Temple Tuesday: Shirley and H2O

With Southern California experiencing high temps in October, the thought of a cool dip in water sounded like the perfect idea for a Temple Tuesday post. Strangely enough, I have very few images of Shirley actually IN a swimming pool, which is why I expanded the theme to H2O overall! In the 1934 film, “Now and Forever,” Shirley meets her biological father at Lake Arrowhead. This image was shot between takes on location, with Shirley Temple and Gary Cooper.



There IS a scene at a pool in the film, with Carole Lombard and Gary, but…



Shirley doesn’t go IN the pool; she just plays nearby with a little boy.



In “The Little Colonel” (1935), Shirley actually gets wet, in this baptismal scene with Nyanza Potts and Avonne Jackson.



By the time of “Curly Top” (1935), the studio liked to have their biggest star in controlled environments, like this phony beach backdrop, accomplished with rear projection:



Can’t get the star wet; that might mean having to create an additional copy of Shirley’s outfit, or cause a time delay for filming. With René Hubert as the costume designer for “Curly Top,” that could really rack up the costs! Esther Dale reads the Sunday “Funnies” to Shirley’s character, but rest assured, the child stays dry.



In “Captain January” (1936), Shirley lives in a lighthouse and hangs out in the nearby coastal town wth Buddy Ebsen, but manages to stay out of the water.



This deleted Hula scene was filmed in a nice, controlled, studio soundstage at Fox.





A scene of Shirley in a bathtub for “Poor Little Rich Girl” (1936) was cut before release. Note that her curls are still perfectly set and moisture free!



“Dimples” (1936) has Shirley at the edge of a lake fishing, but as always, not allowed IN the water. No wonder she looks a bit gloomy.



Finally, in “Just Around the Corner” (1938) Shirley gets access to a pool! Only Franklin Pangborn gets wet.



In Shirley’s private life, the cameras never seemed to catch her IN the water, just nearby, like these images of her on a Hawaiian trip, circa 1937:



…and 1939:



This series of images from her Rockingham pool, circa 1937, show a fully-clothed little girl playing with a sailboat:



Doesn’t seem to be anything remarkable!





It appears that Shirley had her own sailboat to safely keep her dry while floating in the pool:





This 1944 shoot at home with Guy Madison is about as close to “cheesecake” as Shirley would let the photographers get:



The two made the tepid “Honeymoon” (1946), which had Shirley appear in a bathing costume, displaying a two-piece suit for a few seconds.



This publicity still below shows Shirley in the water with Franchot Tone after she (aka the stunt double) dives into the pool. The final film doesn't show the two in the pool together.



Shirley DOES get a pool scene with Guy Madison in “Honeymoon,” but she is fully clothed:



Final H2O image of the day is from August 1957. Shirley is at her Atherton home with son Charlie and daughter Lori. Even a blowup pool like this would be heaven on a day like today!



See more Shirley Temple photos at my main website.

Paramount Set Stills: Now and Forever, Pt. 1

Paramount’s 1934 production, “Now and Forever” (originally titled “Honor Bright” and then “You Belong to Me”) starred Carole Lombard, Shirley Temple, and Gary Cooper. Lombard and Cooper were already big stars; Temple had just exploded onto the scene with her captivating performance in “Little Miss Marker,” also a Paramount production. I am always amazed at the care and detail that went into creating the sets for these films from the golden age of Hollywood. The first production still shows the Sino Manor Hotel lobby located in Shanghai:



As you can see by the board, the film was still being referred to as “You Belong to Me”:



This screenshot reveals that the black area was used for a rear projection effect, thus eliminating having to build the rest of the set. Smart!



Another view of the lobby desk:



Look at all the branded materials on the desk, created just for this brief scene:



The hallway of the hotel, which does not appear in the final film:




This detailed exterior shows the shop where Cooper prints some bogus business cards:



This publicity still shows way more of the set than we see in the final film:



In this office, Cooper sets up shop to milk hotel customers for their outstanding hotel bills so that he can use the money to fund his extravagant trips with Lombard.



