Culture

Shirley Temple and the Art of Obits

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

From 1934 to ’38, she was the biggest star, period. Anything with her image on it sold in the millions; you can still buy the “Shirley Temple doll.” Clark Gable, who finished in second to her year after year as most popular movie star, never had a hit song, and not many singers sold out movie theaters. Many a girl born in the period had to live for a time with her hair done in a perfect, bouncy mop (said to be 56 ringlets), whether or not her hair actually could be so styled.

Several obituaries for Shirley Temple Black yesterday included a quote like this one from people who lived through it: “That little girl danced us out of the Depression.” It is a true statement, both uppercase D and lowercase. More specifically, Shirley Temple sang and tap-danced 20th Century Fox from the edge of bankruptcy. In two dozen movies made in about five years, the country saw a child solve adult problems with a cute song, a dimply smile, and relentless optimism.

Even racism. As the New York Times noted in its own somewhat odd obituary (more on the oddness later), the child Shirley Temple “may have been the first white actress allowed to hold hands affectionately with a black man on screen in her staircase dance with Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson in ‘The Little Colonel,'” which was made in 1935. Robinson, born in the Reconstruction South of the 1870s, was a stage star, the most successful black performer of the era to bridge the worlds of white and black audiences, if only by always appearing relentlessly cheerful, as relentlessly cheerful as his child co-star. Their pairing, across four movies, made history by suiting Hollywood’s logic.

Once the dimples faded, though, her movie career declined—she was still popular as an icon, but the sight of a teen Shirley Temple reminded audiences too much of time’s passing, and people had their own lives to remind them of that. (The era of money-making nostalgia was still far-off in our country’s future. Today, in which history is not valid unless it is memorabilia, how is it that there is not an annual “Great DepressionCon,” at which cosplay performers wander around the convention floor dressed as hobos? If there was, Shirley Temple Black would have been a huge attraction.)

The rest of her life, a truly event-filled 85 years of life, minus any of the “child-star becomes a teenager, discovers they are not God, enters rehab” sadness, is sketched briefly in all of the obituaries, like so: Married to a businessman, she officially ended her show business career by age 30, discovered that the millions she had earned had vanished in her father’s bad business decisions, ran for office and did not win, and served in many official public roles.

She was a political fundraiser of such great note that two Republican presidents named her to official posts, only to discover that she was actually a talented and dogged diplomat, much like the dogged problem-solver of a child she played in her movies years before. She was a delegate to the UN, ambassador to Ghana under President Ford, and ambassador to Czechoslovakia under the first President Bush. She was a co-founder of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies, which sounds anomalous but her brother had MS.

But the New York Times, in its long-standing role of uncle who you like to chat with about current events at parties until he gets creepy, got creepy in its obituary. I admit that I have not seen many of the famous “Baby Burlesks” that brought Shirley Temple to her first fame, but after reading this paragraph, I do not think I ever saw any, not any at all:

In 1932, Shirley was spotted by an agent from Educational Pictures and chosen to appear in “Baby Burlesks,” a series of sexually suggestive one-reel shorts in which children played all the roles. The 4- and 5-year-old children wore fancy adult costumes that ended at the waist. Below the waist, they wore diapers with oversize safety pins. In these heavy-handed parodies of well-known films like “The Front Page” (“The Runt Page”) and “What Price Glory” (“War Babies”), Shirley imitated Marlene Dietrich, Mae West and—wearing an off-the-shoulder blouse and satin garter as a hard-boiled French bar girl in “War Babies”—Dolores del Río.

Later, after affectionately describing Shirley Temple’s partnering with Bill Robinson, the Times does this:

She may have been the first white actress allowed to hold hands affectionately with a black man on screen, and her staircase dance with Mr. Robinson in “The Little Colonel,” the first of four movies they made together, retains its magic almost 80 years later.

Not everyone was a Shirley Temple fan. The novelist Graham Greene, who was also a film critic, was sued by 20th Century Fox for his review of “Wee Willie Winkie” in the magazine Night and Day, which he edited. In the review, he questioned whether she was a midget and wrote of her “well-shaped and desirable little body” being served up to middle-aged male admirers.

