014 Dimpled Ambassador Transcript (Shirley Temple Black)

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Michael: This person died in 2014 at age 85. She was the United States ambassador to Ghana from 1974 to 1976.

Friend: Ooh, Barbara Bush,

Michael: not Barbara Bush at a time when operations for cancer or shrouded in secrecy, she held a news conference in her hospital room after her mastectomy to discuss her experience and to urge women discovering breast lumps, not to sit at home and be afraid.

Friend: Oh my gosh. I feel like I should know who this person is trying to. De-stigmatize breast cancer. Is it Nancy Reagan?

Michael: It's not Nancy Reagan in 1950. She became a prominent Republican fundraising.

Friend: I don't know. I'm trying to think

Michael: from 1935 to 1939, she was the most popular movie star in America.

Friend: Oh my goodness. That's thirties movie star, who was also a Republican fundraiser. I have no clue. What's it like Shirley temple?

Michael: Today's dead. Celebrity is Shirley temple.

He is perfect. Lady are a regular guy.

welcome to famous and gravy. I'm Michael

Amit: Osborne. My name is Amit Kapoor.

Michael: And on this show, we go through a series of categories about multiple aspects of a famous person's life. We want to figure out the things in life that we would actually desire and ultimately answer a big question. Would I want that life today?

Shirley temple black day 2014, age 85 line of the obituary, Shirley temple, black, who as a dimpled, precocious and determined little girl in the 1930s sang and tap danced her way to a height of Hollywood stardom and worldwide fame that no other child has reached died on Monday at our home and Woodside, California.

She was 85. Um, it,

Amit: they just stopped. They

Michael: didn't, they didn't get into the second half of

Amit: anything, not even the second half. That's like even the second

Michael: quarter. Yeah. They didn't get to the last three quarters, which were

Amit: tremendous as well be talking

Michael: about. Yeah, I couldn't believe it. So when you and I decided to do this episode, I was thinking, oh, good, two middle-aged men talking about a child actor from the 1930s.

Obviously there's going to be plenty of wisdom to extract from this conversation. And then you get into our life and holy shit, fascinating. It's fascinating. And yeah, we'll get there, but like, There's a lot missing from this. I mean,

Amit: it is what she is famous for.

Michael: It is what she's famous for, but it doesn't not any of the other accomplishments.

It also, for me misses one of the big categories of fame, the drink. Yeah. I think the drink has to be mentioned in the first line of the obituary.

Amit: And I saw, I was going to ask, I was thinking of other people who have a drink,

Michael: Arnold Palmer. I mean, I'm not an alcoholic drink. Sure. So her and our Arnold Palmer, all I can come up with was

Amit: Harvey.

Wallbanger a

Michael: person must have been with that name, Tom Collins. I mean, there's other drinks named after people, but shouldn't have belonged in here. I mean, even if it is a comma splice of, and will be forever remembered for both her accomplishments as a child actress, as well as a non-alcoholic drink, served her in the

Amit: world.

I agree because, I mean, at least that speaks to something lasting, regardless. Let's look at the words that we had. We had precocious. How did they use.

Michael: Dimpled precocious and determined little girl I'm on board with all of that. Yeah. I mean, that's never having been able to sit through an entire Shirley temple movie before I tried.

I couldn't do it. Th this is an accurate description,

Amit: like a little girl, even though that's exactly what she was. I just there's something about that phrasing and in

Michael: obituary. So I think the use of the phrase, little girl with the omission of the woman she became is a disservice. Yes. Even though her later in life accomplishments are less.

Well-known the immortalizing, her as a little girl of the silver screen in the 1930s is a kind of, not just a service, but it's almost trapped in a time capsule or something, right? Yes. And

Amit: then they said, whatever song, tap dance solution. Did they, did they say salute?

Michael: They say height of Hollywood, stardom and worldwide fame that no other child has reached.

So there is a sort of sub purlative accomplishment in there. If you go to Wikipedia, if you look up child star and go to Wikipedia. It's her picture. There she is the literal poster child for a child star. I'm sure

Amit: the rest of the, of the obituary got into it. But the whole reason we do this category is the first line tends to be a pretty damn good synopsis and they didn't

Michael: do it.

It seems like you're leading towards a low score, which for you is less than seven.

Amit: It's true. Yeah. This might be my all time low. I don't like, I just, I need some discussion of her life after the age of like 12, even just a reference. So I'm, I don't like it. I'm going three. Wow.

Michael: Yeah. I think I'm going five, which all your points are taken.

There's no question that this diminishes. The rest of her life after she's out of the Hollywood limelight, even though she's never really entirely out of it, but it's the thing we know her for. I'm pissed. The drink is in there and I'm pissed that the ambassador ships and the public service and dedication to political causes is not there, but at least for the thing that we remember her for and why she's famous and why she's in here, it's encapsulated and it's the right verbiage to dimpled, precocious and determined.

And then I do think the fame that no other child has reached that from 1935 to 39, she was the biggest star. I mean, we don't remember most of the stars from that age, but more important than Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and Charlie Chaplin. Like I think actually, because of everything that's said in the first half of the obituary line that doesn't actually land and sound as elevated as it is.

That is an unbelievable accomplishment. She's on the Mount Rushmore, if not the president of the child actor. So I give it a five. Okay. That's kind of low. It's meets middle for me, but it's got some things that are working. Yeah. All right. Category two, five things. I love about you here. Amit. And I worked together to come up with five reasons why we admire this person.

And there were talking about, on the show. Do you want to kick us off?

Amit: Yeah, I can go. Yeah, I'm going to go big because this was one of the most surprising things to me, but I loved it. She was a board member of like extremely high profile corporations. So she was on the boards of Disney, which we can see a parallel perhaps there.

Sure. But she was also on the boards of Del Monte and bank of America as

Michael: well as the, uh, national wildlife Federation. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, she was leader, which I'm not sure anybody knew that about her. Yeah.

Amit: But to be on the board of directors of a public company, much less, these are, you know, probably fortune 500, if not fortune 1000 companies.

Is a huge leadership role. It's a huge crowning achievement. And what you are doing is essentially being the stewards and strategic decision-maker of billions of dollars, and then ultimately in people's own wealth. Right? I mean

Michael: the stockholders

Amit: and yeah, but stockholders are everyone like every pension fund and every, everyone that has the gift of having savings in their life has stakes in this.

Michael: That's incredible. Have you served on any big boards before?

Amit: No. I mean, I've been on the board of a nonprofit,

Michael: but no, nothing else. I've been asked a few times and I volunteered and most of the time those opportunities have kind of flitted away and I'm not sure if it's mean or not.

Amit: Maybe you got to build it up,

I

Michael: guess.

So I don't even know if I really want to be bored material. Do you want to be bored material? Yeah,

Amit: I think so. Cause I, I have been lucky enough to present to boards in some previous jobs and I kind of look across the room and I was like, yeah, I wouldn't mind being in one of those chairs.

Michael: So I guess what I'm, why I'm asking is why is this a thing you love about her?

It speaks to her leadership qualities, but is there something you aspire to in your life to serve on morbid?

Amit: I suppose, so I'm not sure what the path is to get there. Yeah. And then it's just, it's so contrary to the first line of the obituary. It's so contrary to what I thought that show about Shirley temple would be about.

Uh, and then something I didn't learn until the lead up to this episode. It's really

Michael: good. All right. Second one. Yes. Okay. The drink, I'm sorry. I want a drink named after me

Amit: that that lives in eternity possibly. I think so. Yeah. That is pretty desirable.

Michael: It's great. I'll have somebody pulls up to a bar and I'm not drinking tonight.

I'll have a Michael Osborne place, which has, I don't know. I was thinking about that. Cause I knew you'd ask probably something with root beer, but I don't know what pairs with root beer that hasn't happened before. Root beer and clubs. Yeah, maybe a diluted root beer. I kind of like that diluted. I probably,

Amit: Hey, I heard you say it was diluted root beer, root beer, then that's lost its way, you know, does nonsensical believes in something

Michael: that doesn't exist diluted.

Right. But actually that'd be

Amit: fine too. We need to, I want just, I learned some things about the drink. Let's talk more about it. So the, the origin story from my understand was what was the name of the

Michael: bar? And well, so the times has this bar, or I think a famous restaurant called the brown Derby in Hollywood.

I saw other accounts that apparently there is a restaurant in Hawaii that claims to have invented it. So there's some. Dispute about its origin. Okay.

Amit: Let's just go with the Hollywood one. Yeah. So it was apparently invented by this bartender so she could drink something because she's a star and she's in these like adult environments.

So that was interesting, even though she doesn't like it. That was the other thing she said it was too sweet. She like didn't even like it. I tried capitalizing

Michael: on it. Somebody tried bottling it up and using the name and she sued. She said, you are not using that. A celebrity. The only thing they have is their name.

You cannot take that from, which

Amit: is great. That's desirable too. I agree. I liked that. She never had ownership over the drink, but she does claim her name and she doesn't want it on the side of cans. Okay. And it's immortalized. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael: So, so I think all of that fits into

Amit: my number two then. Yeah. Well, the last thing I want to add about the drink, which I loved too is so her married name became Shirley temple black.

And so there was this twist on the drink that came to be after that, that a Shirley temple black includes darkness.

Michael: Oh, that's perfect. Yes. I thought that was wonderful.

Amit: And what a great transition from just like talking about a child star into later now being an adult.

Michael: Yeah. Okay. What do you got for number three?

Amit: Let's go breast

Michael: cancer. Yeah. Yeah. I had that one too. Yeah. I mean, not, not the breast cancer, but the public

disclosure

Amit: of it and the beating of it. And the bidding in 1972, that alone is impressive. It's certainly

Michael: desirable. Yeah. To beat cancer and to de-stigmatize breast

Amit: cancer. Yes. You talk about that.

The de-stigmatization.

Michael: So she has a press conference in the hospital room and that she discloses that shit out in the SAC to me at a time when this was. Discussed publicly that having breast cancer was if not stigmatized, wasn't discussed in public. And she, my understanding is, is encouraging self-examination for women.

Yes. Why

Amit: was it stigmatized in 1972? Just because it deals with

Michael: dealing with boobs. Yeah. Yeah. We're very uncomfortable with boobs. I think in America where I think that's all it is. It's private parts. I think you could talk about having, you know, shoulder cancer, brain cancer, whatever. But if you get anywhere near, you know, the sexual organs, ,

Amit: it's funny and what's stigmatized now mental health, right?

Yeah. And it's the exact opposite it's cause it's not parts, although

Michael: that don't you think that's

Amit: changing? Uh, it is, but I don't think it's changing enough. I think there's a long road.

Michael: Yeah. I agree with that. Well, that's a great number three. Can I check number four please? I think I, you know, this is where I want to talk about.

Experience as a diplomat. Yeah. So three ambassadorships or three sort of diplomatic posts. The first was as a us delegate to the United nations under Nixon in 1969. She was the ambassador to Ghana from 1974 to 76. And this is like, I mean, Ghana in the mid seventies, my understanding is this is not a nothing post that one of the things she had to do in that job was secure us interests for mineral rights in Ghana and make sure that there wasn't some sort of communist socialist takeover she had actual work to do.

And then she was the ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 92. And this is at the end of the cold war. And during the time of the velvet revolution and by all accounts did an awesome job. All of this gets sort of started. And 69 when Henry Kissinger overhears her talking about, I think Liberia.

Namibia. Okay. Yeah, but he's like, how the hell does Shirley temple know anything about Namibia? And then she has this whole other career. And not only does she have these diplomatic posts, she also runs an ambassador training program or participates in one where she's like teaching people what to do if a hostage situation happens.

Yeah. Fucking unbelievable. Right. Surely goddamn temple. I had no idea. I could not believe this. I mean, this really, this floored me.

Amit: I mean, and what is w what is leadership in that realm? Right. It's, it's part politics, but it's a lot of social skills required. And that's what I, that that's where I think she brought something to it, but also did tremendously well.

And navigating all the other parts.

Michael: She presents incredibly well as an adult woman. I saw an interview. She did with Larry King in the late eighties, around the time that our autobiography came out. And like, she has like authority. She's a boss, man. It's incredible. And I did not expect that of Shirley temple because I had this firmly cemented in my mind, you know, the curly hairs and black and white picture.

And then what is your sort of knowledge and experience of people who work in the forest?

