The September 1938 issue of Better Homes & Gardens ran a feature story on Shirley titled, “Mrs. Shultz visits Shirley Temple.”
Gladys Denny Shultz was part of the magazine’s Child Care & Training Department, and was sent to Hollywood to interview Shirley on the set of “Just Around the Corner” (1938) which was still being referred to as “Lucky Penny” at the time this article was written.
How do you bring up a child to have a million-dollar personality? That’s what I went to Hollywood to discover, if I could, and I came away with a brand new appreciation of a happy, healthy little girl and her mother—of Shirley Temple and Mrs. Temple.…I had an excellent chance to watch Shirley—at the studio, doing scenes for “Lucky Penny,” rehearsing and discussing the next “take,” studying her lessons in snatches in the little dream trailer which is her schoolroom during pictures, with her mother, her teacher, her director, other children in the cast, and with several dozen more people all engaged in making the important Temple pictures. I saw her in action thru a long grueling afternoon as she made and remade a difficult sequence that had the adults on pins and needles long before it was over.…Shirley off the screen is perhaps even more remarkable than the Shirley in pictures. To me, she’s most attractive in real life. The camera makes her seem plumper than she is—her 68 pounds is just a good, sturdy, 9-year-old weight for her 50-inch height. Neither can a camera really show her healthy, glowing complexion. Shirley never wears make-up. To prepare her for a scene, Mrs. Temple merely sees to it that her curls are in order.…In the scene they were shooting…Shirley was supposed to snip off the long red ringlets of Bennie Bartlett with electric clippers, in the dog lounge in the basement of a luxurious apartment house. It was Shirley’s first experience at barbering, and she wasn’t quite sure about the clippers. She attached the job gingerly, afraid alike of cutting her fingers and shearing Bennie of his real curls. For those Shirley clips in the picture are false ones, artfully interpolated in the glowing mass of Bennie’s own crowning glory. The children rehearsed the scene and then were ready with lines and action. But things went all wrong. Every time Shirley took hold of an artificial curl, it would come off in her hand before she could touch the clippers to it, and it was necessary to start over again. As the afternoon wore on, Shirley got more and more intrigued with those clippers. Between attempts, her eyes darted about the set, seeking whom she might pretend to clip, and discussing the possibilities with delight. Then, as will happen, and as would have happened much sooner with another child, the fun began to get a little hysterical. At once Mrs. Temple leaned forward on her stool and said, not sharply, but as tho she meant it, “That’s enough now, Shirley. Let’s attend to business.” Instantly Shirley snapped into character again. Before they stopped, the scene was in the bag, Shirley operating the clippers in the final take with impish abandon.…There’s a very beautiful bond of love and understanding between mother and daughter. Mrs. Temple is simply quietly determined that what Shirley does shall be done right.
The photo below is courtesy of Melissa (aka “The Colonel”) who was recently gifted a copy of it by fellow Shirley’s Army member, Lori. It was Shirley expert supreme, the great Rita D, who let us know what the occasion was for this photo shoot, and then I hunted down a copy of the magazine itself. Yes, it takes an Army! Now you can see Shirley’s Fox studio trailer which was cropped out of the magazine article.
This photo from my collection also shows Mrs. Shultz, along with Shirley’s beloved studio tutor, Frances Klamt, inside the trailer.
Here’s what Mrs. Shultz had to say about Frances Klampt:
Miss Frances Klammt, Shirley’s teacher, is an M.A. who taught five years in the Los Angeles public schools before taking over Shirley’s education two years ago. She represents both the Los Angeles Board of Education and the Child Labor Board and has authority to halt production if anything occurs on the set which she considers harmful to Shirley, or if they’re not getting in the three hours’ schooling daily which the law requires for movie children. Even when the Temples vacation between pictures, Miss Klammt goes wherever they go, for Shirley must have her three hours of schooling every day that other children are in school. It’s often piecemeal study, but, as Miss Klammt pointed out, “Shirley possesses marvelous powers of concentration. She throws herself into a scene for al she’s worth, then instantly centers upon her studies the moment she sits down at her table.”
Another interior view of Shirley’s trailer taken during the filming of “Just Around the Corner”:
Shirley had to catch a snack between takes in her trailer during the filming of “Little Miss Broadway” (1938). Gotta’ keep that energy up!
A series of three shots taken during filming of “The Little Princess” (1939) with Miss Klamt:
Time for the cameras!
Shirley’s cute little trailer was the perfect place to keep up on her correspondence:
SPELLING COUNTS! A note about the spelling of Shirley’s tutor’s name. In the BH&G article, it is written as “Klammt.” In a vintage 1935 drawing Shirley created to give to her tutor, she wrote “Miss Klamt.”
When Shirley was welcomed back to the Fox lot in 1948 with a gala party, the publicity blurbs used the “Klamt” spelling.
By the time Shirley wrote her autobiography Child Star in 1988, Shirley referred to her as “Miss Klampt.” Shirley expert supreme Rita D also used “Klampt” in her book, as did author Gavin Lambert in his Natalie Wood bio, as did former pupils (and “Sound of Music” stars) Charmian Carr, Nicholas Hammond, Angela Cartwright, and Kym Karath.
The Palo Verde Valley Times referred to her as “Frances M. (Klamt) Willis” in her May 23, 2008 obituary as does imdb. In the A&E Shirley Temple documentary, she was interviewed and the onscreen credit reads, “Klamt.” I would hope they got it right for that one at least!
But that’s not all in the questionable spelling department for this post! The author of the BH&G article, Gladys Denny Shultz, was written up this way by the New York Times for her June 22, 1984 obituary:
Gladys Denny Schultz, a writer and editor, died of cancer Tuesday in Allentown, Pa., where she was staying with the family of her son, Peter. She was 88 years old and had retired to San Diego, Calif., in 1972. Mrs. Schultz was a writer and correspondent for The Ladies Home Journal from 1946 to 1961. Earlier she had been a child care writer for Better Homes and Gardens from 1927 to 1945. Mrs. Schultz was the author of several books. Among them, she wrote or edited ''It's Time You Knew,'' a discussion of sex problems of younger girls, (1955), “Lady from Savannah: The Life of Juliette Low,” a biography of the founder of the Girl Scout movement, (1958 - see cover below), ''Letters to Jane,'' a revised edition of a book published in 1947, (1960), and ''Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale,'' (1962). In addition to her son, she is survived by a daughter, Eleanor Dale, of East Lansing Mich., six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
So much for the NYT’s spellchecker! Thanks to Mrs. Shultz for her vintage insights into Shirley’s world!
See more Shirley Temple photos at my main website.
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