March 14, 2014
This former child star, who was then teetering towards B-list with A-list name recognition after several years of being A+++ list, had to deal with one of Hollywood's most powerful producers, after he invited her to his studio office to discuss the movie that would prove to be a sort-of comeback. He then exposed himself to her and she ran out of the room crying. Fortunately, another actress who was to appear in the same film was waiting in the next room for her daily session with the producer whom she would later marry.
Shirley Temple/David O. Selznick/Jennifer Jones/movie: Since You Went Away
This former child star, who was then teetering towards B-list with A-list name recognition after several years of being A+++ list, had to deal with one of Hollywood's most powerful producers, after he invited her to his studio office to discuss the movie that would prove to be a sort-of comeback. He then exposed himself to her and she ran out of the room crying. Fortunately, another actress who was to appear in the same film was waiting in the next room for her daily session with the producer whom she would later marry.
Shirley Temple/David O. Selznick/Jennifer Jones/movie: Since You Went Away
Poor Shirley
ReplyDeleteOne of my all-time favorite movies
ReplyDeleteSad.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYou are a big loser if you flash Shirley Temple.
ReplyDelete@Dena
Deleteagreed
Double agree. It's Shirley Temple! Hope he's in hell.
DeleteI've never been a Jennifer Jones fan. I find her stiff and artificial. I can understand her appeal to Mr. Selznick, who divorced Louis B. Mayer's daughter in order to marry her, but I can't understand her appeal to audiences. But I feel the same way about Tyrone Power, and a lot of film critics still swoon over him.
ReplyDelete@Bacon Ranch ID'ed Shirley and my other homie @Nutty Flavor solved the rest from there. Well done!
Delete(Sorry @BR I felt weird omitting this)
Way to go @Nutty!!! Did you even realize you were our big winner?!? ;)
She dumped her husband Robert Walker to marry Mr. Powerful Producer/Director.
DeleteAlways felt bad for him and the kids.
{unwraps the spork}
ReplyDeleteSelznick was a known tool and a meth addict. That he exposed himself to my beloved Shirley Temple Black is the epitome of a person in need of a spork to the head (and other areas).
Meth was around back then?
DeleteUgh, what a tool exposing to Shirley. No wonder she quit acting
ReplyDeleteJennifer was a skank....I understand leaving your man, but you dont abandon your kids
ReplyDelete"I can understand her appeal to Mr. Selznick, who divorced Louis B. Mayer's daughter in order to marry her"
ReplyDeleteWow Selznick was willing to piss off Louis B Mayer or was he dead by then?
Oh Hollywood, never change you, never change.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteWow, DOS really was a pig. Ugh.
I thought Jennifer Jones was great in Song of Bernadette & Portrait of Jennie.
Just saw Robert Walker Jr. in a Star Trek episode the other day.
Anyhow, JJ and Selznick had one child, a daughter who committed suicide at age 20 by jumping off a building in LA. Yikes!
I thought the story was that Shirley laughed and he got pissed off. Or was that a different perv producer/exec?
ReplyDeleteI got my stories mixed up..Arthur Freed (original rock jock) exposed himself to Shirley when she was 12 and she laughed and walked away. He was "infuriated."
ReplyDelete@Seven of Eleven...
ReplyDeleteYou are one of the reasons I visit CDaN daily. Smart, informed, sassy insight. Thanks. Your avatar rules, too.
As my proposal deadline looms... thanks to all of you for bringing smarts and humor to life.
ReplyDeleteSandybrook
Nutty_Flavor
For years of your awesome comments, I bow in appreciation.
That's disgusting.
ReplyDeleteThx Tinselsass
ReplyDeleteGotcha on this one Enty. Arthur Freed.
ReplyDeleteAnd Shirley definitely wouldn't have run out of the room for DOS. Or I should say "didn't".
She cried? How small WAS it?
ReplyDelete@0_0 He took Benzedrine, not meth per se. But both are amphetamines.
ReplyDeleteThis story has been around a while but I heard it was Darryl Zanuck, not Selznick.
It was outed as Freed in VF and Temple's autobio:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/02/honor-art-without-honoring-artist
Wednesday morning, in one of those serendipitous juxtapositions than can come with random reading (though “serendipitous” is probably not le mot juste), I went from Yglesias’s essay to The New York Times obit for Shirley Temple Black, which recounted a troubling meeting between Temple and Arthur Freed, the producer and head of one of MGM’s legendary musical units. This was in 1941, when, by her account, the actress was 11, shortly after she signed with that studio (after being dumped by 20th Century Fox following a couple flops). I’ll let Temple herself tell it, from her 1988 autobiography, Child Star:
“First we get rid of the baby fat,” said the little man seated behind the wide desk. “Then new hair. Teach you to belt a song, and some decent dancing.” . . .