Does the next paragraph reveal the outcome of this lawsuit? No it does not. (The movie studio won a few thousand dollars, which at that time was enough of a hit for Greene to close the publication.) “Not everyone was a Shirley Temple fan.” That’s quite a non-transition transition. In its lurching, whiplash style, the Times moves on to the end of Shirley Temple’s contract days, her relief at this, and then … therestofherlife. The Greene anecdote is deposited into Shirley Temple Black’s obituary like any other fact of her life, like the duration of her marriages, say, and then given the same weight as any other fact.

The story of Graham Greene’s ancient movie review is worth exploring on its own because it raises issues of child stardom, audience participation in the fetishization of a child star, especially a female one, and even libel law. Greene’s attempt to capture the uncomfortable specter of middle-aged people leering at a young body instead veered most uncomfortably into the specter of watching a middle-aged Graham Greene leer at a young Shirley Temple’s body (he calls her a “fancy little piece,” for instance), but its place in Shirley Temple Black’s obituary, out of context, seems to place us in the leering role. The Times uses Greene’s language to raise the issue, then does not follow through on the issue because why would we, this is an obituary. It is the prurient censor urging us not to think thoughts we may not actually be having while holding up a photo, pointing at it, and telling us not to look.

Shirley Temple, a child star whose image became immortal eight decades ago, and Shirley Temple Black, dead at age 85, probably deserve better.

An Award-Winning Blog

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

liebster2A nomination for a “Liebster Award” is something of a blogger’s—or at least a WordPress blogger’s—rite of passage. In German, the word “liebster” means “dearest” or “beloved,” so sharing a nomination for the award and asking the nominee to pass it on (which is one of the stipulations of the award) is a way to make the world a little more dear. Billie nominated me this week, so I am a dear in her headlights. Please visit her website—it is worth your time, and her design and approach have given some direction to my plans for this website.

As I have detailed elsewhere, my column won a prize from the New York Press Asssociation some years ago, but most of my pride that day was for the writers I edited who won awards for their work, themselves. Those were some of the best phone calls I have ever been asked to make. This is the first time work of mine has been nominated by someone other than my employer. A Liebster Award nomination is the same thing as winning—as long as I pass it on and nominate several blogs that have fewer than 1000 followers each and give them some props and ask them to take part. (This award is kind of a pyramid scheme, minus the con. It’s actually just a cool way to build readership and showcase some blogs that are worth getting to know.)

Besides “Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me,” my nominated blogs are “Mywordsontheline,” “Words, Words, Words,” “Read. Write. Teach,” “Writing with Purpose,” and “black is white.”

If I have nominated you, and you choose to accept my nomination of your blog and continue with the Liebster award process, here are the rules:

1. Thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog.

2. Display the award on your blog—by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget.” (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.)

3. Answer eleven (11) questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.

4. Provide eleven (11) random facts about yourself.

5. Nominate five to 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, blogs that have less than 1000 followers each. (Note: you can always ask the blog owner for this information since not all blogs display a widget that lets the readers know how many followers they have.)

6. Create a new list of questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer.

7. List these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here.) Once you have written and published it, you then have to then:

8. Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster Award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of this prestigious honor).

Here are the questions that were sent to me and that I now send on with my replies: (in the case of the first question, change “Ireland” to “upstate New York”)

What do you think of when you think of Ireland?
The Hollywood version, probably: “The Quiet Man,” etc. I studied James Joyce in graduate school and have ambitions to reread “Ulysses” this year. I also have ambitions to see Ireland in person someday …

What food is too much work for you to eat?
Anything too hands-intensive. Lobster. I can still work chopsticks.

Did you ever have a tree fort growing up? How about a secret club?
My dad laid some planks in a tree in our backyard, and I remember some steps nailed to a tree. I never liked climbing trees or even jungle gyms. I seem to have developed my healthy fear of falling from the start, before ataxia.

What technology (if any) in today’s world are you suspicious of?
Anything controlled remotely or automatically—drones, online bots.

What is the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night?
Start boiling water for coffee (I love my coffee press). Fall asleep watching Netflix.

What (if anything) would you absolutely refuse to do under any circumstances? Why?
Physically injure an animal.
Hum. I don’t hum.

