“When I saw work shoes I would know that that person worked. I was very worried about people with shiny, pointed shoes as a child.”

Shirley Jane Temple on growing up as the most famous child in the world:
At age six she became the first recipient of the juvenile Academy Award. To this day she is the youngest person ever to receive an Academy Award. After receiving her award from actor/writer Irvin S. Cobb, she politely thanked him, then turned to her mother and asked, “Mommy, can I go home now?”
Her mother, Gertrude Temple, did her hair in pin curls for each movie. Every hairstyle had exactly 56 curls.
She was considered to play Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939), and there are several stories about why she didn’t. One is that 20th Century-Fox refused to lend her to MGM. Another was that MGM considered her singing limitations “insurmountable”. In either case, Judy Garland got the part.
She was also considered for the role of Veda Pierce in the Joan Crawford drama Mildred Pierce (1945), which went to Ann Blyth.
James Dunn, commenting on his relationship with Shirley Temple: “She’s a grand baby; sweet, nice, wholesome, never fresh. I think she’s swell and one of the things of which I’m most proud is that Shirley thinks I’m all right too.”
James Dunn, commenting on his relationship with Shirley Temple: “She’s a grand baby, sweet, nice, wholesome, never fresh. I think she’s swell and one of the things of which I’m most proud is that Shirley thinks I’m all right too.”

After Temple told cast members of “Bright Eyes” she was going to marry him when she grew up, Dunn said, “That makes it 100%. Up to now Shirley was the only girl in Hollywood to whom at one time or another I hadn’t been reported engaged.”