Shirley Temple Thesis

Lisa Wadman
Dance
Summer Semester
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple was the greatest child star who ever lived, but the work her movies accomplished was mostly for the benefit of adults. That’s true in the economic sense, of course: from 1935 to
1938, when she was between the ages of seven and ten, Temple was the biggest box-office draw in Hollywood, and it was her popularity that pushed Fox Studios into the black. In 1935, when
Fox merged with Twentieth Century, Temple was the guest of honor at a grand banquet to celebrate the deal, and one of the other guests picked her up. A horrified silence fell on the room as the combined bankers, business executives, producers and moneylenders realized that the gentleman was holding all the assets of the

The loss of innocence of our children is a national disgrace; the yielding of values that protected their innocence is cause for mourning. We are dealing with a culture that is hell-bent on destroying any semblance of the traditional American reverence for protecting the innocent.

The death of Shirley Temple at the age of 85 left many fans and movie buffs alike saddened.
Shirley was the icon of exactly how joyful a childhood can be without the burdens of matters that more properly belonged to adults, people should see this as a wake-up call for those of us who still believe in the innocence of children and a clarion call to action to take our culture back from those who seek to steal that innocence away.
Thank you, Shirley, for giving us images that we can use to remember what innocence was and inspire us to fight to restore it.
SOURCES:
www.shirleytemple.com