A Dignified Manner

No other little girl had ever grown up quite like Shirley Temple. She was a movie actress at four,* a star at six, and then a dimpled, curly-topped national institution. Between seven and ten, she was the No. 1 box-office draw in the U.S.; at eight, she was the most photographed human being on earth. At nine, while other little girls waited for their permanent teeth to come in, she wore costly false teeth to hide the gaps from the camera. When she was ten, a Dies Committee witness denounced her as a Communist dupe. At 13, she was a has-been (with $3,000,000 in the bank). At 16, making a comeback, Shirley got her first screen kiss. At 17, when she was barely out of high school, she got married, and at 19 she gave birth to a daughter.

Last week, at 21, Shirley completed Hollywood's classic domestic cycle--and startled millions of Americans who have followed her precocious public & private life with affection and a worrisome feeling that the years do whiz by. She filed a divorce suit against handsome, 28-year-old John Agar, the Army Air Forces sergeant who became a cinemactor after their marriage four years ago.

"No Other Way." Shirley told the news according to the strict pressagent-approved code of prominent film personalities: she telephoned Hearst's Louella Parsons, in whose syndicated column Hollywood's private lives pass regularly into the public domain. "Oh, it's not sudden," said Shirley (as related by Louella). "I've been in Palm Springs for six days trying to think out the best thing to do. I didn't want to break up my home and my marriage, but there's no other way. I don't want to hurt John. I want our separation and divorce to be dignified. I am merely going to charge cruelty. John is a nice boy, but he's a little mixed up."

Shirley wanted no alimony but she wanted full custody of 20-month-old Linda Susan Agar ("The worst thing about all this," she said, "is what it will do to the baby"). To Louella's colleague, Columnist Sheilah Graham, Shirley unburdened a little more: "The trouble with my marriage started two and a half years ago, when Johnny started to drink My suit doesn't mention the drinking,'but it has become unbearable."

"Let Them Stew." While fans tried to adjust to the latest milestone of the little girl who grew up so fast, the gossips tried to piece out fragments of feverish rumor. In Manhattan, Crooner Johnny Johnston, 33, stoutly denied any romantic involvement with Shirley. In Hollywood, his wife. Cinemactress Kathryn Grayson, 26, admitted that she had exchanged harsh words with Shirley about Johnston but, she added, all that was over now. Both Johnston and his wife accused Professional Golfer Joe Kirkwood Jr., 28, who plays Joe Palooka on the screen, of trying to brew a romance between Shirley and Johnston. His alleged motive: to cut Johnston out with Miss Grayson. Just as angry in his denials, Kirkwood warned that any more such accusations would make him "blow the whole sordid mess wide open and let them all stew in their own juice."

For his part, Agar, going home to his mother, announced that he would not contest Shirley's divorce. Said he: "I agree with Shirley that it must be done in a dignified manner."

So did Hollywood bigwigs, who are more & more mindful of the public-relations headache posed by all the beautiful young people who live in a little world of too much money and too much attention. In this special, supercharged world, 21-year-old Shirley Temple had really come of age.

* The public thought she was three. As it does with many an older actress, Hollywood had lopped a year off her age.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.