Shirley Temple: The Tragic Life of America's Sweetheart

shirley temple was one of the first child stars to ever exist she had an incredibly successful career in hollywood but it was also extremely dark shirley was exploited at the age of three years old and from that point on it was surely against the predators the amount of trauma that she had to go through in the industry is unacceptable so let's get into it [Music] if you care about saving the environment and living in a clean home then you will love this brand blue land offers everyday products without single use plastic packaging for their cleaning products all you need is this nickel sized tablet and one of their reusable bottles all products are made without hard chemicals and blue land has been epa approved by switching from traditional cleaners to blue land you can save a ton of money stop paying five or six dollars for wasteful plastic bottles and invest in blue lands two dollar tablets let me show you how it works so you fill your forever bottle with warm to hot water drop in one of blue lands tablets into the bottle and wait for the tablet to fully dissolve then in minutes you have a brand new cleaner without having to shake or stir the bottle i got the clean essential kit and it came with four reusable bottles and four different cleaning tablets the tablets coordinate to their bottles so there's no confusion i can't wait to continue to clean with blue land and i want you guys to try it out all you have to do is click my link in the description below to get 20 off your first kit you won't want to miss this deal blue land ships to the us canada the uk australia and new zealand so gift a kit to a loved one or start your own blue land cleaning journey thank you blueland for sponsoring this video and enjoy so shirley temple was a leading child star back in the great depression she starred in projects like bright eyes and captain journey and when her rendition of the song on a good ship lollipop became famous in the 1930s she earned a special academy award [Music] as an adult shirley took on some acting roles but that was before she decided to go into politics she was actually a us diplomat for the united nations so it's cool that she had a career in hollywood and then decided to go into politics which are both very different fields but still public facing but in today's video i want to focus on the dark times that shirley survived during her childhood she was born on april 23 1928 in santa monica california when she was just three years old she landed a contract with a company called educational pictures she made her acting debut in a film series called baby burlesque which is really disgusting to think about because back in the great depression i guess people enjoyed watching young children three-year-olds four-year-olds and two-year-olds act inappropriately with each other and that was the basis of this film series so baby burlesque is a series of eight short little mini films and these mini films are all very edgy and a little bit risky for young toddlers to be playing the children dress in adult costumes but they're still wearing a diaper so it's a weird in-between of acting like an adult but still being a visibly young child one of the baby burlesque shorts was titled polytics in washington where a four-year-old shirley temple plays a mistress who pretty much goes to a senator's office to go and seduce him to make him work in her favor it's really gross because she walks into the room and she acknowledges that she was sent to come and entertain this man and it's already instilling this mindset in a three-year-old girl that this is how the world works and here's a little clip from that short hello i'm polly pix boss flip i sent me over to entertain you [Music] i think you are wonderful away [Music] well if you feel that way about it i'll go wait i think you're the most beautiful woman i have ever seen you're gorgeous you're rivers so i watched that entire short film and it was really weird but the first time shirley ever had a speaking role on film was in 1932 it was part of this baby burlesque series and it was a short titled war babies boys [Music] absolutely no copy time so a three-year-old shirley temple is playing an exotic dancer in this film and pretty much she is bouncing around from soldier baby to soldier baby to collect their lollipops and kind of like cheat on them and it's a weird setup because she's like treated like an object in the little film [Music] and it looks like these army baby soldiers little actors were all about shirley and trying to be the one to win her over so those were just two short films in this baby burlesque series which probably should have never happened but i guess the 1930s were a different time period shirley did speak about the series in her autobiography and she wrote that it was a cynical exploitation of our childish innocence she also shared that whenever any of the baby actors acted up so if they were i guess hungry and crying or not doing what they were told they were put into a punishment room pretty much it was a sound booth dubbed the punishment box where they would be forced to sit on a block of ice shirley actually said it was so uncomfortable to be doing this and once you messed up a few times you never wanted to go back to the punishment box it's crazy to me that none of the adults that were working on this project thought to follow child labor laws i mean at this point there probably weren't even child labor laws but i can't imagine feeling okay with sending a three-year-old to a soundproof box to go sit on ice it just doesn't sound right to me so it doesn't seem like any of the adults who worked on that project truly cared about the children's well-being and shirley actually shares that she had to have an operation to her eardrum once and she was forced to work right after there was also another occasion where shirley was forced to dance on a injured foot just making it so much worse so why were these adults treating these children so poorly by 1934 america was in love with shirley they could not get enough of her after the film bright eyes and this must have added a lot of pressure to shirley because they were back in the great depression so everyone was struggling and they were looking to shirley for a good time even president franklin roosevelt called shirley little miss miracle for raising the public's morale during times of economic hardship he was even quoted saying as long as our country has shirley temple we will be all right so i can't even begin to imagine how shirley was feeling because not only did her family depend on her financially but the rest of the country was looking to her for entertainment and to get out of their depressed life now let's get back to shirley's childhood because one of the biggest disappointments in her career was when she wasn't cast for the series the wizard of oz she was already so obsessed with the storyline and she was prepared to go and play the role but unfortunately the role was given to judy garland but in hindsight