Shirley Temple began acting at three. They made her sit in a windowless box as 'punishment'.

When you think of Shirley Temple, you think of a cherubic toddler with chubby cheeks and blonde ringlets. 

You think of a child star, who rose to fame early, and had the kind of glitzy childhood full of film sets and movie premieres that other kids could only dream of. 

But Temple's reality was far darker than that. 

In 1932, when she was just three years old, Temple was scouted by Charles Lamont, a casting director for the now defunct studio, Educational Pictures. In the following years, the studio made a series of eight shorts called Baby Burlesks, in which Temple starred alongside other toddlers in nappies, satirising Hollywood movies and current affairs. She later recalled Lamont saying on set, "This isn’t playtime, kids, it’s work." 

Image: Getty. 

Her first short, War Babies, saw Temple play an exotic dancer named Charmaine who works in a bar for soldiers. In the short, she dances around the bar in an off-the-shoulder top and is watched by toddlers playing 'army men', with big safety pins in their nappies. 

Two of the soldiers give her lollipops and call her 'baby'. 

In Polly Tix in Washington, she plays some kind of mistress/sex worker to a senator, who is also played by a toddler. In one scene, she receives a phone call, telling her to seduce the senator to "get him to work". She arrives at his office, draped in pearls, and tells him she's there to "entertain" him. 

Later, she wraps her arms around him and kisses him twice on the mouth. 

In her 1988 memoir Child Star: An Autobiography, Temple described the Baby Burlesks series as "a cynical exploitation of our childish innocence". 

If the content of these shorts wasn't problematic enough, what was going on behind the scenes was even more sinister. 

According to historian and author John Kassan, to maintain order on a set full of toddlers, the director deployed a range of cruel and unusual punishments on the child actors. Including locking them in a windowless box and forcing them to sit on a block of ice. 

"To threaten and punish uncooperative child actors, the director, Charles Lamont, kept a soundproof black box, six feet on each side, containing a block of ice. An offending child was locked within this dark, cramped interior and either stood uncomfortably in the cold, humid air or had to sit on the ice," he wrote in The Cultural Turn in U. S. History: Past, Present, and Future. 

When Temple tried to tell her mother about the box, she was instantly dismissed and accused of making it up. "Far as I can tell, the black box did no lasting damage to my psyche. Its lesson of life, however, was profound and unforgettable. Time is money. Wasted time means wasted money means trouble," she later wrote in her memoir. 

Temple's breakthrough role came in May 1934, when she starred in Stand Up and Cheer! In December, she starred in Bright Eyes with James Dunn, a film written specially for her. By the end of the year, she had starred in 10 films. 

Between 1932 and 1949, Temple performed in over 40 films. For three years, she was Hollywood's top box office star, taking the title from Hollywood heartthrob Clark Gable.

But her roles remained highly sexualised and looking back through a 2023 lens, they make for deeply uncomfortable watching. 

In Bright Eyes, Temple sings the song 'On The Good Ship Lollipop' in a painfully short babydoll dress, while being carried, held, and groped by an ensemble of around a dozen grown men. In 1936's Poor Little Rich Girl, there are a series of scenes in which the child actor is once again groped by grown men.

This was going on behind the scenes too. 

Temple recalled in her 1988 memoir a meeting with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer, Arthur Freed, when she was just 12 years old. During the meeting, Freed allegedly exposed himself to the child actor. When she responded with nervous laughter, he kicked her out of his office. 

"With his face gaped in a smile, he stood up abruptly and executed a bizarre flourish of clothing. Having thought of him as a producer rather than an exhibitor, I sat bolt upright..." she recalled wryly. 

"Not 12 years old, I still had little appreciation for masculine versatility and so dramatic was the leap between schoolgirl speculation and Freed’s bedazzling exposure that I reacted with nervous laughter. 

"Disdain or terror he might have expected, but not the insult of humour. 'Get out!' he shouted, unmindful of his disarray, imperiously pointing to the closed door. 'Go on, get out!'" 

When she was 17, she had an encounter with producer David O. Selznick of Selznick International Pictures. 

"Coming around my side of the desk, he reached and took my hand in his. Glancing down, I saw the telltale stocking feet. Pulling free, I turned for the door, but even more quickly he reached back over the edge of his desk and flicked a switch I had learned from Colby was a remote door-locking device," she recalled in Child Star: An Autobiography. 

Shirley and her second husband Charles. Image: Getty. 

"I was trapped. Like the cartoon of wolf and piglet, once again we circled and reversed directions around his furniture. Blessed with the agility of a young dancer and confronted by an amorous but overweight producer, I had little difficulty avoiding passionate clumsiness." 

It was around this time Temple married her first husband John Agar. The marriage, by all accounts, was abusive and didn't last long. 

Temple also recalled being propositioned by another Hollywood director who told her, "Look, I’m going to be a big executive. We’re going to have to get along... What I had in mind was just a workplace formality." 

By 1945, Temple's iconic golden hair had turned brown, and she was described as "an unremarkable teenager" by film historian David Thomson. 

Although she had starred in over 40 films, the phone stopped ringing. 

In 1950, she married her second husband, Charles Alden Black. And after 19 years in Hollywood, she announced she was quitting showbiz. Temple and Black remained together until his death in 2005. 

"That’s long enough. My only contract is to Mr Black," she quipped at the press conference announcing her retirement. 

Hugging her husband and giving the press a knowing look, she added: "And it’s exclusive."

Feature Image: Getty.

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