page) featured her as “Lulu Parsnips” (movie columnist Louella Parsons); Pie Covered Wagon (a takeoff on Covered Wagon in which she imitated silent screen star Lois Wilson, tied to a stake as diapered Indians leered and threw dirt at her); and Glad Rags to Riches, where she was presented as “La Belle Diaperina,” a Gay Nineties chanteuse at the Lullaby Lobster Palace. Dressed from the waist up in a turn-of-the-century show-girl costume, her diaper made of glittering metallic cloth (designed by Gertrude), she sang “She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage” inside a big gold birdcage, followed (once “freed” from her imprisonment) by a short tap dance executed with a chorus of four diapered lads, chests bared except for stiff collars and bow ties about their necks, and awkwardly maneuvering top hats and canes.

  “All of us wore very elaborate costumes, authentic grown-up clothes from the waist up and diapers pinned with enormous safety pins,” Temple remembered. “Mom worked harder than I did because she had to make all my costumes and press them at night. She created a special panty for me with a flap in front that resembled a diaper [but wasn’t as bulky] . . . She spent her days on the set with me and considering the four day shooting schedule, they must have been nightmares.” And then, as an added thought: “A movie lot is a fascinating place even for grownups . . . completely Alice-in-Wonderland. Machines and gadgets all over, trees and grass apparently growing right inside a building . . . Mom had never been on a studio lot before, so she was as agog about it as I was.”

  A daily routine was now formed. Gertrude would drive George to the bank, and then she and Shirley would continue on to the studio, where she would remain by her daughter’s side as much as possible. They brought their own lunch—usually a Thermos of hot soup and some small sandwiches. On the drive home, Gertrude would explain to Shirley what she was expected to do the next day. After dinner, George gave her a bath, and then Gertrude set her hair in rag curlers. When Shirley was in bed, Gertrude would read any lines she had to say the next day. Shirley would repeat them “word for word five or six times. She might say, ‘You’re supposed to feel very happy when you say this line, Presh’ . . . or ‘You’re supposed to be eating a thick sandwich while you’re saying these lines,’” and Shirley would practice this bit of action. When the light went out, Shirley was expected to repeat the lines several times as a soporific, so that by morning they would be memorized.*

  Gertrude’s life was now dominated by her pursuit of Shirley’s career, and she was determined that her daughter would make the leap from “cheap-jack comedy shorts” to the eminently more respectable feature film. As in dancing school, she remained distant from the other mothers and kept Shirley apart from their children whenever possible. Costume adjustments were always to be made. She never left the interpretation of Shirley’s role to the director (Charles Lamont, in most instances). During a production, she departed with Shirley for the studio by 7:00 A.M., the child’s hair set and brushed into curls. Pandemonium might have existed among the other children in the cast, but Shirley remained close to Gertrude’s side, rehearsing the scene she was about to play. The child’s timing was always correct. Her mother taught her to “sparkle,” as she called it, by wetting her lips, focusing her eyes so that they gleamed with a little pre-tearing moisture, and then to smile or sulk or laugh as the scene required. Standing behind Lamont as he got set to instruct the cinematographer to start shooting, Gertrude would issue a final instruction: “Sparkle, Shirley, sparkle,” and Shirley would. (The pet name “Presh” was used by her mother only in their private moments, and “Shirl” employed in a disciplinary tone; Gertrude called her daughter “Shirley” in most public situations.)

  Jack Hays was a shrewd promoter. A good chunk of the financial backing for the Baby Burlesk shorts was secured by using products that could be easily identified by their packaging (Carnation milk, Kellogg’s Com Flakes). For her ten dollars a day, Shirley and her tiny co-performers were also expected to pose for advertisements for these products between film scenes. Gertrude offered no objections. She had already learned that exposure was an important part of a film career, both for Shirley to be seen and for the child to begin to feel natural before the cameras.

  Shirley’s early footage reveals a lissome child with camera appeal but no indication of any exceptional talent other than charm. The song that she sang and the dance steps she executed for War Babies and Glad Rags to Riches (which she made at the end of 1932 when four and a half) show precociousness rather than inspiration. The simple steps are mastered and the song rendered on key, but several other children in the shorts exhibit far greater musical talent and dancing ability. Her acting was more mimicry than performance, especially when measured against a child like Margaret O’Brien, who at the same age gave such a stunning performance in A Journey for Margaret, or Jackie “Butch” Jenkins, who was five when he brought tears to moviegoers’ eyes as Ulysses, the dreamy, Depression-bound little boy who symbolically waved to passing trains in William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy. But Shirley did possess a tremendous camera appeal that brought the viewer’s eyes to her in almost every scene in which she appeared.

