评论
打印
Hollywood star Shirley Temple dies at 85
好莱坞女星秀兰邓波儿去世
Movie studio executives took notice and in 1934 she appeared in the film "Stand Up and Cheer" and her song and dance number, "Baby Take a Bow," stole the show. Movies such as "Little Miss Marker" and "Bright Eyes" - which featured her signature song "On the Good Ship Lollipop" - and in 1935 she received a special Oscar for her "outstanding contribution to screen entertainment."
She made some 40 feature movies, including "The Little Colonel," "Poor Little Rich Girl," "Heidi" and "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," in 10 years, starring with big-name actors like Randolph Scott, Lionel Barrymore and Jimmy Durante.
Shirley was a superstar before the term was invented. She said she was about 8 when adoring crowds shouting their love for her made her realize she was famous.
"I wondered why," she recalled. "I asked my mother and she said, 'Because your films make them happy.'"
She was such a money-maker that her mother - who would always tell her "Sparkle, Shirley!" before she appeared before an audience - and studio officials shaved a year off her age to maintain her child image.
Her child career came to an end at age 12. She tried a few roles as a teenager - including opposite future president Ronald Reagan in "That Hagen Girl" - but retired from the screen in 1949 at age 21.
Temple was only 17 in 1945 when she married for the first time to John Agar, who would eventually appear with her in two movies. Their five-year marriage produced a daughter.
In 1950 she wed Charles Black in a marriage that lasted until his death in 2005. She and Black had two children.
Black's interest in politics was sparked in the early '50s when her husband was called back into the Navy to work in Washington.
She did volunteer work for the Republican Party while attempting to make a comeback with two short-lived TV series, "Shirley Temple's Storybook" in 1959 and "The Shirley Temple Theater" a year later.
Seven years after that she ran unsuccessfully for Congress in California but stayed in politics, helping raise more than $2 million for Richard Nixon's re-election campaign.
She was later named to the United States' team to the United Nations and found that the her childhood popularity was an asset in her new career.
"Having been a film star can be very helpful on an international basis," Black once said. "Many people consider me an old friend."
Sometimes the public found it hard to accept her in diplomatic roles. But in 1989 she pointed out her 20 years in public service were more than the 19 she spent in Hollywood.
In 1974, Ford appointed Black ambassador to Ghana and two years later made her chief of protocol. For the next decade she trained newly appointment ambassadors at the request of the State Department.
In 1989, President George H.W. Bush made Black ambassador to Prague - an Eastern European post normally reserved for career diplomats.
In 1972, Black was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. She publicly discussed her surgery to educate women about the disease.