it probably saved shirley from being s a'd another time because judy later on revealed that she was physically harmed on the set of that series if you guys want me to talk about judy garland and all she went through leave a comment below because it was bad so even though shirley was disappointed that she didn't get the role she could have been potentially harmed while working on that set because judy was but when shirley was only 12 years old a producer named arthur freed exposed himself to the young girl so at the age of 12 shirley was at the top of her game and she actually decided to switch management companies and she signed with a company named metro goldwyn mayer or mgm supposedly this agency was notorious for running their child stars into the ground by forcing them to shoot film after film the agency tried its best to capitalize off of their young actors and actresses so they try to get as many movies done as soon as possible so they definitely overworked their child stars shirley wrote in her autobiography that during her first visit to mgm this producer arthur freed invited her to a private meeting and then this guy unzipped his trousers and exposed himself to her saying i have something made just for you she responded by giggling nervously and he threw her out of his office he went on to produce films such as annie get your gun and singing in the rain so i don't know maybe the giggling turned him off but like what type of man is over here trying to present himself to a 12 year old this guy is a sicko less than five years after this incident shirley was violated again at this point shirley was just 17 years old and the man who tried to sa her is a producer named david a woman named anita colby actually warned shirley about david because she said that she found him in stockings uh shirley wrote this in her autobiography and this gave her the impression that casually hooking up could be a condition of employment so it seems like shirley was hooking up with this guy david so that he would give her roles in film this is what she wrote in her book coming around my side of the desk he reached and took my hand glancing down i saw the telltale stocking feet pulling free i turned for the door but even more quickly he reached back over the edge of his desk and flicked a switch i had learned from colby was a remote door locking device oh my gosh so that reminds me of like that matt baller lawler guy your wire i feel like i'm saying his last name wrong anyways she writes i was trapped like the cartoon of wolf and piglet once again we circled and reversed directions around his furniture blessed with the agility of a young dancer and confronted by an enormous but overweight producer i had little difficulty avoiding passionate clumsiness so it doesn't even really sound like that was a casual or consensual situation to me it sounds like he locked the door pushed a button and trapped her in there and she described herself as a piglet and this producer as a wolf so he was trying to prey on a little shirley and make her get physical with him and unfortunately this became far too common in shirley's life because she had a bunch of different predators trying to pursue her in her book she writes about one hollywood producer but she doesn't flat out name him and she shares that once he tried to hit on her she told him no and then he told her look i'm gonna be a big executive we're gonna have to get along what i had in mind was just a workplace formality getting physical is like a glass of water you get thirsty you drink you want to get physical you have it so again trying to set the expectations that shirley would hook up with him and turn for movie roles and keep in mind guys that was just one of the hollywood creeps there are so many of them like this guy george jessel he once invited shirley into his office to discuss a very important role which doesn't add up to me and of course he tried to violate her she wrote about this in her book and this is what she had to say we were standing a pace apart eyeball to eyeball in one swift movement he opened his trousers and with a sudden reach encircled me with one arm i could feel his other hand groping to lift my shirt hard on the heels of the wizard this new essay seemed unreal but little could i do but thrust my right knee upward into his groin so she was fighting against this guy pain disgust and hate flickered across his face but i felt no mercy more and more the adult movie business seemed populated with a bunch of copulating tomcats which is a nice way of saying a bunch of predators so it's clear that shirley was struggling behind the scenes with all of these creepy executives trying to get with her but she was also struggling in the public light because there were some people who were writing really inappropriate things about shirley she actually ended up suing this guy named graham green because he wrote very inappropriate things about the young star when writing about shirley in the film captain january he wrote her neat and well-developed rump twisted in the tap dance which uh keep in mind she was no older than eight years old in this film so why is he writing about her butt in his 1937 review of wee willy winky what a weird name he wrote wearing short kilts she is a complete totsi which i don't think that sounds like a good word watch the way she measures a man with the agile studio eyes with dimpled depravity adult emotions of love and grief glissade across the mask of childhood a childhood skin deep i don't know exactly what he's saying here because some of those words are confusing but obviously he's calling her like inappropriate because of how she i guess is able to seduce a man on camera i don't really know what he's saying he also wrote her admirers middle-aged men and clergymen respond to her dubious coker tree which i believe means like you know being flirty uh to the site of her well-shaped and desirable little body ew packed with enormous vitality only because the safety curtain of the story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire weird so she ended up suing this guy for uh defamation i believe and she actually won which good because why is he talking about a little girl like this like nobody should be allowed to do this now let's jump to the year 1939 because in that year the film the little princess was released and a woman actually accused shirley of stealing the soul of her daughter and that same woman tried to take shirley's life so a lot happened in that year so back in 1939 shirley was hired to perform the song silent night at some radio performance and during that live performance some woman tried to assassinate shirley because she believed that she stole her daughter's soul and she actually thought that if she was able to successfully shoot shirley that once she passed away her daughter's soul would come back to life i guess or would go back into her daughter [Music] that is so scary to think about because it makes me think about selena and how she lost her life because some crazy fan came and took it so that could have been surely if this woman was successful but in all actuality this woman wasn't the worst thing to happen to shirley because there were so many rumors and lies spread about this young girl i can't imagine how she was feeling back in the day reading these things so one of the popular rumors was that shirley wasn't a kid at all but she was rather an elderly little person and that's why she was small and played these child roles but in fact she was an adult she actually wrote in her autobiography that this rumor was so popular that the vatican sent someone to come and investigate her to see if it was true which is so weird why is the church getting involved this was a big big rumor because people would even talk about the fact that she never lost her teeth because she was a child star so wouldn't she have gaps in her teeth but she shared that when you know she was filming they would go and fill in the gaps so she didn't have a bunch of gaps in her teeth which is i mean that makes sense to me but i guess uh people are just trying to find anything to grasp at for this theory people also tried to make it seem like shirley was wearing some type of wig so people would actually go and grab her hair like when she was out in public and fans saw her they would grab her hair and would pull it to see if it was real so she had to go through a lot because people couldn't believe that she was a real person so shirley lived a very full life and she did a lot unfortunately her first husband john agar was an alcoholic and he got physical with her actually back in 1949 she sued her husband on the grounds of mental cruelty he was constantly cheating on her he was getting arrested while drunk driving and he was a horrible husband so thankfully she got herself out of that relationship shirley did end up remarrying right after her divorce with john she married a man named charles and they actually were together until he passed away in 2005. and as i was researching about shirley's life i was trying to find people who were advocates for her like who were those people who were standing up for her back when she was a child star and it doesn't look like her parents were really that supportive they looked at her as a money-making machine and they spent a lot of her money shirley actually had to forgive her father for robbing her blind her parents would divvy up the money and would put some into an account for shirley but really they were spending all of the money that she worked for at shirley's peak she was making about ten thousand dollars a week and she made about 3.2 million dollars over her childhood but when she looked at her bank accounts she only had 44 000 dollars in it because her father had failed to place her childhood earnings and the court-ordered trust fund so she actually wrote about how she had to forgive her father because he stole like all of her money can you imagine working your entire childhood to finally become an adult and understand the impact of your work and everything you did and like to look back on your bank accounts and to see wait hold up all the money i was paid for this work is gone and her parents just stole it and spent it and that's why we really need really strict uh like child star protective laws because these parents can get away with making a ton off their kids and then the kids are left with nothing after working their entire childhood shirley temple was stripped of her innocence at the age of three years old and she had to go through hell and back honestly bless her for surviving through all of that and telling her story because we really don't want another shirley temple ever again but i want to hear what you guys think in the comments below here is my email if you guys have any other video ideas for me do you have any other things like related to shirley temple you want me to talk about what about the judy story anything else feel free to reach out to me let's go ahead and open a p.o box package item okay so it looks like this package is from victoria and it looks like uh uh they're located i think i can't tell if this is the west coast or the east coast but anyways let's go ahead and open it i love the packaging and also it's got a really cool sticker so go and check out their shop it looks like it's called like a girl so everything will be listed below let's go ahead and see what's going on in here oh i love the packages where i can just like rip it open like this okay so here is a letter sl04n um hi sloane i hope you're doing well love all of your videos i've been watching you for a while and i love your coverage of the free britney movement but my favorite video ever is the one you did about amy winehouse it was so beautiful how you spoke about her oh i love her so much um the tribute she deserved but never got uh my name is victoria and i started a small clothing business not too long ago i was scared to send you something because i don't want to pressure you or use you for a free shout out don't worry about it use me all you want um my brand is called like a girl athletics club i chose the name because i wanted to show that doing things like a girl is super dope and empowering uh and being in looking athletic is beautiful so why not make it a club oh i love that idea i've included a pink hoodie for you in honor of breast cancer awareness month i hope you enjoy since i'm so new my custom cards and stickers are oh haven't come in yet so i will list everything below you guys go and check out her site happy filming sloan never give up on and stay handsome and loving um hearing i have a new video for you guys because gives me life a forever supporter victoria oh my gosh victoria that was so sweet i really i'm gonna cherish this letter it's so sweet and just like everything i like could wish for in a subscriber was just like described there but um let's go ahead and check out her sweatshirt i'm so excited about this too so it looks like i do get a sticker a few stickers here which is really exciting i actually really love the branding because it's very classic looking i love like classic branding and then let's go ahead and see i actually just got this sweatshirt from a subscriber so i'm really excited for all these new sweaters for the winter time oh and look this is so cute oh my gosh so it says lag so like a girl and oh my gosh this would be such a good like photo shoot moment it feels really good i love how it's in like embroidered i think that's the word i don't even know how you would do that so congrats on that this is awesome oh my gosh i'm so excited about it thank you so much i can't wait to wear it victoria and congrats on your brand i'm wishing you luck and everything will be listed below so go and support our business and i'll see you guys in a new video soon bye guys [Music]

Channel: SLOAN

Views: 798,429

Keywords: shirley temple, shirley temple movies, shirley temple interview, shirley temple childhood, wizard of oz

Id: 1AJH6709Kpw

Length: 24min 41sec (1481 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 02 2021