  The Baby Burlesk films did not make an overnight star of Gertrude’s little girl. No outside producer fought to get her away from Educational, perhaps because the Baby Burlesks did not have the popularity of the Our Gang series. The shorts were played in neighborhood theaters at matinees or to accompany a double feature, and audiences were lured in by long programs and giveaways of kitchen dishes. Without Gertrude’s enthusiasm and perseverance, Shirley Temple might have ended her career at five—the cutoff age at Educational—as did her co-star Georgie Smith. But on film, Shirley did sparkle, and this, in the beginning, was her greatest attribute. Something about the glint in her eye, the golden ringlets that bobbed as she moved and the irrepressible dimples brought a smile to her beholders, most of whom were going through grim times when a child’s smile was far more moving than its tears.

  “[My father] said there was no use bothering about the movies any longer,” Shirley recalled. “He said that I had about three hundred dollars in the bank—that was all the money I had made working for a whole year. . . . Mom though . . . kept sayi
ng she wished I could get a contract . . . she didn’t care about the money—-just so long as I had a chance to get a good part.”

  Gertrude knew Shirley had a better opportunity of being “discovered” in a feature picture, and she jumped at the chance offered her for Shirley to appear in The Red-Haired Alibi, for Tower Films, a subsidiary of Hammons’s company.

  The part was little more than a bit role. When the picture was reviewed in Variety, Shirley’s name was not even listed in the credits. It starred Merna Kennedy (who later became Mrs. Busby Berkeley) as a redhead accused of murder, Theodore von Eltz as the gangster she is involved with at the time of the murder and Grant Withers as the man she finally marries.* To make Kennedy’s and Withers’s roles more sympathetic, they were given a little girl (Shirley) who appears in two scenes, once in close-up, eyes saucer-wide and appealing as she clings to and looks up to her mother—the message being, “If this innocent child can love her mother this much, the woman must be innately good.” Red-Haired Alibi suffered from a script that was “sufficiently bad to relegate the feature to the country’s least important locations.” Gertrude and Shirley were back to work at Educational.

  Four more Baby Burlesks were made starring Shirley. George and the boys became self-sufficient as Gertrude devoted herself to Shirley’s career. First there was Kid’s Last Fight, a Jack Dempsey spoof, with Georgie Smith as the fighter and Shirley as his girl friend who is kidnapped by gangsters to force Georgie to throw the championship match. Shirley next made Polly-Tix in Washington, dressed in a black lace bra and undies designed and made by Gertrude, and playing “a wealthy gold-digger intending to elect a cowboy politician [Georgie Smith] to office . . . she vamps her way into the life of a mighty important man in Washington. Will she lead him astray, or will he have some effect on her and make her mend her ways?” Jack Hays’s intentions were obvious. The Baby Burlesks were meant to titillate male matinee audiences. Kid ’n’ Hollywood followed, with Georgie as “Frightwig Von Stumblebum” (a takeoff of Eric von Stroheim) and Shirley as “the incomparable Morelegs Sweet Trick” (a blatant parody of Marlene Dietrich), “wearing lots of blue feathers and sequins,” which she later claimed she considered “really dreamy . . . The most sirenish outfit” she was ever to wear.

  In Kid ’n’ Africa, Shirley played Madame Cradlebait, a missionary caught by the cannibals she has been sent to civilize. While she is being cooked in a big pot over a fire, the natives drink the water in which she sits. Rescued by Diaperzan (a mini-Tarzan) on an elephant, she insists he marry her and then domesticates him into becoming her slavey and the cannibals into hucksters. Kid ’n’ Africa was the most tasteless of the eight Baby Burlesks that Shirley made, and with its release, the series was discontinued.

  During production of the Baby Burlesks, the children were constantly faced with dangerous situations. Shirley recalled that while making this final film, “I was Jane to a little boy who was Tarzan and we had to run through a jungle. I was being chased by little black boys who were playing the African natives. . . . [The director] wanted all the children to fall at one time. [I] got through on the path and then they put a wire up and tripped all the little black boys at once and, of course, they all fell in a heap and some of their legs were cut.” For a scene in Polly-Tix in Washington, Shirley was to take a wild ride in an ostrich-drawn carriage. To get the proper effect, Hays and Lamont had the animal blindfolded before the camera began to roll. The moment “Action!” was called, the blindfold was ripped away. The ostrich, terrified by the bright lights, bolted forward, surprising Shirley (exactly the effect they had wanted), who had not been warned and who would have been thrown to the ground from the fast-moving vehicle if not for the quick thinking of a nearby assistant director, who caught her in midair. Gertrude had either not been consulted or had not thought Shirley was in danger.

  George did not often accompany Gertrude and Shirley to the studio, and it is doubtful if his wife informed him of the risks to their daughter. Jack Hays interpreted the eight-hour daily federal child-labor law to mean eight hours’ work before the cameras. Children could therefore be on the set, ready and waiting for their scenes, from eight in the morning until six at night. Movie parents tended to think their children were special and could handle anything. Gertrude was no exception. But a film clip from Kid’s Last Fight of a “speakeasy” scene in which a “free-for-all” ensues as the place is being raided by the “cops” reveals an utterly disoriented, bewildered and frightened expression on Shirley’s baby face.

  “Children were treated as children by directors, crew and other actors until the cameras rolled,” Diana Serra Cary says. “Then there were no holds barred. . . . One take, no wasting time or film, no excuses. [You] were a ‘responsible’ child. When I turned four and made Captain January* . . . I ceased being a child and became a grown-up.”

  With brothers considerably older than herself (Jack graduated from high school in 1933) and her days taken up with the pursuit of her career—filming, auditioning and dance lessons—Shirley had little contact with children her own age other than movie kids, who were pitted against each other professionally and whose parents harbored attitudes of mutual mistrust.

  When Shirley’s first Baby Burlesk, War Babies, was exhibited at their local theater, the Temples invited all their friends. Gertrude was to recall: “The picture lasted ten minutes. Shirley merely flitted across the screen a few times and said only two lines. But my head swam and the goose flesh popped out on my arms. I think I cried a little. George squeezed my hand. Oh, well, we were proud. It was our little girl doing something wonderful, like saying her first words, and we were happy.” Shirley, who had accompanied her parents and their friends, added, “She kept whispering to me, ‘Do you see yourself, Presh? That’s you!’ ”

  Gertrude continued to believe, correctly, that Shirley needed to be seen in a full-length picture to get her “big chance.” Though Shirley was under contract to Hays, Gertrude made contacts in studio casting departments and began to make the rounds and “calls” (open auditions) with her on the child’s free days, but these independent attempts were not successful. Shirley later remembered one of these “calls” as having “about three hundred other little girls there with their mothers, and many of them with their agents—so we couldn’t get very near Mr. White [George White, the producer-director]. Mom was quite disappointed. But a man finally came over to us [Leo Houck, the assistant director] . . . he recognized me from seeing me in the Baby Burlesks. . . . He told Mom he didn’t think there was much use in expecting me to get a part in Mr. White’s Scandals. The ‘call’ was only to see what little girls they could get if they really made up their minds they wanted any.”*

  Early in 1933, Shirley played a bit role in the Universal feature Out All Night, starring Slim Summerville, ZaSu Pitts and Laura Hope Crews. The story, an amusing comedy, had Pitts, as a nurse in the baby-checking department of a large retail store, in love with Summerville, another store employee. The couple accidentally get locked in the store overnight and have to marry. The rest of the film has to do with Pitts’s problems with her husband’s attachment to his mother (Crews). Shirley appears with several other children in two baby-checking scenes. She played a loving but mischievous child whose antics harass the fluttery Miss Pitts. Listed in the credits under children along with several others, she was not singled out in any of the reviews. Out All Night was a turning point in her career, however.

  Although competitiveness was partially responsible for Gertrude’s aloofness from other movie mothers, a certain amount of snobbishness was also involved. Some of the children came from vaudevillian backgrounds, and Gertrude believed she had little in common with their mothers, who were relying on their children as wage earners to support whole families. Gertrude always refused to consider that she and George were exploiting Shirley. After all, George held a respectable position, and they owned a house and a car. To Gertrude, this meant she was a breed apart from the other mothers—and Shirley from their children
. She also did not mingle with the adult cast. However, during Shirley’s work on Out All Night, Gertrude made friends with ZaSu Pitts, and this friendship would eventually have an influence on the lives of both Gertrude and Shirley.

  Raised in California, Miss Pitts had been on the scene since the early days of films. She began her career in two Mary Pickford films, The Little Princess and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and gained prominence as the dramatic lead in Erich von Stroheim’s great silent movie Greed. With the advent of sound, her humorous, trembling voice caused her to appear almost exclusively in comedy. She worked constantly and became well known for her portrayals of scatterbrained, zany women. But she was anything but light-headed. An excellent businesswoman and an ardent Republican, she was financially secure despite the shakiness of the times. Gertrude admired her sense of fashion (following the star’s lead, she bought an elegant pair of alligator shoes with matching pocketbook, one of her few early extravagances) and her confident attitude, and although Shirley worked only five days on Out All Night, by the end of that time the two women had become friends. Miss Pitts gave Gertrude wise advice—to begin being selective about Shirley’s roles. What a producer or casting director saw on-screen, she told her, was how a performer was perceived. She warned against Jack Hays’s questionable taste, and suggested Gertrude have more to say about the stories Shirley did.