May, 2008

"I broke my arm last week at my house, it hurts quite a bit," and "people should turn on the lights when they are walking around in the dark," she joked.

Born April 23, Shirley (Jane) Temple-Black quietly celebrated her 80th birthday after breaking her arm in a fall at her Woodside home, an upscale town in Silicon Valley south of San Francisco, California.

Shirley Temple

I treasure her letter she wrote me as the U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia after she was informed about my 1937-1938 involvement in the Prague's Shirley Temple Club, when she was the perfect antidote to the 1930s Great Depression and became national institution not only in America but all over the world.

Her assignment in Prague ended her diplomatic career where she once eluded the secret police and attended an anti-government rally, and then watched the so called 1989 Velvet Revolution from a friend's apartment window. After, she was effectively promoting the U.S. by attending several Czech celebrations and functions and became the most popular American before Bill and Hillary Clinton and Madelaine Korbel-Albright.

After retiring from the big screen, she ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Congress in 1967 but remained active in Republican politics, and was named by Richard M. Nixon to serve as a US representative in the United Nations and held a number of diplomatic posts during the Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administration.

When she was 21, Temple fell in love a second time just months after the divorce, when she met pineapple executive Charles Black while on a vacation to Hawaii. She was especially charmed when he admitted having never seen any of her films. They remained married for more than 50 years, until his death.
Josef Schrabal

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