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America's little darling, everyone knows her but where did she come from? George Francis Temple was her father (Shirley Temple). He was born in 1888 and eventually became a banker (Shirley Temple). Her mother's name was Gertrude Amelia Krieger, she was born in 1893(Shirley Temple). They had two sons whose names were: Jack Temple and George Jr. Temple (Shirley Temple). While expecting their first daughter Gertrude played the phonograph and attended dance recitals (Shirley Temple). Finally on April 23, 1929 a beautiful baby girl was born (Shirley Temple). Shirley was a baby who would bring smiles to everyone’s face during the great depression (Hall). They named her Shirley Jane Temple. Shirley was born at 9:00 p.m. She once said " Too late for dinner, and so i started life one meal behind. Ever since then I have tried to make up for that loss"(The Official Shirley Temple Website).
Shirley began dancing extremely early (Shirley Temple). Even as early as eight months old, as she swayed back and forth in her baby crib (Shirley Temple). Her love for dancing continued. As Shirley got older she took dance lessons at Ethel Meglin Dance Studio, which was only ten miles from Hollywood (Bankston 6-7). It was the day before Thanksgiving and the family had travel plans arranged, so Shirley took dance class early that week (Bankston 7). While in a hurry her mother did not have time to curl her hair and Shirley had on very casual clothes, not knowing that this would be the day her fame would begin (Bankston 7). This is the day in 1931 that producers Jack Hays and Charles Lamont discovered Shirley (The Official Shirley Temple Website). Shirley's family became very protective of their little girl (Shirley Temple). She attende...
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...he received many awards even after her acting career had ended. In September of 2005 the Screen Actors Gold proclaimed that Shirley," who captivated the world as no other child star has done before or since, then served her country as an eminent diplomat over more than three decades"(U-S-history). She received a Life Achievement Award for her many accomplishments (U-S-history). Also, in 2005 Premiere Magazine put her at number thirty-three on the Greatest Movie Stars of all-time list (Shirley Temple). She was voted the thirty-eighth greatest movie star of all time by Entertainment Weekly (Shirley Temple). At one point, Shirley's fan club in England had 650,000 members (Lindeman). Located at 1500 Vine Street is her Hollywood Walk of Fame star (Shirley Temple). All in all, Shirley Jane Temple had a very full life and accomplished so much.
Shirley Temple was born on April 23, 1928, in Santa Monica, California at 9:00 p.m - a time significant to her because it told her she would always have a bit of catching up to do if she wanted to be on time for dinner (Black 5). As the youngest child and only girl in her family of five, she was her mother’s pride and joy. She had two supportive parents, Gertrude and George, and two older brothers, Jack and George Junior. Gertrude Temple was a stay-at-home mom while George went to work as a bank teller, which played in Shirley’s favor when she needed someone to manage her money later in life (Blashfield 55). Gertrude Temple has been called the first stage mother (Blashfield 22) for good reason. Shirley Temple was acting before she could read, so her mother helped her memorize her lines. Temple’s mother served as her private costume designer, and never failed to make the young star’s performance her best yet, by encouraging her to “Sparkle, Shirley Sparkle!” (David 2).
Lotta Crabtree was born in New York in 1847, where she spent her first few years living, before moving to Southern California. With her parents Mary Ann Crabtree a upholsterer, furniture industry, and John Ashworth Crabtree a bookseller. Her Family was attracted by the gold rush and they moved so that they could be closer to it. Her father was the first to leave in search for gold in 1851 and Lotta and her mother moved soon after. In 1852 Lotta and her mother moved to California San Francisco for the race for gold. They weren't the richest family so they moved in with their friends that had been living there.Marry encouraged her daughter Lotta to begin dancing right away and enrolled her in dance classes at a very young age. Lotta Crabtree loved acting and performing for people while she was only a 6 year old girl. The Gold rush attracted lots of people to San francisco and that gave her a chance to perform in front of a huge audience. She danced for them and they threw nuggets and coins at her for her amazing dancing. People were throwing money at her like it was nothing and she was only 6 years old. She earned about 400 dollars per show which is an astonishing amount. Her mother collected her earnings and stored them away.This was only the beginning of Lotta Crabtree’s dancing and theater career.
At eleven years old, she was discovered by Gus Edwards and performed in a dinner show called the Vaudeville Kiddie Revue. In her teenage years she could often be found dancing in clubs. Then, she started auditioning for Broadway shows. The reason she started tap dancing was because the fact that every audition she went to, she was asked to tap dance. So, she enrolled in the Jack Donahue School in New York. After her first class, she didn’t want to come back because she felt so behind. Jack called her and told her to come back, so she did. By her seventh lesson, she was finally getting good.
Gladys Smith was a small town girl that became famous as a young child. As a young child Gladys Smith no longer Gladys Smith, she was renamed by a director by the name of David Belasco. He changed her name from Gladys Smith to Mary Pickford from then on everyone has known her as Mary Pickford.
Shirley Temple Black was easily the most popular and famous child star of all time. She got her start in the movies at the age of three and soon progressed to super stardom. Shirley could do it all: act, sing and dance and all at the age of five! Fans loved her as she was bright, bouncy and cheerful in her films and they ultimately bought millions of dollars worth of products that had her likeness on them. Dolls, phonograph records, mugs, hats, dresses, whatever it was, if it had her picture on there they bought it. Shirley was box-office champion for the consecutive years 1935 to 1938, beating out such great grown-up stars as Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Robert Taylor, and many more. By 1939, her popularity declined. Although she starred in some
Dorothy West was a novel and short story writer. She was born on June 2, 1907 in
Growing up Marilyn Monroe had a very difficult childhood. First, Marilyn Monroe did not have a home to go home too so she spent most of her childhood in foster homes and orphanages.