How it looked in the film:





The Stateroom occupied by Cooper and Lombard:



This area is barely seen in the final film:



…and yet someone had to go to the trouble of putting together Lombard’s luggage. Note her hat on the couch:



In a 1930s movie to get by with the recently created production code, separate beds were a necessity!



This is all we get to see of the room where “the magic” happens! The status of the relationship between Lombard and Cooper had to be solidified as a marriage, rather than just lovers, in order to appease the censors.



In France, Lombard returns to her hotel and receives a wire from Cooper: 



The corresponding production still:



A detail of the signs on the wall, that probably not a single movie-goer would notice back in 1934:



This little cafe is not in the final film:



It was used for an ultimately deleted scene between Jameson Thomas and Carole Lombard, who were in a relationship before she met Cooper.



More set stills from “Now and Forever” to come!

See more photos at my main website.

Temple Tuesday: A Lot of Bull

When Shirley Temple signed on at MGM in January 1941, the publicity machine wasted little time in promoting its newest star. None other than Clarence Bull was enlisted to give Shirley the glamour treatment, as seen by the portraits shown here. For a bit more about Bull, here’s an excerpt from the 2008 book Glamour of the Gods by Robert Dance and John Russell Taylor:

Clarence Sinclair Bull’s long association as a photographer with the studio that would become Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer began when producer Samuel Goldwyn hired him in 1919. Managing to survive the commotion of the consolidation of Hollywood in the early and mid-1920s, Bull found himself at the helm of MGM’s stills department when the studio was formed in 1924, and stayed there until retiring in 1961. The enormity of MGM’s output of films in the 1920s—they advertised a new feature every week—saw Bull’s domain grow. He was responsible for managing MGM’s staff of photographers and the large support crew of technicians needed to develop, re-touch, print and collate the hundreds of thousands of prints distributed annually by MGM’s publicity department. At least one photograph from the 1920s shows Bull with twelve stillsmen who juggled the task of shooting photos on as many as a dozen films that might be concurrently in production. At MGM, like the other studios, these men—and it was an almost exclusively male profession—worked six days a week and often long hours each day. Generally one photographer was assigned to a production and, as filming was underway, he would document each scene using an 8 x 10 view camera. These cameras not only had lenses with sharp resolution, but contact prints could be made from the negatives quickly and in enormous quantities. The stills made for each film were numbered sequentially and gathered together for a book. Stills photographers also created the images used for poster art, lobby cards and other forms of advertising conceived by imaginative publicity chiefs and their staffs.

The first photo was numbered 5241; the one below 5245:



5257:



5266:



For SJR, I knew you’d want to see this detail:



Often, movie studios would allow their stars to wear gowns provided by the costume department when they were to be seen in public at events. This would ensure that the stars looked their best for the paparazzi! Shirley wore the gown seen above to the February 8, 1941 Greek War Relief Benefit at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Back row: Frank Morgan, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Dick Powell, and Reginald Owen. Seated: Madeleine Carroll, Samuel Goldwyn, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Shirley Temple, and Myrna Loy. , 



Back to Bull…the photo below was stamped #5267:



The accompanying caption is extremely interesting:

SHIRLEY TEMPLE…Young veteran of the screen, poses for her first portrait sitting after signing her contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The youngster will start work on two pictures for the studio “Barnacle Bill,” with Wallace Beery, and “Babes on Broadway,” with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. Here the tiny star wears a many-pleated skirt with a pique-collared jacket.

By the time the photo was released, the plans had been changed! Shirley was removed from both films, most likely because the Temples did not feel Shirley should be relegated to supporting roles. Instead, Shirley was made the lead in a low-budget picture (or at least as low budget as MGM could do!) titled, “Kathleen.” MGM’s frustration can be seen on the back of the photo. The portion of the above caption about her two projects AND the description of the outfit were crossed out; in pencil the following simple replacement was written:

The young star is now working in “Kathleen.”

Despite all the initial excitement and publicity about working at Hollywood’s most elite film studio, Shirley’s contract was canceled after the one movie.
   
See more teenage Shirley Temple photos at my main website.