SHIRLEY TEMPLE: THE YOUNGEST OSCAR RECIPIENT

At age six, Shirley Temple became the first recipient of the juvenile Academy Award. To this day she is the youngest person ever to receive an Academy Award. After receiving her award from actor/writer Irvin S. Cobb, she politely thanked him, then turned to her mother and asked, "Mommy, can I go home now?"

Many years later, in an appearance on the 1984 Oscar show, Temple explained what had happened. At the 1935 Oscar banquet, her special award was one of the last to be presented that evening. She had been forced to sit through the entire awards ceremony, watching all the other awards being handed out (including her presenting the Best Actress award to Claudette Colbert for "It Happened One Night"). By the time she got her award, at about 10:00 p.m., she was exhausted and ready to go home to bed.

Temple became very close to Will Rogers after signing with Fox. When Rogers died in a 1935 airplane crash, she was inconsolable for days afterwards. Studio chief Joseph M. Schenck, who was in England at the time, bought her a pony and had it shipped the US on the Queen Mary. When she learned that the pony was to be flown from New York to Los Angeles, she insisted that it be shipped by rail to avoid another crash.

Temple was considered for the role of Veda Pierce in the Joan Crawford drama "Mildred Pierce" (1945), which went to Ann Blyth.

"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph."