The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America

256 Pages·2014·3.36 MB·English

by  John F. Kasson

DEDICATION
To Peter and Laura,
For the gift of their childhood, mature wisdom,
and sustaining love,
To William E. Leuchtenburg,
For his friendship, scholarship, and inspiring example,
And to Joy,
For everything!
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
1 SMILE LIKE ROOSEVELT
2 SUCH A HAPPY LITTLE FACE!
3 DANCING ALONG THE COLOR LINE
4 THE MOST ADORED CHILD IN THE WORLD
5 KEEPING SHIRLEY’S STAR ALOFT
6 WHAT’S A PRIVATE LIFE?
Epilogue: Shirley Visits Another President
Notes
Acknowledgments and Permissions
Index
Also by John F. Kasson
Copyright
THE
LITTLE GIRL
WHO FOUGHT
THE GREAT
DEPRESSION
Smiling through the Great Depression: Shirley Temple, 1935. (Photofest/Twentieth Century–Fox)
INTRODUCTION
H
er image appeared in periodicals and advertisements roughly twenty times
daily, rivaling President Franklin Roosevelt and the United Kingdom’s Edward
VIII (formerly Prince of Wales and later Duke of Windsor) as the most
photographed person in the world. Her portrait brightened a poor black laborer’s
cabin in lowland South Carolina, the mantel of the tumbledown house of a poor
white childless couple in North Carolina, the living room mantel of preteen
Andy Warhol’s house in Pittsburgh, the recreation room of Federal Bureau of
Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover’s house in Washington, D.C., and the
bureau of notorious numbers gangster Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson’s Harlem
apartment. A few years later her smile cheered the secret bedchamber of Anne
1
Frank in Amsterdam as she hid with her family from the Nazis.
Conventional histories of the 1930s draw their emblematic faces from the
period’s distinguished documentary photographers, such as Dorothea Lange’s
careworn woman known as “Migrant Mother.” Yet the most popular and
cherished images of the period were smiling ones, and the most popular and
memorable of all were of the child actress Shirley Temple. At a time when
movie attendance knit Americans into a truly national popular culture, they did
not want a mirror of deep deprivation and despair held up to them but a ray of
sunshine cast on their faces. In fact, such conspicuous demonstrations of
confidence characterized the Great Depression, as President Roosevelt extended
the politics of cheer deeply into the private lives of citizens and Shirley Temple
did so into the private lives of even the youngest consumers. The complex and
paradoxical effects of these efforts are with us still.
The emotional resiliency embodied in the smiles of Shirley Temple, Franklin
Roosevelt, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and others in this decade has been largely
taken for granted. Yet such smiling figures repay close investigation. They yield
important insights into the character of American life during the greatest
peacetime crisis in American history. They have broader implications for modern
culture as well. “We can see emotional expressions as a medium of exchange,”
the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild has written. “Like paper money, many
2
smiles and frowns are in circulation.”
The circulation of a new emotional currency during the Great Depression
formed a little-understood but essential part of the nation’s recovery, a sort of
deficit spending with immense effects. In a time of great financial hardship,
spending on amusements actually increased—eloquent testimony to its
emotional necessity. Satisfying the craving of many deep in need of emotional
loans and replenishments challenged political leaders and entertainers alike. The
politician who succeeded most effectively was Franklin D. Roosevelt. The
entertainer who did so most spectacularly was a little girl, Shirley Temple. Born
in April 1928 in Santa Monica, California, to Gertrude and George Temple,
Shirley began her film career at age three. Her performances attracted little
notice until April 1934, the month she turned six. Then, with the release of Fox
Film’s Stand Up and Cheer!, she catapulted to stardom. But what distinguished
her from every other Hollywood star of the period—and everyone since—was
how brilliantly she shone. For the next six years, before she left Twentieth
Century–Fox in 1940, she made twenty-two feature films. Through four of those
years, from 1935 through 1938, she was the most popular star at the box office
both within the United States and worldwide, a record never equaled. At the end
of this energetic period of performances (which would continue at a lesser pace
through the 1940s), she was still under the age of twelve.
In all of her major roles in the 1930s Shirley’s central task was emotional
healing. She mended the rifts of estranged lovers, family members, old-
fashioned and modern ways, warring peoples, and clashing cultures. She
accomplished these feats not by ingenious stratagems but by trusting to her
inexhaustible fund of optimism. No loss ever troubled her for long, even the
death of a parent or reversal of fortunes. No scolding matron or miser could
dampen her mood. Money could not buy happiness, she repeatedly reminded
audiences, and, although she often wore exquisite clothes and bounced between
cramped quarters and palatial settings, riches never turned her head. She treated
the lowly with kindness and approached the mighty without intimidation.
Characteristically lacking one or both parents, she relied not on institutional