Madge Evans Talks to Shirley Temple (1935) 🇬🇧
Strangest of all strange phenomena developed in the picture business is the child star. To the clinking tune of gold at the box offices, many a baby smile and mannerism have zoomed briefly across the film horizon, as if coming from nowhere, flashed with dazzling brilliance. Then abruptly, in most cases, it disappears, never to be seen again.
Such is the case of the average child star, whom time relentlessly brings to the point where he has outgrown his mantle of childish stardom as completely as he has outgrown the childish clothes he used to wear.
Exceptions to this grim rule have been pitifully few. Occasionally a familiar name will reappear on the silver sheets to reclaim forgotten popularity. And the public, still remembering, flocks to see the change that the years have wrought in "little Miss So-and-so." But, nine cases out of ten, "little Miss So-and-so" couldn't make the grade. She was "just too cunning" as a child, but the grown-up version is sadly disappointing.
There is one exception, however, that towers above all of the past failures and mediocre come-backs — that exception is Madge Evans, one of the grandest baby stars of them all, whose accomplishment led O. O. Mclntyre, a well-known American columnist, to remark:
"Madge Evans is the exception to a general rule that stage children drop out at maturity and are seen no more She began as a wonder kiddie of the screen and footlights, with a 'prop' smile.
"The girl grew older, the bud blossomed into maturity, and she has flowered into a very good kinema actress. Endowed with natural beauty, she has acquired animation along with a becoming restraint. And what is more, she gives the impression of being a lady of culture."
At the moment there is another wonder child blazing across the kinema sky, like a bright and dazzling comet, over a trail left vacant by Baby Peggy Montgomery. Jackie Coogan, Ben Alexander, Mickey Daniels, and others, whose inevitable fate was to grow up. This new wonder child is the tremendously talented Shirley Temple.
What is to be her fate? Is she also going to fall under the precocious child jinx — dropping into oblivion when that gawky age catches up with her?
A public who loves her, desperately, hopes this is not to be, and has asked Madge Evans, who adds her fervent hopes with the rest, to give Shirley advice on how to avoid this pitfall.
"When I played with little Shirley Temple, she was not as well known as she is to-day," declared Madge, upon being approached with the subject. "But she was a lovely child and marvellously unspoiled. Her mother was a fine woman — and not one of those 'stage mothers' that one looks upon with fear and dread. She was a charmingly intelligent woman — an ideal mother to whom Shirley would run for advice if she were in doubt about what to do.
"As long as Shirley gives her the same love and respect that she did when I knew her — half of her battle is already won.
One of the greatest dangers that Shirley will have to look out for is taking seriously the inevitable praise and adulation that grown-ups will give her because of her babyish charm. It is pitiful if a young child actress begins to depend upon it. For when she gets to the gangling-, gawky stage, this love and praise ceases as suddenly as it began.
"Then the child fights to retain the petting and spoiling that she has learned to thrive upon. When the child feels that she is losing it, she tries to get her treasure back by being 'smarty' and straining herself to be 'cute.' So at this early age Shirley should realise that what people tell her should not be taken too seriously.
"Then, there is her relation to other children," continued Madge. "Generally precocious children, if they don't have an intelligent person watching and guiding them, get the idea that they should receive the same attention from other children that they get from grown-ups.
"Other children are naturally a little awed and stiff when playing with a famous child, and wonder what it is the other fellow has that they have not. This only tends to make the famous child more conscious of her own importance. She starts to lord it over the others, and if she doesn't get the attention she wants, she won't play — thus harming herself by cutting off the valuable experience of playing with other children.
"Shirley should be protected from a tendency to over-act. All children love to act, and a child actress usually passes her time draping herself in clothes and acting before the mirror instead of going out and playing. I know I did. "When the first signs of the gawky stage appear and the child has lost most of her babyish attractiveness, her parents should not force her through the year or so left of her career for the sake of a few extra dollars. But they should take her completely away from the pictures for four or five years, so that she can make school friends and play with other children.
"In short, she should become a normal little girl. She should be made to forget completely that she is a child wonder. Others will soon enough. After a year's absence from the screen, the best and most prominent names are soon forgotten.
"Then, if the young girl decides that she wants to become an actress, she should still forget all about her brilliant child's career — put it completely behind her. She should be willing to start all over again, as if she were just beginning, instead of regarding her return to acting in the handicapping light of 'a come-back.'
"When I was fifteen, after having lived for five years the normal life of any little child, I decided that I wanted to be an actress. I had stopped working on the stage and in pictures when I was ten years old.
"I hunted for work in every theatrical company in New York. It took me a solid year until I finally got a small part in a stage production of What Every Woman Knows, as a maid. In stock I played any number of small bits, unimportant parts that could have been played by any ingénue.
"On Broadway I finally worked up to ingénue leads — but it took a long time. To be exact, I spent five years looking for work, playing bits, and leads in 'shorts,' until I got my first big part. Ben Piazza, the casting director of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, saw me in this part, and brought me to Hollywood under contract.
"I do want to emphasise the fact that I was not brought up with the thought of my previous success as a child actress. I wanted to forget it. For I learned that what was cute as a child didn't help any when one was older.
"If I happened to go for a test, at the time when they were testing every one in New York for talking pictures, and there was someone there who remembered me as a child prodigy, I generally lost out, for the remark of 'she was a child actress, and you know they never make good' carried lot of weight,
"Little Shirley, when she reaches the gawky overgrown period, will have a harder time living a normal life than I did. In New York, pictures were just a fraction of the activity back there, and it wasn't hard for me to forget all about them But in Hollywood, films are the chief topic of conversation — all that matters.
"However, Shirley's father is not in the picture business, and .she has a sensible mother, and two older brothers with whom she can play. I therefore shouldn't be .so difficult for her to grow up normally, then, even if she does remain in Hollywood.
"As for the present, if Shirley remains that same little girl that I knew, who, when she didn't understand the things they told her, would ask her mother's advice, even though surrounded by people who told her the marvellous things she could do. she will make the grade.
"I can truly say that Shirley is one of the most talented children that I have ever seen. She has the most utter naturalness — her lack of self-consciousness is marvellous to watch. My hope is that she never loses this, no matter how famous she becomes.
"The hardest thing I think that Shirley is going to have to learn is that what is cunning in a child counts absolutely nothing when one is grown up, and that there are many other things in the world just as important as pictures."
Collection: Picturegoer Magazine, April 1935