PALO ALTO — After Shirley Temple Black died last year, six huge wardrobe boxes and 40 barrels secured with metal clasps arrived at the Woodside estate where the legendary child star raised her three children.
One by one, her son, Charles Black Jr., wheeled them into one of the bedrooms, where his sister, Susan Black Falaschi, cut into a box that hadn’t been opened in nearly eight decades. Delicately, she lifted out the first piece, covered in archival, acid-free paper.
“Oh my goodness,” she said to herself, letting out a gasp. “I’ve found the costume.”
It was the iconic red polka dot dress that Shirley Temple had worn in her 1934 breakout movie “Stand Up and Cheer,” one of the numerous movies the Black children had watched at their birthday parties after their mother set up a 16 mm projector in the family room.
After months of unpacking, cataloging and hanging the costumes in her mother’s cedar-lined closets, this dress along with more than 100 costumes, dolls and other Shirley Temple memorabilia will be exhibited Friday through Sunday at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, along with screenings of five of her best-known pictures, including “Wee Willie Winkie” and “The Little Colonel.”
It’s the only stop of the “Love, Shirley Temple” exhibit in the Bay Area, one of seven across the country before the full collection of some 560 items — including her autograph books, gifts from celebrities and a collection of 1,000 dolls — will be auctioned by Theriault’s auction house July 14 in Kansas City.
In an interview Wednesday with Falaschi and her brother at the Stanford Theatre, where “Our Little Girl” premiered 80 years ago, they said the exhibition is a farewell tour of sorts for the country as well as the Black family.
Shirley Temple Black was 85 when she died at home in February 2014 after suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Charles Black, her husband of 55 years, whom she had met at a cocktail party in Hawaii and who went on to head business operations at SRI International, died a decade earlier.
A former U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia and Ghana, she had been active in the Junior League and served as president of the Commonwealth Club.
“We talked to her at the end of her life and she said, ‘I really want these beautiful things to be shared,'” said Falaschi, 67, a retired schoolteacher and librarian who lives in Menlo Park. “I want people to see them again and love them again.”
For years, Shirley Temple Black and her husband tried to find a museum to house the entire collection, the brother and sister said, but economics and the permanent space requirements for the vast collection foiled their efforts.
Stuart Holbrook, president of Theriault’s auction house, said the collection on tour has evoked intense emotions.
“If you come to the exhibit, you will walk into the room and burst into tears,” he said.
The collection includes the red polka dot dress, which he considers the “ruby slippers” of the collection, her Scottish regiment costume from “Wee Willie Winkie,” and her five personal autograph books, which include autographs from everyone from Cary Grant to Eleanor Roosevelt to Disney cartoonists. It also includes a child-sized racing car given to her by co-star Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who tap-danced up a staircase with her in “The Little Colonel.”
It also includes a Steinway baby-grand piano inscribed to her by Theodore Steinway, a piano that her children used to play as well as drape with blankets to make forts.
Holbrook was reluctant to put a value on the collection, but said that bidding might start at about $6,000 for one of the autograph books.
Proceeds from the collection will go back to the Black family partnership, which is intent on preserving her legacy. A hardcover commemorative book will also be published showcasing the collection.
Being the children of the most famous child star in history had its privileges. Susan’s godfather was the famed director John Ford, who directed Shirley Temple in “Wee Willie Winkie” and “Fort Apache.”
But it also provoked interesting interactions with the public.
“I remember being approached by this woman who held on to me and told me she had to sleep in curls every night,” said Charles Jr., 63, who works in real estate in San Francisco. “We had this person who was our mother, who we knew and loved, and these people who knew her before we did.”
Sometimes, they would get glimpses of the child star their mother once was. Usually while cooking, with the oven timer ticking, she would break into her favorite childhood song, “Polly Wolly Doodle.”
She didn’t expect her children to become America’s darlings like she was, they said. Although Black enrolled Susan in ballet lessons, she embraced her daughter as the tomboy she was. Susan’s sister, Lori Black, became a musician, playing the bass with the Melvins, a 1980s grunge band. The siblings all remain close.
In her mother’s final months, Susan would often visit her at the Woodside home, where her mother enjoyed sitting in her master bedroom overlooking her garden.
It was during these times, while sharing a turkey sandwich, that her mother would talk about her early years, the close family bond they shared and the disposition of her collection.
The children had seen a few of their mother’s dolls over the years, but had never seen her costumes.
After pulling out the red polka dot dress from the wardrobe box, Susan quickly put on white gloves to gently remove the rest, one by one.
“Look, this is the ‘Little Princess’ dress,” she would say to herself. “Oh, look, this is ‘Sunnybrook Farm.’ Some of them were frocks from ‘Little Miss Marker.'”
Shirley’s mother, Gertrude Temple, negotiated with Fox Studios to allow her daughter to keep her pick of movie costumes. And it was Gertrude who made sure they were properly preserved and cataloged. She even pinned handwritten notes to costumes and dresses, including one that Susan found reading, “This dress worn to a premiere with Spencer Tracy.”
Gertrude Temple kept the costumes in storage at her home in Brentwood in Southern California until the 1950s, when they were shipped to the Bay Area and put in professional storage before being delivered to the Woodside estate last year.
The family is hopeful the collection will “go into the gentle hands of people who will respect and love these costumes and dolls as much as our family has,” Susan said.
The commemorative book, she said, “will be enjoyed by my grandchildren and by future generations. It’s a way to keep her always — shall we say — on the marquee.”
Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at 408-278-3409. Follow her at Twitter.com/juliasulek
‘Love, Shirley Temple’ Exhibit
What: More than 100 costumes, dolls and memorabilia will be on display.
Where: Stanford Theatre, 221 University Ave., Palo Alto. Back-to-back Shirley Temple movies will also be playing.
When: Friday from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Saturday from noon to 10 p.m.
Sunday from noon to 8 p.m.
Tickets: Free admission to the exhibit. One $5 movie pass to watch all the movies, including “Bright Eyes,” “The Little Colonel,” “Poor Little Rich Girl” and “Wee Willie Winkie.”
Additional details can be found at www.stanfordtheatre.org
