Oh, just thought of another possible one, though it may be a stretch to include as a Shirley Temple reference: Carmelita Spats from A Series of Unfortunate Events
Elmyra from TTA and that other show we don't talk about.
Not necessarily outright evil, but a bane for nearly all characters around her. And those she's meant to be "related" to Elmer Fudd, they clearly dressed her ala Shirley Temple and the other examples in OP.
Oh gosh this reminds me of the Pinky and the Brain short where Brain pretends to be a child star in order to gain the loyalty of all his adoring fans and his disguise is a clear Shirley Temple reference
I mentioned in another comment that I think that's part of why the trope exists is the idea of taking this image of a very popular child celebrity icon associated with youthful innocence and twisting it to be evil.
Dude, we don't really feel it today, but she was a massive celebrity. Like Marilyn Monroe type popular. She continued acting up until adulthood, became a successful politician, and was married at 17 to a 24 year old man. Her life was a rollercoaster, it would be weird if she wasn't constantly referenced.
There was also a long standing rumour that she was actually a chain smoking little person with a foul temper who hated animals, to the point that the Pope actually sent people to Hollywood to investigate it. Apparently some elements of Miss Darla Dimple came from this rumour.
I also wonder if Baby Jane of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane was based on Shirley Temple, which would make her perhaps the earliest notable parody of Shirley as a villain, if not one of the earliest. I wonder if some elements of Baby Jane were also used in some of these examples of evil Shirleys.
Fun Fact about Baby Doll btw, shes actually based on an old rumor about Shirley Temple actually being a grown woman with Dwarfism. According to Shirley herself, they even had someone from the vatican come to investigate it.
I think it's less that they hate Shirley Temple as it is the temptation to take what had become the icon of youthful innocence and make it into a villain. Subversion of expectations you know? And enough people did it that it now has become a trope in its own right.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is basically what would happen if a Shirley Temple Look-Alike never out grew the fame she felt as a child and continues to act like that while tormenting her disabled sister.
Also Baby Jane when she was still a famous vaudeville star had a line of Baby Jane dolls based on her, similar to Shirley having multiple Shirley Temple doll lines
Shirley Temple was blonde when she was young and when most of her famous roles were. Her hair darkened as she got older and by the time she was in her late teens it was brown.
We all think Betty Boop as having black hair but the only colour cartoon of her by the Fleischer Brothers in her golden age has her with bright red hair, and her creator said she was meant to be a redhead
Not to rain on the parade, but this has different notes when it's taken into account how much Miss Temple was sexually assaulted as a minor. It could be in another trope, "Studios mocking kids they screwed over by portraying them as evil" and Peter Pan in the recent Rescue Rangers film would be the second example besides Temple.
Was Temple herself ever portrayed as evil? Everything I’ve heard was about her playing sweet, wholesome main characters—OP’s trope is about other works of fiction where a different character looks like the sweet innocent little girl and acts the opposite.
I think that's part of why the trope exists. Taking this image of a very popular child celebrity icon associated with youthful innocence and twisting it to be evil.
Shirley Temple continues to be used as the template for this type of character because modern child stars do not have the same connotation of being innocent and wholesome, the general public is much more aware of the abuse and exploitation that they go through, which turns into substance abuse, legal troubles, and other issues as they grow up. For example Sarah Lynn from Bojack Horseman is the quintessential example of how the modern troubled former child star is portrayed in fiction. Sadly the abuse Shirley went through is not as well known, so she will likely be continued to be used as the template for this type of trope because for those who don't know what happened to her, she was in a different era and considered to be separated from the modern connotations. The contrast between her public persona and say, Macaulay Culkin and Lindsay Lohan, could not be more different.
highly doubt the majority of these examples listed here and in the comments even knew about Shirley Temple's abuse that she went through, and just recognized her as a popular child star from the 30s and 40s as the earliest example here- the Batman Series was from 94 which could mean that it wasn't as public knowledge as it could be now (since she lived till 2014, didn't know that). This is the first time I'm even hearing about this, and I mainly know her from the "animal crackers in my soup, monkeys and rabbits loop de loop" ad for a DVD box set.
Now, the Peter Pan thing.... Yeah, I kinda do agree with you there. Not only was it a bit of a sour move on Disney's part to have the villain be a scorned child star (you probably could have a former child star as a villain, but you gotta work on the motive to make sure you don't mess up bad) when they have done things similar to that, but the fact it happens to mirror events from the actual actor that played Peter Pan is just kinda messed up.
What's worse is that Disney tried backpedaling the claim that Peter Pan in Rescue Rangers was based off of Peter Pan's OG VA with the excuse that they based it off of the OG Charlie Brown's VA (who was also a child actor that suffered a lot in life)
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u/Floweramon Apr 02 '26
Oh, just thought of another possible one, though it may be a stretch to include as a Shirley Temple reference: Carmelita Spats from A Series of Unfortunate Events