Lessons from America’s Sweetheart

I learned only yesterday that Shirley Temple, the iconic child actress, died earlier this week at age 85. Reports on her death were easy to miss. I went through my usual scan of various websites and saw nothing. I fortunately caught a buried “Shirley Temple, R.I.P.” by a writer at a political website.

I was dismayed by the sparse reaction to the loss of this woman who lived a great American life. Had Shirley Temple died 50 years ago, or even 30 years ago, the country would have stopped. People everywhere would have paused to give Temple her due. It would have been the lead in every newspaper.

But not today. Our culture is too obsessed with Miley Cyrus and gay marriage to give proper recognition to a woman who was one of the most acclaimed, respected, and even cherished Americans, a household name to children and adults alike.

When I caught the news of Temple’s death, I groaned. I braced myself to tell my two young daughters. They’ve watched Shirley Temple movies for years. To them, she’s a contemporary, another innocent little girl. When I informed my 11-year-old daughter, she frowned and said, “Oh, that’s terrible.” She was about to cry when I quickly explained that Shirley was 85 and had lived an extraordinary life. There was no reason to be sad.

For years, as my daughters and wife and I watched Temple’s old movies, particularly on the superb Turner Classic Movies channel, we’d check her date of birth, do the math, and realize that Shirley probably would be with us a while longer. That while has finally closed.

I never met Shirley Temple, but a good friend of mine who died in August knew her. Bill Clark, who was Ronald Reagan’s close friend and crucial adviser in taking down the Soviet Union, met Temple at the height of her popularity, when both were children.

Clark’s grandfather was a literal sheriff, cowboy, and California trailblazer, known throughout the Los Angeles area. Some Hollywood publicity folks contacted the senior Clark around 1936 for a local promotion. The promotion featured four-year-old little Bill pinning a badge on Shirley Temple’s vest as she was “officially” deputized by Marshal Clark.

Bill Clark always fondly recalled that moment, captured in a photo that he kept framed and that we put in his biography. He would later have pictures with the likes of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, but here was one photo he kept close to heart.

Fifty years later, Clark and Temple served together again, this time in the State Department, where Clark alas held the higher rank: he, as second in command; she, as foreign affairs officer. Temple’s old Hollywood friend, fellow Republican, and political ally, Ronald Reagan, had appointed her. She became an ambassador.

But Shirley Temple was, of course, known for film rather than politics. I cannot do justice to that storied career here, but indulge me as I share one of my favorite Shirley Temple movies.

In the 1934 classic, Bright Eyes, Shirley played a five-year-old who lost her father in an airplane crash and then lost her mother. She is comforted by loving people who would do anything for her, including her godfather, who is identified as just that. The godfather behaves like a true godfather. The movie includes constant, natural references to faith, never shying from words like God, Heaven, and even Jesus—verboten in Hollywood today.

Today’s sneering secular audiences would reflexively dismiss the film as Norman Rockwell-ish. To the contrary, the movie is hardly sugar-coated. Just when your heart is broken from the death of sweet Shirley’s dad, her mom is killed by a car while carrying a cake for Shirley on Christmas day.

What such cynics really mean is that the film isn’t sufficiently depraved for modern tastes. Shirley doesn’t pole dance or “twerk.” She doesn’t do a darling little strip tease for the boys while singing “Good Ship, Lollipop.” The references to God are not in vain or in the form of enlightening blasphemy. And the movie has a happy, not miserable, ending.

For 80 years, Shirley Temple’s bright eyes brightened the big screen. They reflected what was good and decent in this country. She embodied what made America great, and she brightened our lives in the process.

THOSE WERE THE DAYS-—No less a personage than mega-producer and Hollywood wonder-boy Irving Thalberg co-authored the Production Code, the set of moral guidelines that all film studios agreed to follow.

WIKI The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of most United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood’s chief censor of the time, Will H. Hays.

The Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), which later became the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), adopted the code in 1930, began enforcing it in 1934, and abandoned it in 1968, in favor of the subsequent MPAA film rating system. The Production Code spelled out what was acceptable and what was unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States.

The office enforcing it was popularly called the Hays Office in reference to Hays, inaccurately so after 1934 when Joseph Breen took over from Hays, creating the Breen Office, which was far more rigid in censoring films than Hays had been.

The Code enumerated a number of key points known as the “Don’ts” and “Be Carefuls”:

Resolved, That those things which are included in the following list shall not appear in pictures produced by the members of this Association, irrespective of the manner in which they are treated:

1.Pointed profanity – by either title or lip – this includes the words “God,” “Lord,” “Jesus,” “Christ” (unless they be used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies), “hell,” “damn,” “Gawd,” and every other profane and vulgar expression however it may be spelled;
2.Any licentious or suggestive nudity-in fact or in silhouette; and any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other characters in the picture;
3.The illegal traffic in drugs;
4.Any inference of sex perversion;
5.White slavery;
6.Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races);
7.Sex hygiene and venereal diseases;
8.Scenes of actual childbirth – in fact or in silhouette;
9.Children’s sex organs;
10.Ridicule of the clergy;
11.Willful offense to any nation, race or creed;