Amit: I have very direct knowledge. So my grandfather, my mother's father was an Indian diplomat. So it wasn't ambassador from India to several nations. No shit. Yeah. And so my mother actually grew up in a mix between Uganda and Sweden and the Philippines, but where that means something to me is he, without a doubt in our family was the most tremendous remarkable man just liked by every child and adult just emanated wisdom.

Wow. And so that being a role model to me throughout my entire life, the idea of foreign service and ambassadorship is incredibly desirable

Michael: to me. Yeah. I've had an occasion to meet a couple of former ambassadors, not many, and they all have that quality. Wow. That's really cool, man. Yeah. All right. That's number three for me now that was.

All right. That's number four for me,

Amit: to be honest, Michael, I think you like J just between that, I think we covered most of mine. I can take a number five, but it's really as part of the number four that we just talked about. So if you have one, that's a deviation from that, I think you should do it.

Michael: I do. I, uh, I'll, I'll say first and our interracial dance on the silver screen, we think between a black person and a white person, which was bill Bojangles Robinson.

Yes. And I think that's desirable. Yeah. I think that's desirable. I mean, there's an, so in the autobiography, Mr. Bojangles, after, you know, named, after the jury, Jeff song, bill Robinson and Shirley temple are friends. This was not some, let's just put these two on the screen. They're in many movies together, but like he shows up in big moments in her life.

I mean, he dies when she's still

Amit: fairly young. Yeah. Um, but the presentation of it was just so kind of like. I dunno it wouldn't, it wouldn't go today. Or are you trying to send, I know there was kind of like a minstrelsy thing to it, but for you, right? Like if you put it in just strict context of 1936 or whatever it is revolutionary,

Michael: and I think it's presented as something that should not be so controversial.

And I think that that's how America has had to slow step into more and more racial justice. Like this country takes any bitty steps increasing. Two steps forward one step back. But the presentation of this little girl with this black man in 1936 is not controversial. It works on the screen and that's a step forward.

So it's

Amit: an accomplishment to me. Yeah, you're right. I mean, it's the very beginning of something much, much greater. Right. And also, I guess to that same point, not just that relationship, but the whole thing, her whole career, they attribute her success to the fact that it was depression, era America, you know, that you had a lot of people in despair and she was the uplifter of

Michael: that.

So I think we've got our five, what did we get? We got corporate boards, uh, the Shirley temple drink life as a diplomat, breast cancer, and then

Amit: social job and on the life of the diplomat, let me add, she was the first and only woman so far to represent the United States to Czechoslovakia or later Czech Republic or Slovakia.

Is that right to this day? She's the only woman who's I believe.

Michael: All right. That's a pretty bomber five list. Yeah. Okay. Category three. Malcovich Malcovich. This category is named after the movie being John Malcovich in which people can take a portal into John Malcovich his mind, and they can have a front row seat to his experiences.

The point is to imagine what memories or experiences might be interesting. Why don't you go for

Amit: it? Yeah, I will. So I think every Malcovich I've done so far has been somewhat positive, but we rewatched Malcovich recently, you know, and it's not always that right there at all. And so I thought about it and it's, you know, what do you want to front row seat to not necessarily, what do you want to live through?

So the one I have is, you know, there was a lot of rumors and headlines about who she actually was when she was a child star. You know, there were people claiming that she's actually a 30 year old with dwarfism and

Michael: that was a big rumor. That was like a no bullshit rumor.

Amit: Yeah. So she, and she was getting harassed.

She had a bodyguard, but you know, certain fans or non-fans like, they were trying to expose her and like, you know, saying that this child wake with the curly hair and everything was all front and there's really a 30 year old. So she would actually like go into public and people would pull it, her hair, try to like rip off the wig and expose her for actually being an adult that is bonkers.

It is

Michael: bonkers. Can you imagine that as somebody ripping out your

Amit: hair ripping and everything, and just being like, you're not who you say you are, but you know who you are. It's just gotta be bizarre.

Michael: Yeah. What do you think that felt

like

Amit: for her? I mean, she was so tiny for one, like, it's hard for me to place myself in a child's mind, malicious

Michael: precocious and determined and

Amit: dimpled.

Yeah. So I think what was going through her mind was well, a fucking stop it, but also be like, people care this much. There's no way that I can be me. You know? Like, I'm that an believable in a certain way that this is the lengths that they're going to.

Michael: So at some point in this conversation, you and I need to talk about how she's not fucked up in the way that most child actors or actresses is a trope.

This is a thing this is well understood is Hollywood. The Hollywood machinery will grind a child and screw them up for life. Totally. I found an excellent Atlantic article that really got at this question is, did she come through relatively unscathed? Because she was a child star in a different culture.

And in different time when the sort of, I don't know, drugs were not as common and America was not as divided and just

Amit: less media period,

Michael: or was there something about her that came through relatively unscathed and the article kind of leans in the latter direction that she is precocious. She has a self-awareness.

She also has parents who are my mother in particular who are maybe not always making the best decisions, but are. Parenting and actively parenting and making sure she's schooled and making sure she understands the relationship between her and her fans. In that interview. I referenced earlier with Larry King, he sort of asked the question, why aren't you fucked up?

I mean, he doesn't say it that way, but basically he said, she says, it's because of my mother, I have a wonderful mother. And that I do think parenting can, if not totally guard and protect you from the Hollywood machinery, it can at least buffer

Amit: it. Yeah. And that, and I think what the stories we've been exposed to lately is the exact opposite that the parents, you know, there's a lot of blame placed on the parents.

You look at the whole Brittany Spears thing that's happened lately and all of that. Yeah. But going back to my Malcovich, so, you know, that's, I, I kind of want to see that just through a portal, if you're going to take it further into desirability of living through it's that you are so superior that you are unbelief.

Yeah, and that people actually don't believe you see, but

Michael: that's the thing is that I think these two things are connected because, you know, can a child be elevated and be placed on a pedestal and admired and become the biggest star in Hollywood and so much so that you generate conspiracy theories about whether or not you're even real or not.

And, and how that not fuck with your head. Most adults can't seem to handle the burden of fame. It seems like I can't even take a compliment. Right. Neither me neither. And so I don't know, but somehow she made it through, well, that's a good one. All right. So. All right. I've got one. I need you to bear with me for a second because I'm going to go through a long list of ones I didn't choose.

