The highest paid child movie star was born on this day

Shirley Temple not only did not become a famous adult actress, but she also did not have any special acting talents even as a child, with one exception - she performed the step wonderfully. And here we must give credit to her mother. Housewife Gertrude Temple (maiden name - Kryger, Shirley's family had German, Dutch and English roots), noticing her daughter's talents, at the age of three sent her to a dance school.

In front of the camera, she did not behave naturally, but as, in the opinion of adults, a child should behave in a given situation. Obedient, as Temple was on screen at the beginning of her short film career, or mischievous, as she became in the middle of it.

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Her manager, as is usually the case with child actors and photo models, was her mother, who not only "knocked out" huge fees for her daughter, but even demanded that scripts be rewritten if the roles of other actors overshadowed the role of her Shirley. In addition, it was this housewife, without any special education, who did what is now taught in universities - created an image that sells well. As she told her daughter: "People love kittens. You are a kitten."

The money that was paid to this child was earned by very few adults in those years. For example. In 1936, eight-year-old Shirley received a sum that today, adjusted for inflation, would be $5.25 million for filming and using her image in advertising.

She was born in 1928, a year before the Great Depression, and during this entire period she touched the hearts of Americans on the movie screens, who flocked to movie theaters in search of a distraction from the hard real life. The US President at that time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, himself advised Americans to watch films with her participation.

As a result, when Shirley was only 7 years old, a four-room bungalow with a green lawn and swings was built for her on the territory of the film studio, and a special group of 19 scriptwriters worked for her, writing more than ten scripts especially “for her”.

When the girl grew up and it turned out that she had no special acting talent (Temple's career began to decline in 1938, and she began to mature early in appearance), neither Temple herself nor the businessmen from the cinema and later television managed to understand this right away. And she still occasionally participated in films that failed, as well as radio and television programs that had to be closed quite quickly.

But later she became the US Ambassador to Ghana, and then to Czechoslovakia. However, when Temple once tried to be elected to the US House of Representatives (that is, to become a senator), Temple lost to a professional politician.

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