Shirley Temple Black -- 1928 - 2014

Even as a child, I never understood what the attraction was in the movies Shirley Temple made when she was a child star. Curly locks and saccharine songs did not work for me.

I loved, however, Shirley Temple's Storybook, the children's anthology television series she hosted and narrated from 1958 to 1961. The series features adaptations of fairy tales and other family-oriented stories performed by well-known actors. One episode, an adaptation of The House of the Seven Gables, was meant for older youngsters. The first season of sixteen black-and-white and colored episodes aired on NBC between January 12, 1958 and December 21, 1958 as Shirley Temple's Storybook. The second season of twenty-five color episodes aired on NBC as The Shirley Temple Show between September 18, 1960 and July 16, 1961 in much the same format that it had under its original title.

The show was hampered by lots of things, including lame special effects for fantasy stories, a problem not unique at the time. Also, the show had no regular schedule. You sort of had to hear it was going to be on and then make sure to watch it. That catch-as-catch-can approach did not build a loyal audience.

I still remember watching The House of the Seven Gables. Twenty years later when I visited the original House of the Seven Gables in Salem, my memory of that show was fresh in my mind.

So I honor her memory and the joy and fascination she contributed to my own childhood.
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"The influential classes, and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to all the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables