Shirley Temple’s Adventures with her Little Slingshot
Eleanor Roosevelt had no idea what had hit her
Most of Shirley Temple’s contemporaries saw her as an innocent child. Most of the time she was. Her mother, Gertrude, and her teacher on the set, Frances Klampt, saw to that. The public adored Shirley. Everyone wanted to meet her — even the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who called for her to visit him when he knew a road trip had brought her to the nation’s capital.
Before that, though, Mrs. Roosevelt had stopped by to visit with Shirley one day on the set of Little Miss Broadway. The publicity people had told Shirley not to keep Mrs. Roosevelt too long because of her tight schedule. Nonetheless, Shirley took Mrs. Roosevelt by the hand to her special bungalow.
They had been there for half an hour when Shirley stuck her head out the door. She called her co-actor George Murphy to show Mrs. Roosevelt some of the comic imitations that he often used to entertain Shirley as they waited for their scenes. He didn’t mind doing them to amuse Shirley but was taken aback at the thought of entertaining the President’s wife. Shirley insisted, so Murphy performed before Shirley and a grinning Eleanor Roosevelt, and got the applause of both.
