Breaking: Shirley Temple Dead at Age 85

Online sources confirm that Golden Age film era child star Shirley Temple died February 10, 2014, at the age of 85

 

Although perhaps not well known by young film fans today, Shirley Temple (also known as Shirley Temple Black, after her marriage to Charles Alden Black in 1950), was born April 23, 1928 in Santa Monica, CA. She was a household name well into the 1980s, with classic films such as Heidi, Curly Top, and Bright Eyes having run and rerun in syndication well into those years. In fact, between the age of 3 and 20, Shirley Temple earned nearly 60 film credits, and was awarded a Juvenile Academy Award in 1935 for her work in various films in 1934.

She retired from films in 1950, but returned to acting on TV in 1958. Her television career never took hold, and after a failed run for US Congress, she eventually became an ambassador, first to Ghana in 1974, the later to Czechoslovakia in 1989.

Temple was one of the first women to publicly discuss her battle with breast cancer, which she was able to survive after a modified radical mastectomy in 1973.

She also was a member of numerous boards of directors, including The Walt Disney Company, Del Monte, Bank of America, The United Nations Association, and The National Wildlife Federation. Temple also spoke on behalf of the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation after one of her brothers developed the disease.

Temple died in her home in Woodside, CA, of natural causes.

With information from Wikipedia and IMDb