And be it further resolved, That special care be exercised in the manner in which the following subjects are treated, to the end that vulgarity and suggestiveness may be eliminated and that good taste may be emphasized:
1.The use of the flag;
2.International relations (avoiding picturizing in an unfavorable light another country’s religion, history, institutions, prominent people, and citizenry);
3.Arson;
4.The use of firearms;
5.Theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, etc. (having in mind the effect which a too-detailed description of these may have upon the moron);
6.Brutality and possible gruesomeness;
7.Technique of committing murder by whatever method;
8.Methods of smuggling;
9.Third-degree methods;
10.Actual hangings or electrocutions as legal punishment for crime;
11.Sympathy for criminals;
12.Attitude toward public characters and institutions;
13.Sedition;
14.Apparent cruelty to children and animals;
15.Branding of people or animals;
16.The sale of women, or of a woman selling her virtue;
17.Rape or attempted rape;
18.First-night scenes;
19.Man and woman in bed together;
20.Deliberate seduction of girls;
21.The institution of marriage;
22.Surgical operations;
23.The use of drugs;
24.Titles or scenes having to do with law enforcement or law-enforcing officers;

THE YEAR WAS 1964--CONSERVATIVE HOLLYWOOD STARS SPEAK OUT FOR PRAYER IN SCHOOLS

In 1964, the handsome, virile star, Anthony Eisley, emceed a "Project Prayer" rally attended by 2,500 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California.

Eisley played Tracey Steele on the "Hawaiian Eye" series, and appeared 17 times on the eight-year run of ABC's The F.B.I., with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr (another Hollywood conservative).

Eisley was later replaced on Hawaiian Eye by Hollywood icon Troy Donahue (a conservative---and practicing Catholic). Eisley also appeared three times on CBS's Perry Mason during its final three seasons.

The Hollywood gathering sought to flood the United State Congress with letters in support of school prayer, following two decisions in 1962 and 1963 of the United States Supreme Court which struck down the practice as in conflict with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Eisley declared that the nation was facing in 1964 "an ideological crisis. Movie stars and the stars of the entertainment world will tell you what you can do about it. Everything will be from the heart."

Eisley was joined at the event by Walter Brennan, on whose series The Real McCoys he had once been a guest star, Rhonda Fleming, Lloyd Nolan, Dale Evans, Pat Boone, and Gloria Swanson.

Eisely added that John Wayne, Ronald W. Reagan, Roy Rogers, Mary Pickford, Jane Russell, Ginger Rogers, and Pat Buttram would also have attended the rally had their schedules not been in conflict.

Syndicated columnist Drew Pearson claimed in his "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column that Project Prayer had "backstage ties" to the anti-Communist John Birch Society. Pearson noted that the principal author of the prayer decisions, Chief Justice Earl Warren, was a Republican former governor of California and that most mainline denominations endorsed the court's restrictive rulings.

Sylvia Sydney---staunch Republican and conservative.
Memorable co-starring w/ George Raft.
Later appeared in one of the "Omen" sequels.

Film legend Ginger Rogers was another Hollywood conservative and lifelong Republican and appeared in the Nixon-Lodge Bumper Sticker Modorcade in Los Angeles in 1960.

Her biographers all considered Rogers to have been Fred Astaire's finest dance partner, principally because of her ability to combine dancing skills, natural beauty, and exceptional abilities as a dramatic actress and comedienne, thus truly complementing Astaire, a peerless dancer who sometimes struggled as an actor and was not considered classically handsome. The resulting song and dance partnership enjoyed a unique credibility in the eyes of audiences.

Loretta Young was a lifelong Republican. In 1952 she appeared in radio, print, and magazine ads in support of Dwight D. Eisenhower and was in attendance at his inauguration along with Anita Louise, Louella Parsons, Jane Russell, Dick Powell, June Allyson, and comic Lou Costello, among others.

In both 1968 and 1981 she was a vocal supporter of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. She was also an active member of the Hollywood Republican Committee with close friend Irene Dunne as well as Ginger Rogers, William Holden, George Murphy, Fred Astaire, and John Wayne.

Superstar director Leo McCarey was a devout Roman Catholic and deeply concerned with social issues. He was considered the most handsome director in Hollywood---a Cary Grant look-alike.

During the 1940s, McCarey's work became more serious and his politics more conservative. In 1944 he directed Going My Way, a story about an enterprising priest, the youthful Father Chuck O'Malley, played by Bing Crosby, for which McCarey won his second Best Director Oscar.

McCarey's share in the profits of this smash hit gave him the highest reported income in the U.S. for the year 1944, and its follow-up, The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), which was made by McCarey's own production company, was similarly successful.

Going My Way also produced the fanciful hit song sung by Bing, "Would you like to swing on a star."

Gloria Swanson 1922

Swanson's most celebrated role--was as faded silent star Norma Desmond--1950. In 1980 Gloria Swanson chaired the New York chapter of "Seniors for Reagan-Bush". In 1964, Swanson spoke at the "Project Prayer" rally attended by 2,500 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Swanson declared, "Under God we became the freest, strongest, wealthiest nation on earth, Should we change that?"

The gathering, which was hosted by Anthony Eisley, a star of ABC's Hawaiian Eye series, sought to flood the United States Congress with letters in support of school prayer, following two decisions in 1962 and 1963 of the United States Supreme Court which struck down the practice as in conflict with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Joining Swanson and Eisley at the Project Prayer rally were Walter Brennan, Lloyd Nolan, Rhonda Fleming, Pat Boone, and Dale Evans.

Both Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were Republicans. Comic star ZaSu Pitts was a staunch Republican---she mentored starlet Nancy Davis (Reagan).

John Payne--memorable as Santa's attorney in the Christimas perennial. "Miracle on 34th Street"----was a staunch Republican and in October 1960 he was among conservative notables who drove in the LA Nixon-Lodge Bumper Sticker Motorcade. Teenidol singer Connie Francis appeared at GW Bush presidential campaign rallies.

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