Shirley Temple died on Monday at 85, more than half a century after she made her last movies. She shot to stardom at age 6, had been in the movies since age 3 and was dropped by her first studio, Fox, when she turned 13. Although she is best remembered as the singling girl with beautiful curls, who danced into the hearts of billions around the world, she continued acting into her teens, signing with MGM after Fox dropped her.
Throughout the 1940s, Temple continued finding occasionally roles. In 1944, she starred in the David O. Selznick production Since You Went Away, which was about the women who stayed home while their men went off to war. She had a hilarious part in 1947’s The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, in which she was a teen smitten by Cary Grant’s charms. But one of her best roles during this time came in 1948’s Fort Apache.
The film is a Western, directed by the great John Ford, who worked with Temple when she was at Fox, and stars Henry Fonda and John Wayne. In it, Temple plays the key role of Philadelphia Thursday, the young daughter of Lt. Col. Owen Thursday (Fonda). While this may seem like a silly, insignificant role, nothing is insignificant in a Ford movie. The fact that Thursday is a father is the only thing that makes him seem like a human being to the audience.
Thursday is a driven officer, dedicated to finding glory wherever he can. At first, he hates the idea of going to the desolate Fort Apache, seeing no way to have a glorious achievement on his resume there. But then he learns of Cochise, a Native American whose tribe is getting uneasy with Americans around. Thursday decides that to attack, but Captain Kirby York (Wayne) is convinced it’s a bad idea.
Temple’s character provides the film with Ford’s usual light touches throughout super serious subjects. Her courtship with Michael O’Rourke (John Agar, Temple’s real-life first husband) is, in some ways, the mission that her father should be focused on. Instead, he’s dedicated to a suicide mission, but the audience knows that he loves her, even if it’s tough love.
There’s a genius scene early in the film, when O’Rourke and Philadelphia start clicking romantically, as Philadelphia tries to play hard-to-get (as all Hollywood women are). It’s moments like that which makes me wish she stuck around in movies a while longer. That smile could melt anyone’s heart.
Fort Apache, as historian F.X. Feeney notes in his commentary on the Blu-ray, was really Ford’s deconstruction of the myth of Col. Custer, who was at one time revered for going on his ill-fated pursuit of glory. Fort Apache shows how a myth like that can be created and how one’s egomaniacal drive for glory can hurt everyone, especially your family.
Temple did make a few movies after Fort Apache, but then moved to television in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Then, she dedicated her life to politics and diplomacy. While she made few public appearances in recent years, she will always be remembered as the little girl who made a county smile during the Great Depression. Don’t forget her roles as a teen, though. These movies are too good to be lost in the attic.
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