Shirley Temple

She received Kennedy Center Honors in 1998. Her suicide has gathered a cruel but grimly amusing story, made into a film by Andy Warhol in 1965 as Lupe. She went on to hold several diplomatic posts, representing the United States in the United Nations in 1969-70 and serving as American ambassador to Ghana (1974) and Czechoslovakia (1989). The drug did not work, instead upsetting her stomach; she actually was found dead in her bathroom, having drowned in the toilet. She subsequently became involved in Republican Party politics under her married name, entering a Congressional race in 1967. Lupe Vélez committed suicide with Seconal in Beverly Hills, California after the end of her relationship with Harold Raymond, whose child she was carrying. Temple married the California businessman Charles Black in 1950; she may have looked favorably on his admission while dating that he had never seen any of her films. In 1943 she returned to Mexico and starred in Nana (1944), well received she returned to Hollywood.

Later appearances on television did not prove as popular as her films. She went on to have another emotionally draining affair, this with Gary Cooper. Temple retired from film acting in her early twenties. The fraught marriage lasted five years, they repeatedly split and finally divorced in 1938. The role of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, played by Judy Garland, was originally intended for her. Emotionally generous, she had a number of highly publicized affairs before marrying Johnny Weissmuller in 1933. By the late 1930s she was the biggest box-office attraction in motion pictures, and the success of her films may have saved more than one major studio from bankruptcy during the Great Depression. Vélez was one of few Hollywood actors to make a successful transition from silent film to 'talkies'.

She subsequently starred in many films including Heidi, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Susannah of the Mounties. She largely stuck to lighter roles from then, notably in the Mexcan Spitfire series of seven films (1939-1943). It was in that film that she sang "On the Good Ship Lollipop"; though she often sang in her films, that was probably her most famous song. She did a further eighteen films before finding her niche in comedy with Hot Pepper (1933). One of her first film roles was in Bright Eyes, for which she won a special Academy Award. Her first feature-length film was Douglas Fairbanks' The Gaucho (1927); the next year, she was one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars. Shirley Jane Temple (born April 23, 1928 in Santa Monica, California), later known as Shirley Temple Black, is an American film actress and diplomat who is considered by many to be the most famous child actress in history. She moved to California that year and was first cast in movies by Hal Roach.

She took dancing lessons and in 1924 made her performing debut at the Teatro Principal. She was lightly educated at a convent school in Texas before finding work as a sales assistant. She was born in San Luis Potosí as María Guadalupe Vélez de Villalobos. Lupe Vélez (July 18, 1908 - December 13, 1944) was a Mexican actress.