Shirley Temple was married at 17, a mother at 19 and divorced by the time she was 22. Having her film career fizzle out when she was a teenager might have been the best thing that happened to her.
Ah, Miss Gumm… Hollywood chewed you up and spat you out.
The fact that she was undergoing so much trauma and could still give performances like this is a testament to her natural talent. The Madam Crematon number highlights a radiant, super-intelligent woman with a wicked sense of comic timing.
And the dress she is wearing? She owns the shit outta that bitch! Step off, heffas!
She was a rare treasure that was squandered.
Interesting to wonder if the child actors that largely rejected acting in their early 20s (Temple and Deanna Durbin) ended up with the happiest lives. Durbin married and lived in Paris, rejecting virtually all interviews. Temple did some tv projects in the late 1950s but was involved in the diplomatic service.
Sandra Dee. Learned of that trainwreck only in the last couple of years, but she had a truly wretched childhood which led to a pretty damaged adulthood. Led off by the daily sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her step-father from ages 8-12( with her co-dependant and smothering mother apparently offering her up on a platter in exchange for domestic stability ).
Patty Duke was in the running. Alcoholic father and a mother with clinical depression and prone to violence. Father was forced to leave home when she was six and when she was eight she was turned over to her talent managers John and Ethel Ross. They changed her name from Anna Marie to Patty to try to replicate the success of tween actress Patty McCormack. Gave her alcohol and pills, took a high cut of her earnings, wouldn’t let her use the bathroom unless the door was open, lied about her age and resume, made sexual advances. They got her involved with the quiz show scandals of the 1950s and coached her to lie to a grand jury and a Congressional committee. One congressman asked her if she was really telling the truth and she broke down admitting she was lying. As a young adult broke down on national tv in 1970 Emmy awards ceremony. One marriage failed and a whole big thing over who impregnated her with her son Sean (as a Catholic an abortion was out of the question). Eventually in the 1980s she was diagnosed with bipolar depression and became a lot better.
The article gkster linked mentions Rooney getting a similar treatment as Garland’s from MGM, where they worked together. Pills to pop you up, pills to pop you down…
I nominate Lauren Chapin (Kitten on Father Knows Best). One of the original happy family shows, Lauren’s home life was a horrorshow. Rape and sexual abuse from an early age. Later in her life she met a classic abuser who pimped her out and got her on drugs. She spent a great deal of time in and out of rehabilitation centers, where the pushers would be waiting right outside for the miserable clients to come out. It was a classic scenario of child abuse and sexual abuse leading to prostitution and drug abuse. Eventually, she found herself pregnant and like a miracle from above she cleaned up, completely. Later went on to become a preacher or involved in some church and gave inspirational talks. She wrote an autobiography, ‘Father Does Know Best’ in 1989, absolutely hair-raising.
I’ve also read similar bad bad things happen to child actors today, pedophilia runs rampant. Some of the ‘celebrity blind items’ hint at major conspiracies among the rich and famous, politicians and celebrities of every kind, to indulge in trafficking of children. Including child actors on major tv shows who go through horrors with writers and producers when no one is watching after them. The young girl from Poltergeist, it is whispered, died as a direct result of grotesque sexual abuse inflicted on her undeveloped body.
That seems a stretch. She was operated on and autopsied - she had a congenital issue that was misdiagnosed. If there had been even a hint of foul play( and the hospital that was sued for malpractice would probably not have hesitated )you’d think it would have been all over the news, much like the Ramsey case.
Melissa Gilbert was also abused, but I can’t remember if it was on the set of Little House or The Miracle Worker.
NM
That is bad. However, I only mentioned Garland, Piaf, and Holiday because I deliberately wanted to limit the comparative choices to mid 20th century female singers (or singer-actress in the case of Garland) who endured such extreme misery and tragedy in their lives that it became part of their public persona. I don’t know if Sandra Dee also sang but even if she did, she was almost entirely known as an actress.
I apologize in advance for this being in bad taste but this thread has almost inspired me to draft a “Misery Matrix” featuring a column of well-known 20th century singers (e.g., Garland, Piaf, Holiday, etc.) and a row of everything that went wrong in their lives (e.g., poverty, child abuse, sexual abuse, financial exploitation, substance abuse, divorces, racism, early death, etc.).
You could draft something similar for actors and comedians. It seems a lot of people drawn to show biz of any sort seem to have dysfunctional unhappy backstories. Not all, but a lot.
Does reducing it to a competition make it more palatable? Is everyone who is not the worst somehow saved by their newly diminished status?
Worse for those who haven’t been drawn to it but brought by parents who either want to be The Mother Of The Star or to make a living from the kid.