Okay. Because her life, especially in the early days was pretty fucking fascinating. She meets Amelia Earhart, Amelia heir heart shows up on her doorstep and. becomes Shirley Temple's hero and an Amelia Earhart dies. I wonder about that. She meets Albert Einstein who tries to connect with her over like, yeah, I too struggle with arithmetic and she's like, whatever Albert, she gets to know J Edgar Hoover, very well.

It's a lifelong friendship. The FBI is very involved in protecting her throughout her years in Hollywood. She also played croquet with Orson Wells who asked, did you fall for the war of the worlds thing? And Shirley temple says, no, I did not. Apparently they didn't like each other very much. She meets F Scott Fitzgerald who has a movie that she's going to do for her.

That ended up not happening when she was 19. She's in a movie with Ronald Reagan and right before a kissing scene with Ronald Reagan, she finds out she's pregnant. And then she also was asked for an autograph, all having contractions for her first child in an elevator. None of those are my Malcovich moments, but I had to bring them all up.

Amit: Yeah.

Michael: I hope you enjoyed that.

Amit: I did.

Michael: Okay. Here's what I. She ran for a house seat in California and the Republican primary. She was a lifelong Republican and she lost to Pete McCloskey who, by the way, he's still alive. It was a 1967. Shirley temple does not win that primary. She stresses

Amit: to come forward to the Kissinger, correct?

Correct.

Michael: But the same year, She loses an election. I wonder what it feels like to lose an election, especially after you've had a successful Hollywood career. And you're trying something new, you're trying to define your adult life being part of an election just sounds awful because it is a kind of popularity

Amit: kind, which we talked about a lot on

Michael: Ross Perot.

Yeah. It's so binary, you know, you either are accepted or not. Now that at this point there had not been a woman California representative in 1967. So maybe losing it as buffered by that I'm curious to know how hard she's working to see. I had these 20 years in Hollywood, people are going to know me for forever for my Hollywood career and for this pink drink.

And now I'm really trying to get into a public service and then to lose an election. I just wonder how that feels. I mean, I'm sure it's defeating, but one of the things I admire about her is her resiliency. And I want to know how long it took to bounce back to bounce back from that. Yeah. So that's my Malcovich.

Okay. Good category four. How many marriages also, how many kids and is there anything public about these relationships? I'll go through this quickly to marriages. John Aguilar, I think is how you say it AGA our 1945 to 1949. Shirley was 17 when they got married, which

Amit: was the, which was okay

Michael: at the time. I don't know what I read.

I mean, I think her mom was not psyched about it and they actually got engaged right before her 17th birthday. He was in the service and there was, there was a kind of world war II. He was like, going away, let's get this going thing. He's 24, he's seven years older than her. And is the older brother of a high school friend.

So as she, around 12 around the time she's in the Westlake school. Exactly. Yeah. So she meets this man at some debts, uh, that marriage lasts four years, produces one child. Sounds like he was an alcoholic. And in her autobiography, there is a moment where he. Already strikes are so, and, and he went on to have kind of a Hollywood career, pretty pathetic one.

It looks

Amit: like he almost used her to launch his own, to get himself with.

Michael: Yeah, that's interesting. I mean that, what, the way it reads in her book, it's more like he did like her. He was attracted to her, but the marriage sours almost instantaneously, he just did not know what it would be like to be married to a child star.

And she's still acting at this point, but the roles have really started to taper off. I mean, once she gets to age 12, she's no longer, you know, banking for Hollywood the same way. Yeah. This is another thing I want to talk about actually, and this hasn't come up yet. One of the things that I've really struggled with as you and I have been approaching this conversation, this episode is kind of the like question of agency, right?

She's a child star. These decisions are made. By her parents. She listens to her mom and dad, and she listens to the directors on set and she learns how to act. And she's actually really good. And she, she can cry on cue and she learns her lines. Like she takes this seriously as a professional, but I don't know when in life we become re responsible for our decisions when you're a young child, obviously.

All decisions are made on your behalf. And then when you're an adult, you're expected to be responsible for your behavior, but it's a transition that spans over many years from somewhere in adolescents, into emerging adulthood, which that's just been on my mind. If this conversation is about desirability and life choices, if that's what famous and gravy is really all about, I don't know when to say these are the life choices Shirley temple is making, and therefore there's something to be learned from it,

Amit: but having the agency to get out of it and regaining custody of

Michael: a child that's right.

And somewhere in there is I think actually where her taking on the responsibilities of womanhood like happens. I mean, actually in some ways happens before, but like, that's the thing that about, about being a child star is that she's got to assume all this responsibility at a much younger age than most children do.

The second marriage, Charles Black, who she gets engaged to within 60 days of finalizing her divorce from John that's in 1950, they are married until 2005. When he does, she was 22. Charles was 31. He dies when she's 77 and she never remarried two children in that second marriage. One of whom goes on to play for the grunge band.

The Melvins. Yes. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. So that's it. I think this basically gets a high score for me, I'm it? Yeah. I would agree. The first marriage was a mistake and the second marriage happens fast, but it's like the love of her life and she stays committed to it and she marries him in 1950. That's around the time she retires from Hollywood.

Amit: Yeah. I mean, there's, there's so much to it, right? Like that was kind of the beginning of Shirley temple black blink, literally. But she, it was when she left acting and made a huge name for herself elsewhere.

Michael: One thing about Charles Black, he'd never seen any of her movies. I he's totally ignorant of who she was and it seemed pretty clear that she needed somebody like that.

Shall we move on? Yep. All right. Category five net worth 30 million, 30 million. What's interesting about that. Cause this, I got curious about, so her parents like basically squandered the Hollywood money. So all the money she makes from like 1931. To 1940 ish, ultimately 1950. But until she has decision-making power over finances mostly gets squandered.

It all goes to the family. They have a nice house and they have a good life and she gets a good education and all that, but she should have had millions waiting for her and it winds up being something like 60,000. So this 30 million is almost all the Shirley temple. Black fortune it's her work as a diplomat and our

Amit: diplomats don't, that's not a

Michael: pain, but I think she's, I mean, she's well, she's also serving on the boards and I think she is also doing some speaking events here and there, but the thing I'm trying to draw attention to is that 30 million ought to be not considered part of her early fortune, that that is adult earned.

Amit: Your understanding was that there was not a lot of royalties and even of the merchandising from those,

Michael: correct, even though there's Shirley temple dolls and dishware, I think that there is some of that, but there's also some shitty contracts signed with the Hollywood studios in the early years. I think that gets corrected later, but the money is not managed.

This is not about her next level. Hollywood stardom

Amit: speaking as a is a moneymaker. Like I've been in positions before that we have to sort of hire these well-known speakers. Yeah. It's a lot of money that sometimes you get paid for 45 minutes of, of giving

Michael: a keynote. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's not in this episode, but I desire that I'd love to just, I'd like to get paid to talk if that's not clear from this podcast.

All right. Shall we go on? Yes. All right. Category six Simpsons Saturday night. Or hall of fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL or the Simpsons as well as impersonations. Okay. Never appeared on the Simpsons, but there is an episode that features a character called the Vicky Valentine.

Yes. I remember that very well. Loosely based on Shirley temples life, Vicky Valentine grows up to have a big ego and a competitive edge and the Simpsons showrunners approach, Shirley temple, and said, would you voice this? And she said, fuck off. And that's quoted several places. She apparently did say fuck off.

Yeah. I don't know if that's true or not. Maybe that rumor just got copied, pasted on a, several articles. Well, yeah, it's actually on one of those like famous people who declined to appear on the Simpsons kinds of lists out there. That's what I found for the Simpsons. So I found that she was parodied by Laraine Newman in the early cast in 1976.

This is when Shirley temple is ambassador to Ghana. And it, this is I think, a joke about her ambassador ship. I couldn't find the video for this. It's behind a paywall. There might've been others.

Amit: I imagine it's something like her with the curls and all like .

Michael: Yeah. And then she has a Hollywood walk of fame.

She got their star in

Amit: 1960. Yeah. And she has the hand prints. She's famous.

Michael: Yeah. Can I ask a question real quick? Did you know her as a drink first or as an actress? First actress? I knew her as a drink first, really? I was somebody ordered me a Shirley temple when I was five or six, I was like, this is fantastic.

And then later I learned there was a person sort of like the Vidaza soon, same thing. I couldn't believe there was actually a human behind IRA.

Amit: Yeah. I remember I hear the name. The first thing I think of is, is good ship lollipop.

Michael: I hear the name. The other thing I hear is surely you can't be serious. I am serious and don't call me Shirley.

Alright, category seven. Over-under in this category, we look at the generalized life expectancy for the year. This person was born to see if they beat the house odds. And as a measure of grace life expectancy for women in 1928, the year she was born was 58.3. She died age 85. Well then sure. Well done, Shirley

Amit: crushed it.

She did, even though she was a lifelong smoker, I saw that.

Michael: And she also, like I said earlier, she presents, well, she aged gracefully. Yeah. She

Amit: was very articulate. She was very attractive. Yes. To throughout. Yeah. She held onto the grace and I mean, the whole story is

Michael: graceful, I think. Okay. I think so. Uh, it's time for a word from our sponsor.

So let's.

Amit: So Michael, we each do our own set of research. As we prepare for these shows, I noticed you always reference the biography and you have like a paperback biography with you as we come to studio. Yeah. So I am to assume that you're getting these from some online mega Mart, is that

Michael: correct? No, not at all.

The first thing I do when you and I decide on our next dead celebrity, is I go and find out, is there a biography on this person and is that biography available at half price books? There's a store right up the street from me, an actual brick and mortar store where I can walk in when I go there to find.

Do they have a biography for our next debt celebrity, but I always wind up picking up more books. I go through with the children's section, I'm a sucker for a good page Turner. So I go through the murder mystery section. They also have rare collections. They have science stuff. I don't know how this sounds to you, but I actually, I love the smell of half-price books.

It's got that old book smell. I do. I like that

Amit: too. Not a great smell. Yeah. And you know what? Half price books is currently celebrating 50 years of buying and selling books, movies, and music. There are more than 120 stores and you can find out more about half price books@hpb.com.

Michael: Alright. At this point in our show, most of what we've learned is easily obtainable public information. We're going to transition. And now start to imagine what it would have been like to have been this person. These are the more introspective categories on our show. First one is man in the mirror. Did she like her reflection on it?

Amit: I'm going to go a slight net. Wow. Didn't expect that she made a quote to time magazine once about or acting life. And she said something to the effect of, I always think of her as the little girl. That's not me. So referring to herself like those first 20 years were just not even her, that it was somebody else.

I think that's confusing. I think it's difficult to have your face as a child plastered all over the world and you look in the mirror and you sort of extract yourself. There's an absence of totality in it. And I think anytime we see our own reflection, yes, we are seeing ourselves in the here and now, but we are also bringing together a sort of all we know about ourselves and all we live through.

And if she has to basically third person herself for that beginning of her life, I just don't know that it's an easy glance,

Michael: very strong and very thoughtful answer. I got us. It's very hard to watch videos of her and not kind of look for the little girl whose likeness or so familiar with. I actually have some, one other thing I want to add to that.

I don't know if you have this experience. When I see pictures of myself, like from last night for exams. I'm always like, I look that old, my mind's image of who I am is a younger version of me. I'm not aware of my own aging, my brain, my mind's eye perception. My, my self narrative hasn't caught up with what has happened to 43 year old.

Michael. I think that's everybody. You're probably right. But I, something about your answer to the Shirley temple question made me think about, is it even harder for her where her likeness is mirrored back to her, the younger version of herself all the time. Exactly. Yeah, I went, yes. I didn't make this complicated by like your answer.

I think she's confident there's a self-awareness there. That to me lends itself to a, yes. To the man in the mirror. All right. Next category. Outgoing message. Like man in the mirror were wondering, did they like the sound of their own. When they heard it on an answering machine or outgoing voicemail, would they ever recorded it themselves?

I didn't think too much about it. I said,

Amit: yes. I, I think so. Yes. And I think it's different than the reflection, even though her voice as a child was just as like this overly bubbly and squeaky type of thing. She was so articulate as an adult. And I think there's a difference there, you know? Cause when you look at yourself, you're not, uh, it's different than hearing yourself.

