Shirley Temple in 1934, Part 1: Tracking the Rise

The most popular child star in the world at New Year’s 1934 was Ronald Overacker, better known to those who remember as Baby LeRoy.

Born in May 1932, LeRoy captured the heart of the public in the April 1933 Paramount release A Bedtime Story, starring Maurice Chevalier. The youngster achieved his greatest fame alongside W.C. Fields, who infamously spiked LeRoy’s bottle with gin to sedate the nose-tugging toddler during the first of three films together. That’s what Baby LeRoy is best remembered for. But the height of his meteoric fame may be best expressed by a Pittsburgh Press headline from late October 1933, not long after his first release with Fields: “Baby LeRoy Is Czar – Not Even Garbo Has His Privileges in Movie Studio.” My goodness!

LeRoy had long been displaced from the top of the kiddie heap by the time of his final film appearance, 1935’s It’s a Great Life, by not only the top child star in the world but the personality who had become the biggest movie star of them all, regardless of age. By the time of Baby LeRoy’s aborted 1939 comeback attempt, Shirley Temple was still starring in hit movies for Twentieth Century-Fox, though that would change within another year.

One can almost see the torch being passed over two pages published in the September 1934 edition of Hollywood magazine under the headline “Baby LeRoy’s First Date.” It was with older woman Shirley, then 6 to LeRoy’s 2, who shared space in every photo and was named in each caption. Baby LeRoy is the focal point; Shirley plays support. I can’t be certain of Hollywood’s lead time in putting this particular feature together, but I do know that they asked their readers, “Are you Shirley Temple-conscious yet?” as early as their July 1934 issue, a full three months before publishing photos of Shirley’s date with LeRoy. Assuming copies of the September edition hit newsstands in August, or even July, Hollywood had starred the wrong actor in their feature.

In July 1934, just as the Shirley Temple phenomenon was reaching critical mass, columnist Molly Merrick wrote, “Her reign is estimated at seven years duration—the maximum for a child actress.

Of course, Shirley Temple’s reign transcended that of mere “child actress” as she became the most popular movie star in America from 1935 through 1938. While I’m sure Miss Merrick could have never guessed the level of stardom soon approaching for Shirley Temple, she nearly pinpointed the length of the first leg of Shirley’s career.

During the past week since her death I have tried to grasp not so much the level of Shirley Temple’s stardom, but to pinpoint the moment in time that the phenomenon began. Just when did America become “Shirley Temple-conscious” as Hollywood magazine put it. It’s no mystery really, it began when Shirley and James Dunn performed “Baby, Take a Bow” in Fox Film’s all-star revue Stand Up and Cheer!, which had its premiere in New York, April 19, 1934 and nationwide, May 4, 1934.

Prior to Stand Up and Cheer! Temple had appeared in a number of one-reel Baby Burlesks at Educational Pictures and after that Educational’s Frolics of Youth series of two-reelers. The Frolics shorts were distributed to theaters by Fox, who signed Temple to a deal in February 1934, soon after Educational folded. Shirley played bits in a few features before Stand Up and Cheer!, but what really propelled her forward in a hurry was when Paramount piggybacked that initial success by borrowing Shirley for a featured role in Little Miss Marker, which opened June 1, 1934.

Now if you’re like me, these dates are interesting, but they aren’t much more than distant calendar pages for us to relate to. My bet is that if YouTube had existed in 1934, the Stand Up and Cheer! clip would have gone viral and created an even more instant peak than the one Shirley Temple ascended to by the end of 1934. While Stand Up and Cheer! and Little Miss Marker were a formidable one-two punch, the public barely had time to catch their breath before Shirley was reunited with James Dunn in the June 30 release Baby Take a Bow back at her home studio, Fox.

Shirley made more headlines in July by winning a substantial raise from the original $150 per week she had signed for at Fox. In response to the various amounts reported by the press as Shirley’s new salary, trade paper Film Daily offered the best headline: “Anyway, Shirley Gets Paid.”

Before the Summer was out, Shirley was back in theaters for Paramount once again, stealing scenes from Gary Cooper in Now and Forever, also starring Carole Lombard. After that the public had a little time to stew before the next wave of Shirley Temple films.

That wave began with Bright Eyes, Shirley’s final release of 1934 and the first role home studio Fox had created especially for their new and unexpected star. The movie premiered in New York, December 20 and nationwide December 28. While her fame soared to new levels with this release, highlighted by her performance of “On the Good Ship Lollipop,” it was impossible for anyone to realize that Shirley Temple’s future was even brighter come 1935.

I’ll be back in a few days with capsule reviews for each of Shirley Temple’s five major 1934 feature film releases, but please do keep reading below for an entirely different view of Shirley’s rise throughout 1934.

By the Numbers

Keeping that timeline for 1934 in mind, I thought an interesting exercise towards better quantifying Shirley Temple’s first blast to stardom came in seeking out just how often she was mentioned in the papers throughout that year. We’re not checking for context here, just mentions. It could be features, movie reviews and even ads, for movies with Shirley Temple or products marketing her image. I’m treating them all equal here in an unscientific attempt to judge how often the young star was simply mentioned in the press.

I began with NewspaperArchive.com, which offers a huge database of various newspapers, mostly American, but does not include most of the better known newspapers from the major markets. We’ll get to a couple of those below, but what I like about using NewspaperArchive for a project like this is the sheer quantity of newspapers they have on hand. That combined with their date-based search provide the tools to create a decent comparative view of how often someone got their name in the paper.

For instance, a search of Shirley Temple for the entire year of 1933 returned just 13 results. This was during the Baby Burlesks/Frolics of Youth period, before signing with Fox and beginning to be featured. Whether they be ads for movies that she is named in or the same report syndicated over numerous papers on a nearby date the term “Shirley Temple” shows up just 13 times in 1933.

It shows up 6,240 times in 1934.

And 13,883 times in 1935.

That number begins a slow decline after 1936 with significant drops coming from 1939 to 1940 (7,133 to 5,035) and an even sharper decline from 1940 to 1941 (5,035 to 2,820).

In short, year-to-year the number followed a somewhat expected path. So what about month-to-month throughout 1934?

3 mentions of Shirley Temple in January 1934
25 – February
30 – March
23 – April
204 – May with Stand Up and Cheer! in release
511 – June with Little Miss Marker in release
1,043 – July with Baby Take a Bow in release
865 – August, no new releases until August 31
991 – September, Now and Forever released August 31
907 – October, no new releases
623 – November, still no new releases
1,015 – December with Bright Eyes premiering late in the month.

To further measure Shirley’s popularity in the press, a similar NewspaperArchive search for Clark Gable in December 1934 called up a total of 428 mentions (587 fewer than Shirley). Mae West was mentioned 579 times that same month. Bing Crosby 383. W.C. Fields 284 and first date Baby LeRoy 204.

Will Rogers actually topped Shirley with 1,223 mentions, but Rogers was also acclaimed as the most popular film star of 1934, an honor Shirley Temple wouldn’t take over until the following year, during which Rogers perished in an air crash. And while Rogers also topped Shirley in mentions throughout all of 1934, Shirley Temple outdid Clark Gable by just under 100 mentions in this, the year of It Happened One Night. Pretty impressive considering that Shirley practically spots the King all of January through April (West also beat her, but Temple outdid Crosby for the year as well. Shirley also blew away Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer).

Anna Sten? No contest. Shirley bested her 6,240 to 1,079.

Since NewspaperArchive gives such a wide view I decided to narrow the focus some in a few additional searches. Being an East Coaster I first thought of the New York Times. While the Times does allow us to search by year and even exact dates, I did notice that the totals of my monthly searches for 1934 did not add up to the same number as my total for all of 1934 (This actually does compute correctly for the NewspaperArchive searches). I don’t think this is too big a deal overall as, once again, these numbers are for comparative purposes only.

The term “Shirley Temple” called up the following results in the New York Times for each month of 1934:

0 mentions in January
1 – February
1 – March
3 – April
9 – May (Stand Up and Cheer!)
4 – June (Little Miss Marker)
15 – July (Baby Take a Bow)
1 – August
7 – September (Now and Forever, August 31)
5 – October
9 – November
12 – December (Bright Eyes)

Shirley’s rise was nearly echoed internationally, or at least in Australia, where several leading newspaper archives are compiled into the Trove database. After being mentioned just twice throughout the calendar year 1933, Shirley Temple next gains mention in this collected Australian press come April 1934. The month-to-month:

3 mentions in April
1 – May
9 – June
43 – July
115 – August
162 – September
185 – October
176 – November
141 – December
264 – January 1935

I included January 1935 since Bright Eyes didn’t open in the US until late in the month of December 1934 and presumably premiered at an even later date overseas. Judging by the January 1935 spike in Trove, my guess is January 1935.

Perhaps the best Shirley Temple search in a single newspaper is the Los Angeles Times, which not only covers Hollywood happenings from more local origins, but whose ProQuest archives allow you to select the type of mention you’re searching for. For Shirley Temple I selected the “Article” search, which should remove ads and other less relevant searches.

For 1934:

0 mentions in January
1 – February
1 – March
3 – April
9 – May (Stand Up and Cheer!)
4 – June (Little Miss Marker)
15 – July (Baby Take a Bow)
1 – August
7 – September (Now and Forever as of August 31)
5 – October
9 – November
12 – December (Bright Eyes)

A small sample from each, at least when compared to NewspaperArchive.com, but the L.A. Times search compares similarly to the N.Y. Times throughout 1934.

Finally, I touched upon Shirley’s press appearances year-to-year in the section covering NewspaperArchive up above. How did she fare on each coast year-to-year over her peak time of stardom?

First, the New York Times:

1933 – 5 mentions
1934 – 83
1935 – 125
1936 – 139
1937 – 160
1938 – 143
1939 – 108
1940 – 128
1941 – 73
1942 – 33

And then the Los Angeles Times, again searching just articles:

1933 – 4 mentions
1934 – 142
1935 – 174
1936 – 207
1937 – 212
1938 – 208
1939 – 178
1940 – 80
1941 – 109
1942 – 65

The reason I went to the trouble of listing these numbers is simple. You can tell me how big a star Shirley Temple was–and actually that’s what I set out to do–but those are just words. You can tell me she was box office champion of 1935 through 1938 and I’m impressed. I can see how her performance with James Dunn in Stand Up and Cheer! brought her to the public’s attention and I can appreciate how an expanded role in Little Miss Marker put her over even better. But just saying that Shirley Temple was one of the all-time great Hollywood stars and rattling off a bunch of famous film titles to prove the point doesn’t get me to do much more than nod in agreement and let my mind soon wander elsewhere.

For me these numbers give some perspective to the rise of Shirley Temple. I can see an incremental rise in interest growing from May into June and July of 1934. Those early film titles and what they meant for Shirley are put into greater context knowing that she followed her Summer coming out with a bona fide Christmas hit in Bright Eyes.

The legend only grows from there. As the yearly numbers help to show, at least until they begin to decline.