For sale is the 1942 SHIRLEY TEMPLE LIFE MAGAZINE ISSUE which was issued on March 30, 1942. Shirley is on the cover due to the issue including a feature entitled “Shirley Temple grows up”. The article was a movie studio public relations push to transition their box office child star to Hollywood leading lady. As a child star, the movie studio treated Shirley’s age as a closely guarded secret. At the time of this article, Shirley was almost 13 years old and the publication of the article was Shirley’s first “glamour portraits”. This 132-page magazine is in very good condition and originally sold for 40 cents. The large format magazine measures 14 inches by 10 1/2 inches. A great Hollywood themed collectible.
Shirley Temple Black was born in 1928. As a child actress she was Hollywood’s number one box-office draw from 1934 to 1938. Temple began her film career at the age of three in 1931. Her signature song, “On the Good Ship Lollipop”, was introduced in the film and sold 500,000 sheet-music copies. The life magazine article on Shirley states that she had an annual income of $200,000. She appeared in 29 films from the ages of 3 to 10 but in only 14 films from the ages of 14 to 21. Temple retired from film in 1950 at the age of 22. After he career as an entertainer ended, she was named United States ambassador to Ghana and to Czechoslovakia.
This issue features a story of the flying tigers who were American pilots operating out of Burma to attack Japanese war planes. The US volunteers managed to shoot down 300 Japanese planes over a 90 day span. This issue also includes close-up of Prime Minister Tojo of Japan. A Photo essay – Submarine school at New London, Connecticut. Full page color poster page for Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book movie. Full page color ad for Orson Welles’ radio picture “The Magnificent Ambersons.”
Life was published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent “special” until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, Life was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest magazine known for the quality of its photography. Life became the first all-photographic American news magazine, and it dominated the market for several decades. Possibly the best-known photograph published in the magazine was Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photograph of a nurse in a sailor’s arms, taken on August 14, 1945, as they celebrated Victory over Japan Day in New York City.
