This Day in Tap History - Shirley Temple

Stacie Strong | Apr 23, 2008 | 0

Born April 23, 1928, Shirley Temple was one of the greatest child stars of all time as well as one of the most well-known tap dancers of her day.  Despite her youth, Temple was paired with the great Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in four films and worked with him as choreographer in several others.  However, Temple was far more than a novelty act.

Here's Temple with Robinson in their version of Robinson's famous stair dance.

Temple began dance lessons at the age of three and was discovered in 1931 when a casting agent visited her class.  Although she reportedly hid behind the piano during his visit, she still managed to catch his eye and was signed by Educational Pictures that year.  Quickly getting over her initial shyness, she became the epitome of the child professional, always coming to the set with her lines and choreography memorized.  She was a quick study and, by all reports, a joy to work with on the set.  However, it wasn't until she moved to Paramount Pictures in 1934 that she started making the films that would make her internationally famous.

Said to be one of the few beacons of light during the Depression years (President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once famously said that "as long as we have Shirley Temple, we will be all right"), Temple's bubbly personality helped shape tap's reputation as a cheerful, upbeat art form.  However, her onscreen charisma was equally matched by her talent.  Though Bill Robinson toned down some of his more difficult steps to work with her (since it would not do, in the segregated society of the 1930s, to have an African American man show more skill than a young Caucasian girl), he reputedly found her to be a very accomplished dancer, and Temple held his memory dear long after his death.  The pair performed together in four films, two in 1935 - "The Little Colonel" and "The Littlest Rebel" - and two in 1938 - "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms" and "Just Around the Corner."   In 1935, Temple won a special Juvenile Performer award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the youngest to receive that award and the youngest person to receive any Oscar until 1974, when Tatum O'Neal won for Best Supporting Actress.

Though Temple was a versatile "triple threat," with skills as a singer, dancer and actor, she experienced problems finding appropriate roles when she went through the transition to adolescence and young adulthood.  Ironically, although Temple helped create the concept of the movie musical, she never appeared in the large scale Technicolor productions that we now associate with Hollywood musical stars such as Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, and she retired from films in 1949.  Although she dabbled in television during the 1950s and early 1960s, she found her true passion in the late 1960s, when she began an entirely new career as a diplomat, serving as the U.S. ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia as well as a delegate to the United Nations.  She was involved with many charities and was the first celebrity to speak about having breast cancer.  

Temple currently lives in Northern California.  Happy Birthday, Shirley!

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