Shirley Temple Black

Shirley Temple died yesterday and, while I have great respect for the accomplishments of the adult Shirley Temple Black, I do and always have found the Shirley Temple movies that frequented the much-limited and purportedly family-oriented television channels that I watched during my childhood to be distressing and uncomfortable to view. Watching a little girl wearing a super-tiny dress, while singing and dancing in front of the groups of middle-aged, ogling men who were consistently her co-stars always left me with an unsettled "something's not right" feeling in my gut ... even as a child.

And as an adult looking back at clips of Shirley Temple movies, I realize that my childhood instincts were correct. It was odd and totally unacceptable, to say the least, that the male-dominated movie industry saw fit to cast a little girl who conveyed the persona of an adult woman as the star of over 40 movies. The cutesy little girl always seemed to be without a home and without any women to care for her, leaving her to be adopted, housed, fed, led by the hand or, in one way or another, accommodated by adult male characters who always seemed just a bit too enamored and intrigued and delighted to be in the company of a little girl. Men who held her hand a little too much and watched her sing and dance just a little too closely.

Plot summaries of a few randomly chosen Shirley Temple movies show a little girl who was tended to by men, men and more men in every movie. I find this eerie and disturbing, which by no means is meant to insult the honor of the late Shirley Temple Black, but does make me question the motives of parents who sat back and saw nothing perverse in what Hollywood did to their daughter. Memories of Jon Benet Ramsey come to mind as she was another beautiful little girl who was taught to assume an adult persona and entertain ogling adult audiences.

Here are the movie descriptions that I wrote using info. from Wikipedia. (Thank you Wikipedia).

Curly Top – Here, the curly-haired, mischievous, adorable little Shirley Temple has no parents and lives in an orphanage. The trustees come to visit and one of the wealthy, male trustees is so enamored with the little girl that he decides to adopt her (along with her sister) and brings them home to live with him. The wealthy trustee eventually marries Shirley Temple’s sister, Mary.  

Bright Eyes – Shirley Temple’s father is dead. Her and her mother live in a mansion where Temple’s mother works as a maid for room and board. When Shirley Temple’s mother dies, the wealthy family wants to send Shirley Temple away, but the crotchety old wheelchair-bound grandfather is so fond of the little girl that he nicknames her ‘Bright Eyes’ and insists that she stay at the house to keep him company.

Dimples – Shirley Temple plays a little girl named Dimples who sings in the streets to make money with her thieving grandfather, with whom she lives. They perform at a wealthy woman’s party, and the wealthy woman’s nephew takes Dimples to live with him and perform in a Broadway show that he is producing.

Little Miss Marker – Shirley Temple plays a little girl named Marky who lives with her father. Marky’s father gives her to a group of gangsters as collateral for a gambling debt he owes them. Shirley Temple then lives with a group of men who are gangsters, bookies and thieves for the rest of the movie.  

Wee Willie Winkie – Here, Shirley Temple and her mother are brought to a British military base. Little Shirley spends all her time befriending and entertaining the male officers and soldiers. She also visits an imprisoned officer to cheer him up.    

I am still bothered when I see movie clips of Shirley Temple's movies as I view her as a child victim.