SHIRLEY TEMPLE DEAD AT AGE 85

Shirley Temple, Hollywood’s most famous child star ever, has died in Woodside, CA at the age of 85. The cause of death was not disclosed. She made her first appearance on the screen at the age of 3, and by the time she turned 13, she had already appeared in 46 feature films. She made seven movies in 1934 alone, including Bright Eyes, in which she sang the song with which she was most closely identified, “The Good Ship Lollipop.” She did a memorable tap dance with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in the Civil War musical The Little Colonel. During the Great Depression, She was the top box-office attraction from 1935 through 1938. At one point, President Franklin Roosevelt famously declared, “As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right.” She left show business in 1961 after hosting and sometimes appearing in the kids anthology series Shirley Temple’s Storybook. She unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 1967. The following year President Nixon appointed her a delegate to the UN, later as ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia and finally as chief of protocol at the State Department.