eMoviePoster.com

What are the objects in the corners of some images? Learn More

Shirley Temple was born in Santa Monica, California in 1928. Her mother quickly saw her remarkable talent, and did all she could to develop it, and to get her noticed. She enrolled her in a dance school, where she amazed everyone with her dancing and singing abilities at such a young age. Her mother gave her a hair style imitative of that worn by Mary Pickford, with exactly 56 "ringlets". She appeared in her first movies starting when she was just shy of four years old, in a series called "Baby Burlesks" (she had apparently failed an audition for the Our Gang series). She was paid $10 a day. In 1934, she signed a contract with Fox, and her career really took off. Her big breakthrough came with Stand Up and Cheer!, where her singing and dancing amazed the nation. But she proved she was a remarkably poised actress that same year in Little Miss Marker and Baby Take a Bow, and Fox rushed her into as many movies as they could. That same year she was in Now and Forever with Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard (reportedly Cooper asked for her autograph when he met her!), and soon after she starred in the series of juvenile musicals she is best remembered for, films like Bright Eyes, The Little Colonel, Curly Top, Poor Little Rich Girl, Wee Willie Winkie, Heidi, and many more. In the late 1930s, Fox (now 20th Century Fox) still had her in little girl roles, even though she was rapidly maturing, and in 1939 MGM badly wanted her for the lead in The Wizard of Oz, but 20th Century Fox refused to loan her out, and instead put her in The Blue Bird, which did not do well. She left Fox, and began playing "teen" roles for various studios, but none were very successful, and she made far fewer movies. In 1945, she married actor John Agar, and they were married for four years and had a child. In 1949, they divorced, and a year later she married businessman Charles Black, and retired from movies forever. She became active in politics (she was a Republican, and was appointed to several posts in the 1960s to 1990s). Shirley Temple was far and away the greatest child star of all time! She saved the Fox studio after the death of its previous greatest star, Will Rogers in 1935. She was merchandised in a zillion ways, and countless girls born in the late 1930s were named "Shirley". There has never been another child actor with so much talent at such a young age! She passed away in 2014 at the age of 85.

If you know who did the art (if any), please let us know.

Important Added Info: Note that starting in the very early 1910s (around 1912, when studios realized that people were more likely to go to a movie if it had a star they liked in it), studios created sets of special "personality" posters, which theaters that showed their movies could hang in their lobbies. These had a big advantage over posters for specific movies, because they could be used whenever a movie with that star was shown, which meant they could be used over and over! Because studios realized this, they made these posters on a high quality paper stock, sometimes with a "linen" texture, and sometimes with elaborate border designs, and almost always with great quality color printing. They almost always measured exactly 22" x 28", the same as "half-sheets" (which were then known as "displays", except that they were taller than they were wide, and that the images almost always had a "full bleed", meaning that there were no blank borders. They almost always showed a head and shoulders image of the star, and the image on these posters is often very close to actual life-size! They almost always have the name of the star and the studio they worked for at the bottom. Even though there were many sets of these from many studios over a period of approximately 30 years (they were rarely made after the early 1940s), very few survive, likely partially due to World War II paper drives, and partially due to the fact that they were never folded and the paper they were made of sometimes aged poorly.

Note that William Fox (later Fox Films, and beginning in 1935, as 20th Century-Fox) owned one of the leading Hollywood studios in the 1910s, and remained at the forefront of Hollywood for the next several decades (although they ran into big trouble in 1929, when they went bankrupt after trying to buy MGM, which is a very long story!). Through the decades, they had a great lineup of stars, and they created many sets of personality posters to promote them (we know of ones from the 1910s and the 1920s, and also ones from the 1940s, but we are not sure if they made more than a few in the 1930s, perhaps related to their financial troubles at that time). You can tell their different sets in two ways. One is that all of the posters from a set have the same border design and the stars and studio names are written in the same font and layout, although oddly, their personality posters from the 1940s usually have no printing on them, just stars' images and names, which is completely different from how almost every other studio created theirs. The other is that you can look at the age of the star in the image (although that might possibly be deceptive, because they might have sometimes used a slightly younger version of a star!). These posters are extremely rare as it is likely few theaters ordered them, and fewer still saved them, and in addition, they could be easily torn, and if they were not stored carefully, they would become fragile, and it is likely many were damaged and discarded for that reason! Note that some of the later Fox personality posters from the 1940s are NOT printed on high quality paper stock like that used for their earlier ones. All of these posters do not always age very well, and can become fragile (usually resulting in chips around the edges of the poster). Because of their fragile nature and their age, we intend to send all of these personality posters in large flat packages, and never roll them into tubes (unless the buyer insists)! PLEASE DO NOT BID ON THIS POSTER, UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO PAY THE COST OF SHIPPING IT IN A LARGE FLAT PACKAGE! Also note that this poster has been paperbacked. What is paperbacking? This means the poster was backed onto a light paper backing (acid-free), that is similar in feel to that of the original poster (it means that the poster must be handled carefully, as the backing does not give it much added strength, but it is similar to having an unrestored poster, and yet it has been properly preserved). It is a similar process to linenbacking, except that most collectors use linenbacking for one-sheets and paperbacking for half-sheets, inserts, window cards.

What IS paperbacking? Learn More

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775