Shirley Temple was probably one of the most photographed people in the world during the 1930s and 1940s. Photoplay Magazine photographer Hyman Fink went out to Shirley’s Rockingham manse to do a photo shoot of the teenage star right about the time she was making a comeback in David O. Selznick’s epic drama, “Since You Went Away.” This first photo shows Shirley at her Steinway piano:
When acquiring vintage photos of Shirley, even without any publicity captions or notations on the back, it’s fairly easy to date them based on her appearance. My initial guess was that this session took place in 1943/1944. Below, Shirley reverently holds her special Oscar from 1935, sitting on the fireplace mantle.
In this shot, she pretends to arrange a vase of fresh cut gladiolas.
These two photos show her playing a game of Backgammon with her father, George. Based on the weary head in the hand pose, I would guess he isn’t winning.
Yup - Shirley appears to be going in for the kill!
This image shows Shirley relaxing on the couch reading the Funnies. You youngsters out there probably aren’t aware that one of the highlights of Sunday mornings back in the day was going through the COLOR comic pages that were inserted into the paper. Yes, paper.
Zooming in for a closeup, we can see the Seein’ Stars feature, created by illustrator Feg Murray, written about in a previous post:
I was able to find this item on eBay, which dates the photos to January 9, 1944:
It doesn’t appear that Photoplay Magazine did any kind of feature with these shots; the only use I could find was from the June 1944 issue, where just one of the photos was part of a double-page collage spread:
In this day and age of instant gratification and people obsessed with posting a plethora of photos immediately, it’s hard to fathom that it took five months for only one shot to be shared with the public. And there you have it folks - an inside peek at how I “date” my vintage photos.
See more photos of Shirley Temple at home at my main website.
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