America’s sweetheart Shirley Temple captured hearts worldwide along with her charming smile and fresh-faced innocence – however in actual life she spent her childhood friendless, alone and abused by a string of Hollywood bigwigs, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Temple, who died at 85 in 2014, was additionally ripped off by her personal father, who wasted her thousands and thousands and left her with solely $30,000 to her title.
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Shirley Temple’s mom pressured her to rehearse strains at bedtime as an alternative of studying fairy tales.
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An insider revealed: “Her childhood was stuffed with distress. She labored lengthy hours and was mistreated by producers and studio heads. However her dad and mom advised her they had been setting cash apart for her, and sooner or later she would see it was all value it.”
Shirley’s mom, Gertrude Temple, was a domineering stage mother who pushed Shirley into showbiz when she was solely three years previous.
Noticed by expertise scouts, she was signed to a contract for a collection of movies known as the Child Burlesks.
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Exploited and paid slave wages by small-time Academic Studios, Shirley made a mere $10 a day for enjoying the lead and was cruelly punished for the slightest misstep.
With dad and mom banned from the set and youngster welfare employees in any other case distracted, studio taskmasters pressured Shirley and different youngster actors to sit down on a block of ice in a diabolical “punishment field” in the event that they proved troublesome whereas filming.
Unbelievably, Shirley credit the horrible therapy for making her a greater performer.
She mentioned the abuse taught her necessary classes: Concentrate. Time is cash. Do as you are advised. Get it proper the primary time.
As an previous professional on the tender age of 5, Shirley was invited to audition for the movie Stand Up and Cheer! and was signed to a deal that paid $150 every week to Shirley and $25 to her mom.
She went on to carry out in 9 films in 1934, and by 1935, she was incomes $2,500 per week, plus one other $15,000 per completed movie that was put right into a belief for her.
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Temple lived in isolation, chauffeured each day to a fortress-like studio life.
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Whereas vibrant and joyful onscreen, her childhood was stricken by loneliness.
She wasn’t allowed to have pals, and every day she was pushed in a bulletproof limousine “to a home bristling with protecting units and encircled by a excessive wall,” shared an insider.
Annually, she had a celebration with some “pals.”
“There have been youngsters of individuals on the studio,” she admitted. “It was enjoyable however impersonal.”
For Shirley, life was all work, and as an alternative of fairy tales at bedtime, her mom would go over her strains for the subsequent day’s filming.
Overworked, the kid would parrot again the strains till she drifted off to sleep, along with her hair coiled into 56 pin curls, so she’d look picture-perfect the subsequent morning on the set.
However as Shirley reached adolescence, her nightmare obtained even worse: She needed to consistently struggle off the advances of perverted, middle-aged males.
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Arthur Freed’s casting sofa advances ended when younger Shirley defiantly walked out.
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In 1941, when Shirley was 13, she and her mom made their first go to to the MGM workplace. Shirley was taken to the workplace of producer Arthur Freed, whereas her mom was despatched to see studio head Louis B. Mayer.
Freed, identified for having an “adventurous casting sofa,” rapidly started making sexual advances towards younger Shirley.
When she resisted, he threw her out of his workplace.
In the meantime, Mayer was making his strikes on Gertrude – who pushed him away. Happily, Shirley had already signed with the studio, so there have been no profession repercussions.
In one other incident, Gone with the Wind mastermind David O. Selznick truly chased Shirley round his desk. However she managed to keep away from the creep’s advances.
Keen to flee her Hollywood hell, Shirley, 17, married B-movie actor John Agar – who turned out to be a hard-drinking, womanizing wife-beater. Shirley turned so distraught she virtually killed herself, however determined as an alternative to divorce the cad – which she did in 1950.
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David O. Selznick as soon as chased Shirley round his desk – one other predator in plain sight.
However yet another devastation awaited her. After assembly and marrying businessman Charles Black in 1950, she requested her father for the cash that had supposedly been put aside for her over time.
She quickly found the $3.2 MILLION she’d earned had been squandered and used to pay wages for Temple family employees.
A scant $28,000 remained, which her mom begged her to depart along with her father to handle “as a result of it retains him going.”