Best known as producer of the blockbusting The Wizard of Oz, Freed was rumored in some adult circles to have an adventuresome casting couch. At the time I knew none of this, not would I have recognized such furniture even when sitting on one. To visit an executive of such stature was enough to send my spirits soaring.
“I have something made for just you,” he continued, fumbling in his lap. “You’ll be my new star!” That phrase had last been used when I was three years old in Kid in Hollywood [one of Temple’s early shorts].
Obviously, Freed did not believe in preliminaries. With his face gaped in a smile, he stood up abruptly and executed a bizarre flourish of clothing. Having thought of him as a producer rather than an exhibitor, I sat bolt upright . . . Not twelve years old, I still had little appreciation for masculine versatility and so dramatic was the leap between schoolgirl speculation and Freed’s bedazzling exposure that I reacted with nervous laughter.
Disdain or terror he might have expected, but not the insult of humor.
“Get out!” he shouted, unmindful of his disarray, imperiously pointing to the closed door. “Go on, get out!”
Fortunately, as Temple points out, she had already signed her contract with MGM, and went on to make a number of films for the studio—none as successful as her childhood pictures, but she did get to co-star with the likes of Joseph Cotten and Cary Grant. Skimming her autobiography and reading her obits gives the impression that she was the best-adjusted, most levelheaded kid in the entire history (mostly disgraceful) of Hollywood child stars. But I can’t believe the experience with Freed wasn’t more traumatizing than she lets on in her breezy account. And, an even more disturbing question, how did he expect her to act, based on how many previous experiences with other children?
So now we know the reveals are fake too.
ReplyDeleteIt took about a minute to find that.
This is all I can find on Zelsnick and Temple
http://davelandblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/screen-gem-saturdays-shirley-temple.html
which is confirmed on wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Temple:
In 1944, David O. Selznick signed Temple to a personal four-year contract. She appeared in two wartime hits for him: Since You Went Away and I'll Be Seeing You. Selznick however became involved with Jennifer Jones and lost interest in developing Temple's career. She was loaned to other studios with Kiss and Tell, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer,[note 8] and Fort Apache being her few good films at the time.[59]
According to biographer Robert Windeler, her 1947–49 films neither made nor lost money, but "had a cheapie B look about them and indifferent performances from her".[60] Selznick suggested she move abroad, gain maturity as an actress, and even change her name. She had been typecast, he warned her, and her career was in perilous straits.[60][61] After auditioning for and losing the role of Peter Pan on the Broadway stage in August 1950,[62] Temple took stock, admitted her recent movies had been poor fare, and announced her official retirement from films on December 16, 1950.[60][63]
Poor Shirley.
ReplyDeleteWhat a nasty pile of trash.
Shirley should have had cast mate Agnes Moorhead geld Selznick.
ReplyDeleteAmphetamines have been around for over a hundred years. Meth was used extensively by the German military in WWII.
@B Profane.
ReplyDeleteArthur Freed.
Unless you are upset that Selznick paid more attention to his somewhat more age-appropriate soon-to-be wife, Jennifer Jones, than teen-age Shirley.
The movie came out in 1944. Shirley Temple was born in 1928, so she would have been 16, or maybe 15 when this happened.
ReplyDelete"Amphetamines have been around for over a hundred years. Meth was used extensively by the German military in WWII."
ReplyDeleteNot sure of where you're going. Drugs are often synthesized decades before they are marketed. Amphetamine sulfate was first marketed as Benzedrine in the 1930s. Methamphetamine wasn't widely used in the US until much later although both were first synthesized in the late 1800s.
"Amphetamines have been around for over a hundred years. Meth was used extensively by the German military in WWII."
ReplyDeleteNot sure of where you're going. Drugs are often synthesized decades before they are marketed. Amphetamine sulfate was first marketed as Benzedrine in the 1930s. Methamphetamine wasn't widely used in the US until much later although both were first synthesized in the late 1800s.
O dont see its fortunate Jennifer Jones was sitting outside, waiting to blow the big pig. Did she comfort Shirley? Yell at the pigman? Pls to explain.
ReplyDeleteOk...Shirley didn't run out crying. Shirley actually said (and she herself said in the documentary) she started laughing and the guy got so angry, he kicked her out of his office. I saw the documentary.
ReplyDeleteso the old g harvey weinstein huh??
ReplyDelete