FIVE SHIRLEY TEMPLE FACTS:

Shirley Temple began acting at age three and retired from Hollywood in 1950 at age 22. The film website IMDb.com lists 61 acting credits, from an uncredited role as Lulu Parsnips in the 1932 short Runt Page to Corliss Archer in A Kiss for Corliss, 1949. She was Hollywood’s top box-office draw four years in a row (1935-38, inclusive).

After an unsuccessful run for U.S. Congress, she went on to become a U.S. representative to the United Nations and U.S. ambassador to Ghana and later Czechoslovakia.

Shirley Temple was presented with the first Academy Award ever given to a child, for her role as Shirley Blake in her first big hit, Bright Eyes (1934). It was a special Oscar, about half the size of a regular one. She was then the youngest person ever to be listed in Who’s Who, and was also the youngest person ever to be spotlighted on the cover of Time Magazine.

The dog Terry (played by Rags) in Bright Eyes is the same dog that played Toto in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Bright Eyes also features her signature song, On the Good Ship Lollipop.

Shirley Temple’s co-stars have included Adolphe Menjou (Little Miss Marker, 1934); Robert Young (Stowaway, 1936); George Murphy and Jimmy Durante (Little Miss Broadway, 1938); Bill Bojangles Robinson (The Littlest Rebel, 1935, and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, 1938); Cary Grant (The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, 1947); and John Wayne (Fort Apache, 1948).