Michael: Oh yeah, no. As you and I have been working on there, show the division between these two categories has grown for me. There are two very different questions about self perception. Yep. Okay. Next category, regrets, public or private. What we really want to know is what, if anything kept this person awake at night?

I think this is where I want to talk about some of the more complicated stuff. Yeah. I agree. Okay. Well let me go through what I got on the public front. Okay. First marriage. It's pretty cool. That was a mistake. Yep. I mentioned earlier some of the shitty contracts she signed with Fox in particular, although she claims to have no resentment around her parents for mismanaging the money, which is sort of interesting.

She didn't get the role of Dorothy in wizard of Oz when she was how old of an age, where it would've made sense. I think, I can't remember which direction it went cause it's 1939. So I think they might've said you still look too young or you're not old enough. I can't remember. But the casting director said no, the other thing was so wizard of Oz was under MGM, which her contract with Fox into 20th century Fox.

And that she's also, by the way, I should have mentioned this credited with saving 20th century Fox in the early thirties, that studio was in a state of major crisis. And she turns out to be a moneymaker anyway. So she didn't get the part of Dorothy, might've been a regret. That's what I had on the public front.

Did you have anything?

Amit: Yeah. I mean, she did ultimately die of obstructive pulmonary disease. So maybe a life of smoking. Yeah. It could have been one. The rest is more private. I think the other ones that I have, so

Michael: I don't know how and where to talk about it, but this is the thing that's been on my mind.

She becomes pretty aware and her parents do that. She is going to age out that her stardom as a child, actress has a set limit and that she is going to. And our puberty and it starts to become a woman. And as soon as she does, holy shit, the wolves descend. Like, I guess I have this story in my head that Hollywood wasn't always so such a corrupt perverted machine.

Not true at all. When she goes over to MGM, which is where I started to talk about this a second ago. There's frayed. I think his last name is it's like Louis B. Mayer, his right-hand man. She has a story with her and her mom where they get separated. Louie B Mayer was talking to her mom and this guy afraid is talking to her and he exposes himself as hot.

And she just like straight up laughed because she had never seen. Male anatomy before and he throws her out and then she and her mom are driving home. She tells her mother about this, which actually is to me, the mark of great parenting that she had comfort with her mother to like, explain what happened.

And her mother says, yeah, well, Louis B. Mayer came onto me. So MGM was not a good place for them. Yeah. Here's the regret. I came up with the private one. This is totally speculative, but she is aware of the sexualization that, and the kind of corruption that can happen to children in Hollywood. Right. And she, she comes of age as a woman still like in the limelight.

And I wondered if she didn't ever think to herself. Could I, or should I have done more to protect the kids that are part of this industry? Okay. I didn't see anywhere where she ever expressed that thought. And so, I don't know. I there's a part of me that, that just wondered if she ever had that thought because she

Amit: had that position.

Right. As you said, she is the president of Mount

Michael: Rushmore of oh, child stardom. That's all right. Yeah. And I don't know what, if anything, she could have done other than raise awareness. It's a big ask in a way, but it's my speculative regret on her life. Yeah.

Amit: Cause she's one of the few examples. Of just like psychologically sound child stars that we know of or that I can think of.

Right. There's a lot of people, I guess, those that exited, you know, we, we don't know their whole stories.

Michael: I think that's right. But I may like fame has to fuck with you. People have very weird reactions, surely temple. There was a woman who tried to kill her. Yeah. 1939. He was like, thought that she had stolen her daughter's soul.

This deranged woman FBI gets involved. It's not like in the 1930s, the bizarreness and the stalker thing around fame didn't exist. It very much dead. And she was protected from it, but she wasn't ignorant of it. Yeah.

Amit: What, I'm going to flip this a little bit. What would you do as a parent? If let's say your daughter had an opportunity to be in a TV

Michael: show?

I put the kibosh on it immediately, man. I wouldn't even begin to walk down. Yeah, that, that road, even if it's something she really wants to do, I say that my wife, Alison, she's actually a wonderful actress. I've seen her on stage several times and she had a real interest in acting at a young age. I remember talking to her about this yet, and I think her parents gently steered her away from bigger opportunities.

I think that's probably for the best, but I know Alison to this day kind of wonders, like if I could have been guided in a healthy way towards a career. Acting and film, you know, as I talked that out, that's probably where I would want to go with it. I love the theater and I don't think it's nearly as corrupting.

And I think that if you become a great stage actress, then we'll deal with the Hollywood offers when we're ready for them. But I that's where I would actually want to steer any. Child prodigy things and into like an institution that I have more comfort with. It's just strange

Amit: to me the whole idea of being a child actor or child star.

So even if you're a musician or whatnot, so, you know, in psychology, can I make the assumption that you've been to a therapist before you can? Okay. So, you know, so much of, of

Michael: all fields and your home, but,

Amit: um, in all fields they're looking for signs of childhood interrupted, right? And that's, you know, the foundation at least of a lot of problems that you develop as an adult, it seems almost impossible to not have an interrupted childhood.

If you have any degree of fame whatsoever. It's so strange. Cause I, I guess we need child actors, you know, if you're doing TV shows about families and stuff like that. So what I'm getting at is, you know, we use. Category in the show about desirability with this person. Right. But what I'm saying is, as a parent, to anybody that has an opportunity for a child to, to star in something, knowing all we know how.

Michael: Do they do it? I don't, I don't know. Personally, I, I would take pains to try and shield any child of any kind of major limelight, because I do think that their head can't handle it. And that part of the challenge of growing up is like having a healthy ego and not having certain forms of affirmation, go to your head.

People tell you how great you are or how smart you are or how talented you are. And if strangers are doing that to you at a young age, you said earlier, I can't even take a compliment. Most people can't. I think we have to learn. Adults had to take a compliment if you pile it on it, a kid at a young age just messes with them.

So I don't know. I major aversion. How could you not as a responsible parent have major aversion to an at the same time, I don't know if they're like good at a thing. And it's like, you know what, there's a healthy pathway forward. You know, like everything has gotta be a game time

Amit: decision. Correct. And not everyone's born into this healthy middle-class that we're born into also, right?

Like if you've got a talented child and you can see an opportunity for that member of your family to earn money, that's a hard thing to pass up.