If you could ask one person one question and get a completely honest answer, who would it be and what would you ask?
Maybe my great-grandparents (great-grandfather, I suppose) on my mother’s side about what made them leave Russia and move to America.

What is the first thing you learned to cook? Did you enjoy the experience?
The first thing I actually remember cooking for myself (or knew that I knew how to) is french toast.

What thing sucks most of your free time away? Do you enjoy it?
Online social media. Yes, I enjoy being in touch and expanding my circle of friends.
When my health insurance starts up again, I will be spending a lot of time in doctors’ offices. Because of my ataxia, I have a neurologist and a cardiologist.

Describe a time when a small decision by you brought big consequences (good or bad).
If I knew that the night I drank my last drink was going to be the night I had my last drink … it was not a decision, not one made by me, at least, and it was small in the scheme of things. The universe did not change when I stopped, but when I stopped, my universe changed.

What major historical thing(s) happened in your lifetime? Has it changed your life?
In my lifetime, there have been many major news stories. There were two presidential impeachment cases, one of which provides me my earliest memory of a news story, and the later one I wrote about in a newspaper. Space exploration accidents. The realization that climate change is happening and more man-made than not.
Mandela.
The social neuroses caused by the Cold War. I probably still have those echoing in my psyche.
September 11.
Chernobyl.
The announcement last year that Voyager 1 had left the solar system affected me deeply; the “pale blue dot” photo.

Eleven random facts about me:

1. The number four is my lifelong “secret lucky number.” (Anyone who has gambled with me knows about this. Read: The Gad About Town: Against NYS Proposition 1.) Now, I know that in most of the world’s luck traditions, if one declares out loud that something is secret and lucky, one has immediately kiboshed all secrecy and luck out of that thing’s existence, but that is the beautiful thing about my “secret lucky number 4”: It remains lucky and maybe even grows in power every time I speak of my special relationship with it.

2. I left New Paltz in 1995 to work in Narrowsburg, NY, and moved back to New Paltz in 1997. I left New Paltz again in 2000 to work in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and returned to New Paltz in 2006. (There are legends about New Paltz and eternal return and gazing upon the nearby Wallkill River—I am legend, I suppose.)

3. Depending on my relative levels of optimism or pessimism, I may refer to my spinocerebellar ataxia as an “illness” versus a “condition.” The latest feature of this condition that I have been noticing of late (first noticed last year) is that when I can not see my feet, I lose track of which is which. I may think I’m tapping my right, but it’s my left that’s annoying people around me. After going to bed, I may think my left leg itches, only to scratch it and find it was my right, or worse, that I am scratching the mattress.

4. I pretended to write before I knew how to write. There may even now be pieces of furniture at my family’s house with my crayon scribblings on and in them—I did not draw, I wrote, wavy lines that I would then interpret to my parents as a story. I’ll guess I was about three or … four. See? It must have been a lucky number.

5. I am one of the least ambidextrous humans on earth. When I sprained my right side a few years ago (falling asleep in an office chair), I learned that I could not write my name left-handed. This was a severe disappointment, as I spent many hours as a child trying to become ambidextrous and had trained myself to write at least my name with my left hand. The skill has left me.

6. I am very audiologically sensitive (I do not know if that is even a term). I can identify voiceover actors, even when famous ones are used anonymously. The downside of this is a sensitivity to certain noises … if the faucet in your kitchen sink is dripping, I will excuse myself from your living room to see if the tap can be tightened or if the faucet swung away from any container under it. Sadly, this sensitivity does not translate to any musical ability. I have none, just an appreciation for music and performance.

7. I see words as I speak them.

8. If you have a trivia team, I am an asset. My areas are American political history, baseball, English literature, broadcasting history.

9. My favorite animals growing up were dinosaurs. My favorite dinosaur was the triceratops. In the children’s books about dinosaurs, the triceratops always seemed to get into a tangle with the T-Rex and walk away.

10. I remember most people’s names after one hearing, especially if I also saw it written down. I can not, however, remember jokes or poems.

11. Formal logic is a weakness. In Geometry class, it once took me eight steps in a proof to establish one leg of a triangle equal to itself. It amazes me that I can design this webpage.

