Temple Tuesday: Shirley & Dorothy

No, not Dorothy Gale. Dorothy Dell, the curvaceous young blonde who costarred with Shirley Temple in “Little Miss Marker.” Dell was nineteen at the time “Marker” was released on June 1, 1934. She and Shirley got along on AND off screen: “I felt treated as an equal,” recalled Shirley. “Time and again during the film she turned out to be a splendid foil for my energy and exuberance. My special affection for her was based on this positive attitude, one which made me feel inches taller than I was.”



The scene shown below in which Temple’s character is refusing her breakfast of hot mush and using rude language (“I don’t want no mush” and “I used to be a sissy”) had to be redone as Dell could not contain her laughter.



Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi and raised in New Orleans, Dell was a descendant of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In 1930 at age seventeen, she won the title of “Miss New Orleans” and soon after entered the vaudeville circuit, where she was discovered by Florenz Ziegfeld himself. Paramount signed her to a film contract in 1933 and she was poised for stardom. After her success in “Marker,” Dell played opposite Jack Oakie in Paramount’s “Shoot the Works,” which began filming on April 4, 1934 and wrapped up two months later.



At about the same time, Shirley was filming “Baby Take a Bow” over at Fox from April 9 - May 1934. Shirley and Dell were set to re-team in “Now and Forever” next, as Paramount had one more film left with Shirley on their two-picture loan agreement with Fox for Temple’s services.



A few hours after Dell saw the preview of “Shoot the Works,” she died in a car wreck on the way home from a party at the Marcell Country Club in Pasadena on June 8, 1934. The Marcell was known for delicious French food…and bootleg liquor during Prohibition!



The man driving the car was Dr. Carl Wagner, who had attended to Dell’s mother just a few weeks before when she was ill. According to the website Bizarre Los Angeles, the doctor’s speeding car struck the curbing on a curve around 2 am, careened against several trees and, turning over, and came to rest 106' from the first impact after shearing off a Pacific Electric trolley pole.

In an eerie twist of premonition, actress Lilyan Tashman had died on March 21 actor Lew Cody had died on May 31; supposedly, Dell had said, “I wonder who’ll be the next — they say those things go in cycles of threes.”

In Shirley’s 1988 autobiography Child Star she recounts the story that she inadvertently received the news of Dell’s death just before filming a tearful scene for “Now and Forever.” According to Shirley’s version of this tale, it was the sadness of losing her friend and costar that caused the real tears to flow. Since Dell was supposed to be in “Now and Forever” but was replaced by Carole Lombard, it is highly doubtful that Shirley’s memory was correct on this one. “Now and Forever” was released on August 31, 1934.



See more Shirley Temple photos at my main website.