Shirley Jane Temple (born April 23, 1928 in Santa Monica, California), later known as Shirley Temple Black, is an American film actress and diplomat who is considered by many to be the most famous child actress in history.
One of her first film roles was in Bright Eyes, for which she won a special Academy Award. It was in that film that she sang "On the Good Ship Lollipop"; though she often sang in her films, that was probably her most famous song. She subsequently starred in many films including Heidi, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Susannah of the Mounties. By the late 1930s she was the biggest box-office attraction in motion pictures, and the success of her films may have saved more than one major studio from bankruptcy during the Great Depression.
The role of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, played by Judy Garland, was originally intended for her.
Temple retired from film acting in her early twenties. Later appearances on television did not prove as popular as her films.
Temple married the California businessman Charles Black in 1950; she may have looked favorably on his admission while dating that he had never seen any of her films. She subsequently became involved in Republican Party politics under her married name, entering a Congressional race in 1967. She went on to hold several diplomatic posts, representing the United States in the United Nations in 1969-70 and serving as American ambassador to Ghana (1974) and Czechoslovakia (1989). She received Kennedy Center Honors in 1998.
See also
A Shirley Temple is also a non-alcoholic cocktail named for the child actress. It was invented at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki, Hawaii.
In her youth, the then-actress dated James Freeman, while filming a movie in Hawaii. Freeman was living in the state while his father was Commander of the U.S. Naval Base there.