Child Star: An Autobiography
In this candid, poised, resilient autobiography, Shirley Temple Black tells what it was like to be a child star adored by millions during the Depression '30s and the 1940s. Fox's cleverly worded movie contracts, poorly understood by her father, held a financial truncheon over her curly head. Studio bigwigs who molded her image demanded that her 14-year-old bust be bound flat. She had to submit weekly urine samples to satisfy Lloyd's of London, underwriters of her pricey insurance policies. Her fretful parents feared she would be kidnapped. Life was a "daily joyous contagion of filmmaking," from which she partially rebelled by marrying, at age 17, Jack Agar, a hard-drinking army man. Divorced and on the rebound, she fell for a pineapple company employee, Charlie Black, to whom she has been married ever since. She ends this Hollywood memoir in 1954 with the birth of their second daughter, thus omitting her recent career as a diplomat and stateswoman. It's a funny, poignant look at the price of fame, studded with sparkling on- and off-the-set anecdotes. First serial to the National Enquirer; Movie/Entertainment Book Club selection.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.