Farewell, Pete Seeger

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In 1996, in my job of assistant editor at a weekly newspaper, I awarded myself the title of music reviewer for a single issue and attended a concert given at a local high school by Pete Seeger, who died today at age 94. (Our newspaper’s actual title-holder was only interested in rock concerts.) I wrote a review, knowing full well that a review is not what one writes regarding a Pete Seeger concert. An appreciation. A thank-you note. But not a mere review judging aesthetic merits.

It was a great night out, by the way.

For someone who grew up in the Hudson Valley during the 1970s like me, Pete Seeger was as much a part of the environment as the river itself and as real as the Catskills, and his effect on our lives was incalculable but tangible. His ship, the sloop Clearwater, brought attention to the polluted state of our beautiful river and helped lead to change. Launched in 1969, he and its crew sailed it to Washington, DC, in 1972 to deliver over a hundred thousand signatures to Congress during debate over the Clean Water Act, which was passed over President Nixon’s veto. The Hudson River that I remember standing beside as a little boy, bubbling with a soapy scum that became and remains my personal image of the word “pollution,” is not that river any longer.

Thousands of public school students in the mid-Hudson Valley visited the sloop at least once as a part of the checklist of things our local schools brought their pupils to; it was the first boat I ever set foot on.

Pete (no one called him “Mr. Seeger,” it seems) was an elderly man by the night I saw him sing in 1996, but he stood through the entire, intermission-less, two-plus hour show. He complained that his voice had lost a lot of its range, but really, that was his cover story for getting the audience to feel more comfortable with singing along. “You can reach the notes I can’t any more,” he stated, and then strove to hit them anyway.

And then came what remained for me the centerpiece, watching this master showman split the audience up by voice type and urge us in singing the lyrics and the “Hallelujah” chorus to “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore”—just like he did in his legendary “Children’s Town Hall” album.

Pete Seeger was born to an artistic family and introduced to folk music at an early age. With plans to be a journalist, he attended Harvard, but dropped out after a couple years to forge his own path, first working for John Lomax and the folk song archives at the Library of Congress, then, after meeting Woody Guthrie, traveling alone and with Guthrie to wherever the music could be found and made.

His music career took off in fits and starts through the 1940s and ’50s, but it seemed that whenever he grew too popular, an accusation that he was too anti-war—before World War 2, he sang antiwar songs, but switched to entirely antifascist songs after America entered the conflict—or, later, a Communist—would almost derail that career, but not him. In the 1950s, his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee led to him being blacklisted and fighting a contempt of Congress indictment for several years.

In one of the eternally great performances of a witness facing an unfriendly committee, Seeger refused to use the Fifth Amendment to protect himself and steadfastly refused to answer questions he called “improper.” The transcript, which I link to above, shows how Kafka-esque the proceedings were, and what a nightmare of single-sided questions the committee thrived on forcing people to answer. Several times, Seeger even offered to sing his answers, only to be rebuffed. If he had merely pleaded the Fifth, he would not have faced the contempt of Congress indictment, but Seeger was not the type to plea for anything.

Blacklisted from television and the major concert stages, he sang in church halls and high school auditoriums and helped found the Newport Folk Festival. Many years later, in 1967, Seeger was invited on to the Smothers Brothers prime-time television show to end the ban. He chose to sing “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” a parable he had written that is set in WW2 but was very translatable to the futile war we were fighting at the time. The show’s network, CBS, censored the song from the broadcast, continuing the blacklist. The Smothers Brothers fought hard, and Pete was re-invited to sing it in 1968.

Once upon a time, songs and words could get the attention of the powers at hand. It has been a privilege to share some time on this earth with this thin, powerful-voiced, banjo-picking, attention-getter.

* * * *
While I was writing today, I came across this video, produced by our local newspaper, the Times Herald-Record, of Pete Seeger singing and leading an audience (at a local high school, where else?) in “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” He coaxes a lovely rendition and offers an editorial comment that rouses the audience to cheers. It was recorded just before his 90th birthday—he was performing up until very recently, and appeared at a benefit concert in my town of New Paltz last fall—and it captures almost everything one needs to remember this grand man.