Michael: I absolutely should cop to my privilege here, you know, and I wouldn't want to deny them. An opportunity for a expression of a God given talent. I don't have a clean

Amit: now I'm thinking too, when we did the Peter Fonda episode.

Yeah. There was that whole Baron

Michael: Trump thing. Yeah. Peter Fonda got derided for making a remark about, about Trump being thrown into a cage at the border or whatever. Yeah. So we can't

Amit: do that, but it's like, they throw him to this cage of this psychological cage of semi stardom.

Michael: Here's another thing I want to talk about that I think is more on topicals, Shirley temple.

If she becomes the most popular Hollywood star and the great depression and the, and that sort of happy narrative of her at least childhood stardom was that America needed. This, what exactly did it need? Why exactly did this character as portrayed in many films and this person become the famous little girl?

I do think that even though I have, you know, icky feelings about child stars overall, I can see the case that one of the things that's great about kids, probably the single most delightful thing about being a parent is their innocence. It is a really heartwarming feeling to indulge in their imaginations and to just like how much they don't know yet.

And that the atmosphere of that is really great. Shirley temple had that. And maybe we do need some version of that in our entertainment and our art. Yeah. So you answered that in your own

Amit: question about like, why, why, why did the nation need that in the height of the greatest? Yeah, and

Michael: I, I don't think that that's bullshit.

I think that that's real. And I think to this day we need that. I think we need Disney movies. I think we need Pixar. I think we need, you know, I've become a big fan of studio Ghibli and Miyazaki lately. I want actually expressions of childhood innocence in pop culture and in art. And to make that art, you probably need kids.

What's the healthy way to do that as a society. I don't know. Yeah. But maybe,

Amit: yeah. Yeah. So this is a really good segue to the regret that I wanted to talk about, which is. Potential regret you used the word innocence, right? So there were detractors about her act and her performance that it wasn't innocent, that all of the outfits and the subtle curves and the little in the flirty eyes was all like sexual

Michael: Bates, masked pedophilia, latent pedophilia.

Correct.

Amit: And that's the reason that was a reason why it was so popular and so popular amongst a large group of, of audience movie going public. Yeah. Yeah. I think all the studios Bohemian deny denials and everything, but they're playing without fire.

Michael: Yeah.

Amit: I wonder what she thought of that, but was there any

Michael: regret, is that her regret, this gets back to the, like, it is

Amit: only if the sense of there was a deliberate thing that she was privy to.

Michael: I think that there's a thing that she's privy to. It's not clear to me that she has any agent. And if she doesn't have any agency to make the decisions about her early career in her life, can it be a regret? At what point are you going to become responsible so that you

Amit: can be regretful, that you did something and were

Michael: used?

Well, that's interesting. So that to me makes me think about healthy regrets versus unhealthy regrets. Cause does, does regret have to be tethered to responsibility? I think you can have the emotion of regret for something that you're not responsible for. Yeah. I think that

Amit: happens a lot, but that's more trauma I guess, than it has,

Michael: but I think it's important.

Yeah. I think it's really important. So if our definition of regret includes things that you may not be responsible for which it shouldn't, it shouldn't, I guess that's the point I want to make because. Regrets should not include things that you didn't have that agency over. And if you're a child.

Amit: Yeah. So maybe I'm expanding this category today to just to just include potential traumas.

Yeah.

Michael: All right. I feel like we covered that. Okay. Next category. Good dreams. Bedrooms. I went good.

Amit: Yeah. I, I went good. Despite some evidence that was interesting. Do you use the word resilient? And I think that's very true about her. The cases against there was obviously like this exposure that she had to witness as a child of men exposing herself.

Pause

Michael: on that though. Cause that's super duper fucking common. I wish it wasn't. I think so. I remember being at this lunch one time in high school with these girls and there was like 11 girls and I was the one guy there. And I remember this one girl saying this will always stick in my memory. Is there anybody here at this table who has not been sexually abused or have faced some sort of sexual assault and not a single girl raised there?

And that can

Amit: be by an older man exposing himself to you as a child

Michael: knows. I think that it's worse probably in Hollywood where there's all kinds of fucked up power dynamics and there's Harvey Weinstein is not the first monster that this industry has produced, but I don't think the pressure that girls face going through adolescence and into womanhood is by any means contained to Hollywood.

Right. I, I think that most girls and women deal with that full stop, I think it may have been harder for her because she's in more of an adult world. Yeah.

Amit: But, but you're saying adolescents in a womanhood, I think we're talking about single digit childhood. Yeah.

Michael: Although. Five I get from her autobiography is that, that risk, somebody doing something inappropriate was really mitigated until she got closer to puberty.

Amit: That was one argument for bad dreams. The other one I had, again, goes back to Czechoslovakia. So did you catch this story when she was there in 68? She was there with like, uh, for a multiple sclerosis.

Michael: It was like a fundraiser

Amit: thing or something. She must have been speaking, but that's when the Soviets invaded.

So they had to flee to like the roof of their hotels. I don't know if the hotel was under siege and she's on the roof for her hotel. And she sees a woman get gunned down in the streets. Like literally just watching, witnessing the death and the shooting. That's some hard thing to see. Obviously our troops face that all the time, but civilians are kind of different too.

I thought

Michael: about that as a Malcovich moment, actually.

Amit: Yeah. So that's, that's just, you know, some of the cases of bad dreams, but I'm going back to resilience, like you said, and I think.

Michael: All right. Second to last category, cocktail, coffee or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity?

That's maybe a question of what drugs sounds like the most fun, or it may be that we're trying to unlock some, you know, get access to some inner question that we're curious about. What are you got here?

Amit: Definitely cannabis. Wow. With the adults, surely, you know, with lake post, uh, suppose Czech Republic.

Michael: So with this beer joint, a bong hit a pipe.

Amit: Probably, well, that's an interesting one. Uh, I mean, a joint seems more, more

Michael: personal. You'd like to pass a joint.

Amit: It was totally terrible. Yeah. Her past one to me, I think actually like she goes first. Yeah, I do. I do. And then, you know, you talk about the access and that arc. I just want to see, I want to know about these quite all these questions I raised about childhood, and I want to know how you fucking build resilience, you know, and she can tell it to me over coffee or a Shirley temple black, but I think there would just be a certain insight and prophecy that perhaps can only be unlocked in that setting, in that, in intimacy.

