Shirley’s Birthday Cakes

On what would have been Shirley Temple’s 98th birthday, Daveland will celebrate with a few new (to my collection at least!) shots of the child actress and diplomat on that special day. In 1934, Fox celebrated Shirley with a party. From the publicity blurb:

SHIRLEY TEMPLE, five year old Fox starlet, made her social bow as hostess at her birthday party (April 21st), when she entertained a bunch of her kid friends to tea, birthday cake, ice cream and a puppet show, in the Café de Paris at Movietone City.

Sharp-eyed readers with a calculator realize that Shirley was actually six in 1934, but thanks to the studio and Shirley’s parents’ attempt to make her appear more precocious to the public, they shaved a year off of her age. Other sharp-eyed readers will see the kid on the right picking his teeth, the same little boy gawking at Shirley as he hands her a gift. Thanks to Shirley expert supreme Rita Dubas I learned a bit more about his story:

The little boy on the right who picked that unfortunate moment to perform some oral hygiene at Shirley's 1934 birthday bash is Pat McCall, nephew of journalist Peggy McCall. Pat had a monthly column in Childen's Play Mate Magazine, "Adventures in Movie-Land", with stories "told" to his aunt. Peggy was a publicist for Fox as well as a freelance writer for Play Mate and other magazines, according to IMDb. Shirley's party was featured in the September 1934 Play Mate issue, using the same pic and identifying Pat as the boy on the right. All of the guests were the children of Hollywood writers. Pat goes into great detail describing the party, including the event's photographer, "Max" (Max Munn Autrey) and that the favors were beach balls and autographed photos.



Two years later in 1936, Shirley was celebrating her “seventh” birthday (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) and was given this ginormous card from her Cleveland fans:

Shirley Temple was 7 years old today and she celebrated by doing no work before the film camera, playing with gifts, which included a pony and a bicycle, and later visiting crippled children at a hospital. She is shown here with a huge birthday greetings scroll sent by admirers in Cleveland.



That’s a lot of signatures!



Below she is shown with a birthday cake from that same year. From the accompanying caption:

Shirley Temple turns seven years old today; at the same time, she receives a higher weekly salary—namely, $1,000 a week! This most precious of all little girls is the darling of every nation. Our picture shows Shirley at the "dress rehearsal" in front of her birthday cake, complete with seven candles.



For the age old question, can one ever have too much cake? The expression on Shirley’s face seems to say it all.



See more Shirley Temple birthday photos at my main website.