Shirley Temple Opens Her Fourth Year as Leading Film Actress

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 20, 25 January 1937, Page 11

Shirley Temple Opens Her Fourth Year as Leading Film Actress

Shirley Temple, the million-dollar baby they found in a five cent picture, began her fourth year on December 19 as a contract actress. Three years ago she was an unknown littie girl, working on a wcek-to-week basis in a series of one-reel baby pictures. On that day, she came with 149 other children—most of whom had dimples and curls—to try out for a brief song-and-dance bit in the musical film, “Stand Up and Cheer.” To-day she is tho No. 1 box-officc attraction of the motion picture world. Her box-offico stature is twice that oi Garbo. Executives of Twentieth Cen-tury-Fox studios estimate 240,000,000 people—a number twice the size of the population of tho United States —have paid to see her on the screen. They claim her popularity is still growing. They cite the lukewarm reception she used to receive in Paris, and compare it to a recent situation in the French capital, when her pictures were playing in five different theatres on the same day, all to capacity audiences.

American theatre men voted her the leading box-office attraction for 1936. She is the only jdayer of either sex or any nation to get it twice in succession. In England, she outranked even the reigning favourite, Gracie Fields, in the opinion of British theatre men. She is the only American ever to receive this rating. She has made 12 feature pictures. Studio heads estimated each film cost an average of 500,000 dollars—cheap as features go—and grossed 3,000,000 dollars each. Her original contract stipulated a 150 dollars a week salary. To-day, usually well-informed sources say she is paid per picture—at 75,000 dollars per film. It is estimated she has earned more than 1,250,000 dollars in studio salaries, perhaps a third as much again from advertising “tieups. ” She will be eight next April 23.