June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles, California Norma Jeane Mortenson was born. She never knew her father and her mother is Gladys Baker, Gladys has psychiatric problems and was placed into a mental institution. One of Monroe's earliest memories of her mother is Gladys trying to smother her with a pillow in her crib (“Marilyn Monroe.”). As she grew up, she spent most of her time in eleven foster homes and one orphanage. (“18 Things...Monroe.”). Until she was seven she was in foster homes until her mother got her back but soon after her mother was declared insane and had to go to a psychiatric hospital (Bradshaw, Lauren). While Monroe was in foster homes she was sexually
Shirley Jackson grew up in a home like any other normal middle-class family. She lived with both of her parents in Burlington, California. Growing up, Shirley had a lot of tense relations with her parents, but mostly with her mother. Leslie Jackson, Shirley’s mother, set high standards for Shirley by the ways she was perceived by society and social norms. Shirley always seemed to disappoint her mother. The emotionally tearing and psychologically damaging relationship with her mother escalated to the point where her mother even told her she wished she had aborted Shirley. Roberta Rubenstein makes a great point in her work: House Mothers and Haunted Daughters: Shirley Jackson and Female Gothic, of the mental stress her mother put on her as a child that carried on throughout her life. Rubenstein says, “Throughout her life, Shirley was distressed by her mother’s profound insensitivity to her actual personality, combined with persistent attempts to control her unconven...
Judy Garland definitely had her ups and downs on her way to stardom. Garland was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Her real name is Frances Gumm, which later changed when she became a star. Her childhood was not what you could call perfect, she was forced into singing and acting by her mother. Her mother was very gifted and had many talents, when Garland was only 2 her mother saw that she had talent and made her perform all around the country. They had many other family problems due to her father's homosexuality and were many times forced to leave certain areas because of this, they sometimes even had to live out of their car because they had no where else to go. Finally Garland was signed by MGM and this was a huge step in her life and also her families. Soon after getting signed her father passed aways and this took a huge toll on Garland’s family life and career. After her father’s death and she got back to working she was faced with the problem of people telling her that her weight was a problem which s...
Marilyn Monroe, Norma Jeane Mortenson. A devious soul but a pure heart, a black past, but a bright future; she became one of the most idolized figures in society. Norma was definitely not born with a silver spoon in her mouth, and she never sugar coated her life to the media. She was straight forward which made her heavily known for her quotes such as “I learned to walk as a baby and I haven’t had a lesson since.” (Marilyn Monroe). This was the beginning to her life story as a hero. This may not seem inspiring or heroic to many by the lack of knowledge a person may have on Norma. In the depths of her quotes lay a deep, heartfelt life though. For this quote may seem sensational and comical to the ear, but Marilyn was transferred to many foster homes not really having a parent that would show her the way. What a good role model would do though, and what Norma courageously has shown society, is that when life knocks you down, get up and hit life back twice as hard. Norma Jeane Mortenson, married Jim Dougherty, and started working. Soon she created the character Marilyn Monroe, she dyed her hair blonde, wore short dresses, and she became the momentous and inspirational character that everyone saw through television, newspapers, and photos. She was one of the greatest actors, singers, and models of the nineteen forties and fifties. But like every hero they suffer and create their own demise. Jeane, Marilyn Monroe, is a shakespearean tragic hero, because like every hero she must fall.
Lena Horne was born on June 30, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents were Teddy and Edna Scottron Horne. After her father left her at the age of two in order to pursue his gambling career; her mother leaving soon after that to pursue her acting career; she went to live with her grandparents. Through her grandparents influence she became involved with organizations like the NAACP, at an early age.
Lucille Ball was the most loved television comedienne of her time. She was an American icon and is considered the first lady of television. With her strong work ethic and her determination, Lucille not only changed the face of television, she also paved the way for a lot of other female actresses.
Singer/actress Lena Horne's primary occupation was nightclub entertaining, a profession she pursued successfully around the world for more than 60 years, from the 1930s to the 1990s. In conjunction with her club work, she also maintained a recording career that stretched from 1936 to 2000 and brought her three Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989; she appeared in 16 feature films and several shorts between 1938 and 1978; she performed occasionally on Broadway, including in her own Tony-winning one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music in 1981-1982; and she sang and acted on radio and television. Adding to the challenge of maintaining such a career was her position as an African-American facing discrimination personally and in her profession during a period of enormous social change in the U.S. Her first job in the 1930s was at the Cotton Club, where blacks could perform, but not be admitted as customers; by 1969, when she acted in the film Death of a Gunfighter, her character's marriage to a white man went unremarked in the script. Horne herself was a pivotal figure in the changing attitudes about race in the 20th century; her middle-class upbringing and musical training predisposed her to the popular music of her day, rather than the blues and jazz genres more commonly associated with African-Americans, and her photogenic looks were sufficiently close to Caucasian that frequently she was encouraged to try to "pass" for white, something she consistently refused to do. But her position in the middle of a social struggle enabled her to become a leader in that struggle, speaking out in favor of racial integration and raising money for civil rights causes. By the end of the century, she could look back at a life that was never short on conflict, but that could be seen ultimately as a triumph.
Cunningham was born on April 16, 1919, in Centralia, Washington. At the age of twelve, Cunningham became interested in dance and started informal instruction. Upon graduation from high school, Cunningham began his formal dance instruction at the Cornish School of Fine and Applied Arts. After two years at the Cornish School, he studied at Mills College and at Bennington College; this is where he was invited to join Martha Graham?s dance company in 1939. Graham was an incredible dancer who also choreographed during her career. While dancing for Graham, Cunningham began to make a name for himself in the dancing community. It was with Graham?s encouragement that Cunningham started to choreograph on his own. His decision to start choreographing can be looked at as one of the most important decisions in the history of dance.