Today is a tale of three of Shirley Temple’s contemporary actors and how they chose to retell their experiences of working with the talented moppet. When actress Gloria Stuart was told by Fox studio head Darryl Zanuck that she was to be put in a Shirley Temple movie, the actress was crestfallen at having to compete with the little dynamo. Zanuck reframed it for her this way: “Gloria, you could be in film for the next ten years or on the stage and nobody would ever see you or hear about you, but if you’re in a Shirley Temple film, millions of people will see you.” The actress realized the wisdom of his words and would later recall, “She was really a getaway girl. You watched her and she was so completely composed and happy and talented and up, up, up. She was a real tonic…a miracle. Indescribable. It’s impossible that one child was all those wonderful things, but she was!” The power of positive thinking was not something little Delmar Watson practiced. In “Heidi” (1937), he played Peter, the goatherd, a fairly substantial role. Here are his recollections about the experience:
I was never given my lines to study in advance. My dad asked Allan Dwan about this, and he said they wanted Peter to be kind of dumb, but it was the only time I was in a picture of that length where they would not give me my lines until the night before I was supposed to do a scene.
I guess Delmar did not understand method acting. Shirley was given her own trailer for the location shoots according to Watson:
[It was] parked on the side of a hill. She was there all the time with Grif and, of course, her mother. Only a few studio people were allowed up there. She had a stand-in [Mary Lou Isleib] for the sound and lights. Then, when everything was set, she’d come down at the last minute, we’d do our scene together, and when it was finished, she would be escorted back up the hill and disappear into her trailer. Once, I was playing horseshoes right after lunch with the lighting guys, and she came out of her trailer. I said, ‘Hi,’ and she greeted me and asked if she could play. Sure, we told her. She picked up a horseshoe and tossed it. I think she missed. She played with us for exactly two minutes, and then her bodyguard came down and took her away, back up the hill into the trailer. I heard him tell her she wasn’t supposed to be there. As she left, I said to her, ‘Bye. Maybe you could do it later.’ Shirley didn’t say anything, but obediently returned to the trailer.
When you have a film riding on your shoulders and a limited amount of work time due to being a minor, it’s easy to understand that Shirley wouldn’t have a lot of time to play. A stray horseshoe that might have injured the star could have shut down the entire production. Obviously, Watson was too young at the time to understand and when he later told the story, too old to remember what the circumstances were.
Case #2: Sybil Jason. If it weren’t for “The Little Princess” (1939), Jason would be all but forgotten today (and for the most part, still is). While an appealing child, the South African born girl just never caught on in the U.S.
Here’s how Jason chose to recall working on “The Blue Bird” (1940), her second Temple film:
Usually when one received a finalized script of a movie, you are apprised of the shooting date. We were quite puzzled when a good two weeks before that date I was told to report to the studio early one morning. When we arrived, we were directed to go to a specific soundstage, and when we got inside all we saw was a small lit set with a plain backdrop and two chairs facing each other. One of the chairs faced the camera and the other one was placed behind it. I was greeted and handed a few pages from the…script. It contained only Shirley’s lines and those of the various characters that would appear in the movie. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this was going to be the ultimate humiliation for me. I was expected to read Shirley’s lines so that actors could screen test for the various roles like the Father, the character Light and the “deceased” grandparents. As young as I was, I knew I wasn’t being treated right and I could see from the hurt look in my sister’s eyes that she too felt that way but, considering the position I was now placed in, there wasn’t much we could do about it.
After a couple of days of reading for the tests, I could now concentrate and prepare for my role as Angela Berlingot, the little crippled girl who yearns for the bird that Mytyl (Shirley) and Tytyl (Johnny Russell) had captured in the woods. My part in The Blue Bird was, to put it politely, minuscule. It consisted of a scene in the beginning of the movie and another at the end.
Sybil’s remarks have always been puzzling. Were these her memories or ones fed to her by the older sister? While it is made clear that Angela is sick, never at any time does the viewer hear the word “cripple” used to describe her. Sybil may have been thought of by Warners (her former studio) as a rival to Shirley, but the public never viewed her that way. Finally, if the Jason sisters thought reading the star’s lines in a screen test was the ultimate humiliation, then they obviously were not aware of how things worked in Hollywood. As stated before, Shirley’s work time was limited; why would it be wasted on screen tests?
In this publicity still and the caption below, we can see that it was co-starring in a Temple film that helped pave the way for Sybil’s Hollywood career. How the public did/didn’t accept her was out of Shirley’s hands.
Since her portrayal in “The Little Princess” won her a long-term contract at 20th Century-Fox, 9-year-old Sybil Jason (foreground) goes to the studio’s school. Seated back of her is June Carlson of 20th Century-Fox’ Jones Family series, while Teacher (standing) is Miss Catherine Hagan.
Here’s the cover of the book Miss Hagan is holding, Highways and Byways. It was copyright 1938 by authors Paul McKee, Director, Teachers College Elementary School, and Professor of Elementary Education, Colorado State Teachers College, Greeley, Colorodo, and Beryl Parker, Associate Professor of Education, New York University.
This is not the same book Sybil is reading.
Houston, we do not have a match.
Case #3: Marcia Mae Jones, who played Klara, a true cripple, in “Heidi” (1937).
Marcia Mae Jones recalled her casting in the film:
There was talk that I got as much fan mail because I played a crippled girl in ‘Heidi,’ and probably that Mrs. Temple would never use me again, but Mrs. Temple requested me for ‘The Little Princess,’ so you see, there’s a lot of talk that’s not so.
Mic drop. Thank you. Below is a shot I took in 2002 of Margaret O’Brien and the sour grapes, Delmar Watson and Sybil Jason. They were making an appearance at the Silent Movie Theatre in Hollywood for a Tippi Hedren fundraiser for her animal shelter.
See more photos at my main website.
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