And with

Michael: that substance. Yeah, that's good. I want coffee. I often do when I send some intelligence and it's not actually that I'm so interested in the stories. I mean, I listed all those people, you know, who are to me, distant figures of history, who she had chance interactions with. I would love to interview her.

The thing that I'm probably most curious about in an intellectual vein is how she understands the phenomenon of celebrity and the blending of entertainment and politics. I mean, she knew presidents, she knew Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. She got to meet Truman. She was honored by Clinton. She worked with decks and she was appointed.

You know for it. So she, she was at the upper echelons of American political culture. She was also at the upper echelons of American corporate culture serving on the board of all these companies. And she's at the upper echelons of American entertainment culture. I want perspective on all those things.

And I just want to sit down and like, hear her talk about how she understands America, you know? Yeah. So that's great. All right. We're here. Our final category. The VanDerBeek named Dr. James VanDerBeek, who famously said in varsity blues. I don't want your life Amit. Do you want Shirley temples life or do you want me to go first?

I've been

Amit: going first a lot, so yes. I want you to go for it.

Michael: So one of the things I feel like I always have to remind myself, is that the question of do I admire? And like, this person is different than the question of what would it be like to be this person? And it's that second question that we are interested in.

Do I want to have been this person? First of all? I don't think I have the characteristics that she had. I think had I been a child actor, male or female? I would have been chewed up now, did she obtain resilience and authority and leadership skills as a consequence of that? Or was she born with them? It's a nature nurture question.

So I don't know. I feel like I'm a lean. Yes. For a lot of reasons. It's a really interesting life. It's a fascinating life. All those things. I just talked about all the people she meets the historical figures, the time periods she exists in the immortal realization and a non-alcoholic drink. Like there is so much I really, really like, and just learning about her was fucking fun and fascinating and great.

I'm not sure I can say separate those questions right now of do I like her versus what I want to be her. I'm a yes, but I'm sort of like struggling in my mind to make the case for why. What a no would be that she had to deal with sleazeballs and perverts and probably some really, really fucked up characters for all of her life that makes me averse.

But at the same time, I don't want to hide and I don't think she did. So I see somebody who's courageous smart and somebody who is a leader and somebody who left an impact on the world in a lot of different ways. And even if those things aren't celebrated in the first line of her obituary, putting all that on the table.

Yes. I think I want this life said that as a grown man, I will take your life. Shirley temple. That felt good. That, that didn't like my inner child just got a little, you know, just got to say good. Just got to pipe up.

Amit: That's good. Okay. Uh, you great word, inner child. There's my hesitation. Is that, that was her childhood.

There was no childhood. That was anything like what you or I are experienced. If I'm going to look back on my life. Probably some of the best, most sound memories are like just playing in the pool with my brother in the summers. When I. Seven or eight years old. And she had none of that. Like she just had none, no pure childhood moments.

And the things that you talk about with your children of the innocence, how excited they are to just like roll around in the grass, you know, that she didn't get, I mean, I'm sure she had moments of it. You know, you talk about how good her parents were at kind of like protecting her and guiding her and being real parents.

But there's no doubt. She just didn't have the opportunity to do that. Given what, that essentially she was a career person from the age of like four or five. So that's something that I am not sure about.

Michael: Well, let me just type it up and I don't want to interrupt too much, but she would say she had fun on set.

She would, she could describe her experiences of practicing lines with her mother the night before and entering this world of make-believe and working with the cast and crew and being a precocious child as positive memories. In fact may be the highlight of her childhood was actually working on the stage and working, you know, with the cameras off her on like, I think it was exciting.

And then all the stuff around it is a little more complicated. So,

Amit: so maybe not, that is true. So maybe all I'm making in the case, this is the anonymity of playing in the pool with my brother, which allows me to be fully present and a presence that I haven't been able to recapture. So that's the case against, but the words that will come up very often in this conversation are resilience.

And I'm going to add the word pivot as well. It seems incredibly resilient to that. I think. Pivot to the rest of her career. As a diplomat, a board member, a champion of causes is absolutely remarkable. And if you book in to meeting Albert Einstein, to being the last ambassador to Czechoslovakia before it's split into two nations is extraordinary and she may live in her name may live on forever.

If that drink does, but the pivot and the resilience, the love, the good parent relationship, the husband that she did finally find. I didn't hear anything that would complicate that. Like you said, she spokes very articulately. So my answer is yes, I want your life Shirley temple.

Michael: I should, it still feels a little awkward.

Amit: Sorry, sorry. I want your life Shirley temple. I think you do the Burley gates. Oh, well,

Michael: okay. Can I tap dance my way? No, but I, I,

Amit: I, now I get to prompt, right? I get to be the here. Uh, okay. Michael, you are surely temple. Yes. Uh, you are entering the afterlife. You are before St.

Peter, who is a stand in for, um, the gateway to any afterlife, regardless of your belief, make your case.

Michael: Peter surely don't call me surely

Amit: he made yourself laugh.

Michael: It's just like, just imagining Peter saying surely you can't be.

Amit: I know, but that was inner child. Laughter did shop Michael.

Michael: Uh, so I had a complicated life in a way.

I was a child star. Maybe the first and in some ways the most important child star. And I brought people a tremendous amount of joy at a time when culture needed that. I'm proud of that, but I not sure whether or not it's right for me to take responsibility for it. I do think it's appropriate for me to take responsibility for the decisions I made as a woman.

For my commitment to political causes for my efforts to bring equal rights to women in a variety of institutions, whether that's in corporate leadership or in political leadership or around health issues. I discovered in my life that the more I gave back, the more possibilities opened up to me. So I'm very grateful for the opportunities I was given.

And I tried my best to give them back at every turn. So from my experiences in Hollywood, for my public service and really for everything I did, let me

thanks so much for listening to this episode of famous and gravy. If you're enjoying our show, please go to apple podcast to rate and review us. It really does help new listeners to find the show. We would love to see you on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at famous and gravy. We've got lots of fun stuff there on our Twitter feed.

Also, please sign up for our newsletter on our website, famous and gravy.com. Famous and gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Morgan Honaker, original theme music by Kevin Strang. And thanks also to our sponsor half-price books. Thank you for listening.

We'll see you next time.