Return of the Blue Bird

When Producer Darryl Zanuck mala-prophesied that the national institution of the '30s known as Shirley Temple "would be good every year of her life as long as she lived," few believed him. Hollywood realists knew that most peewee paragons grew up to be monsters or misfits, kept little of their young luster. But the opening chapter of NBC's Shirley Temple's Storybook last week sent viewers on a wildly nostalgic binge and helped make good the ancient Zanuck prophecy. Shirley Temple, now a full-bodiced 29, had bridged a whole generation without losing so much as a dimple. The goldilocks had turned to deep brown, and the manner was demure as dimity; but the eyes were still dewy, the acting full of artful childishness, and when she sang the show's theme song, Dreams Are Made for Children, the voice had the same lilting lisp that warmed the hearts of millions with Polly Wolly Doodle and On the Good Ship Lollipop.

Hands on the Wheel. Only the rules had changed. Instead of appearing "in every scene possible," as her old scriptwriters had her do, Shirley merely introduced and narrated Madame le Prince de Beaumont's enduring moral fable, Beauty and the Beast--the beginning of a close-to-surefire series of fairy tales prepared for Temple and TV by Lawyer-turned-Producer Henry (Peter Pan) Jaffe.

Backed by a comfortable mixture of sponsors (Sealtest, Hills Bros, and Breck), Jaffe mounted his show with opulent care, and it was played out with style, charm and directness by the Old Vic's delicate Bloom, Claire, and Charlton Heston. Adapter Joseph Schrank's dialogue, clean, spare, and always faithful to the original, gave Beauty the illusion that "all life was still at sunrise, a wonder and a wild desire," made possible such a strikingly gentle image as when Beauty returned to her dying Beast. She touched his hirsute head for the first time, and Beast said, with disarming simplicity: "You are stroking my horrible head."

Beauty: Yes, dear Beast.

Beast: You see me now with your heart.

Although Shirley Temple--still "Presh" to her mother--had very little to do during all this, she had clearly not forgotten the order that used to echo across Fox's back lot: "The little girl's hands must be on the wheel all the way." During rehearsals she was consulted, says Jaffe, "on many things that don't really involve her." Of the 16 shows in the $3,200,000 series, she wants to star in three--Rapunzel, Hiawatha, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow--and narrate the others (Rip Van Winkle, Sleeping Beauty, Ali Baba, etc.,). But to Shirley, the best feature of her Storybook is that most of it is filmed, freeing her for civic and housewifely chores around Atherton, Calif. (25 miles south of San Francisco), where she leads the life of a wealthy California mother.

Little Girl. From the age of three until she married darkly handsome Charles Alden Black, 38, an executive of Ampex Corp. and son of the chairman of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., Shirley Jane Temple had been growing up in public. She was a star at five, the No. 1 box-office draw at seven, the world's most photographed person at eight. She never got sick ("The only things missed in childhood were all the diseases my children get now"), loved castor oil, and could cry on cue--"by thinking of my pony, Spunky, and how he flunked every screen test." She would stop crying "by thinking of Ching-Ching, my Peke, and all the money he was making in my movies."

A has-been t at 13 (with $3,000,000 saved from her 25 features, 20 shorts), Shirley rebounded at 16 with Kiss and Tell, in which she proved she was still one of Hollywood's most adept scene stealers. In the late '30s the Ideal Toy Corp. sold 1,500,000 Shirley Temple dolls. This fall, with TV showing her old films and preparing for her reemergence, astute Businesswoman Temple-Black talked Ideal into putting out a new nylon and vinyl version of the old doll.

Sometimes now, Shirley will join her three children--Lori, 3, Charles Jr., 5, and Linda Susan, 10, her daughter by her first husband, Actor John Agar--in front of the TV set, and giggle at the wobbly dancing of the curl-cropped darling she calls "the little girl." Says Shirley: "I know her well and I know some of her routines, but she's not me." As for that golden age, she adds: "I have no sad memories. I never had to work very hard. We all just seemed to play games." As for now: "It will be hard from now on--there will be competition."

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