Oh, my goodness!

Yesterday, an actress who was one of my childhood favorites, Shirley Temple Black, passed away at the age of 85. 

Some facts about the actress turned ambassador:

• Shirley Temple was "discovered" at the Meglin Dance Studio in Los Angeles at the age of 3.  Her film career spanned 18 years from 1931-1949, during which time she appeared in 42 feature-length films and 19 short films (Take THAT, Lindsey Lohan.)
• Shirley's first films were shorts in what was called the Baby Burlesks.  These eight films feature a cast of young children playing adult roles while clad in diapers featuring prominent safety pins (and often little else, save for a hat). Later, she would appear as a younger sister in a typical American family in the Frolics of Youth series.  Most of these films are in the public domain.
• Shirley Temple's first feature film in which she was billed was The Red-Haired Alibi.  The first in which she received prominent billing was Stand Up and Cheer.  Although she is hardly in it, this film has the "Baby, Take a Bow" dance number in which she tap-dances in the red and white "coin-dot" dress that would later become a signature costume on Shirley Temple dolls.  She would later appear with Stand up and Cheer co-star and dance partner James Dunn in two more films--Baby Take a Bow and Bright Eyes.
• Besides James Dunn, Shirley Temple appeared in films with some of the most prominent actors of the 1930s and 1940s, including Lionel Barrymore, Jack Haley, Buddy Ebsen, Robert Young, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Jane Darwell, Alice Faye, Claudette Colbert, Randolph Scott, Arthur Treacher, Myrna Loy, Clifton Webb, Hattie McDaniel, Frank Morgan, Carole Lombard, Ginger Rodgers, and future US President Ronald Reagan.  She produced films for Fox, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, United Artists, and David O. Selznick Studios.
• With four exceptions (Baby Take a Bow, The Little Colonel, Our Little Girl, and The Blue Bird) Shirley Temple's early roles were either orphans or children who has lost a parent (usually the mother).
• The reason Shirley Temple's footprints at Grauman's Chinese Theater were done without shoes was to draw attention away from her face.  She had lost a tooth that morning, and didn't want the media catching her gap-toothed.  Later, the studio would provide her with caps as each tooth fell out so as not to mar her perfect smile.
• Gertrude Temple, Shirley's mother, not only made most of her costumes and helped the young actress rehearse, she also ensured that Shirley Temple's hair was in fifty-six perfect little pin curls for each shoot.
• Three of her movies were named for her noted facial features--Bright Eyes, Curly Top, and Dimples.
• In 1934, Shirley teamed up with seasoned dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson for a dance routine in which they tap-dance down a flight of steps.  Temple and Robinson were the first interracial dance team in film history.  Their affection for each other off the set was notable.  They always walked hand in hand; she always called him "Uncle Billy," and he always called her "darlin'."
• Shirley Temple never won an Oscar for any of her films, since in the 1930s, the Academy did not deem child actors eligible for nomination.  However, she won a special juvenile Oscar in 1935 for her combined six films of the previous year.  (Judy Garland would win a similar award for her work in the Wizard of Oz.)
• The head of production of Fox Studios changed Shirley Temple's birth certificate so that it would show that she was born in 1929 instead of 1928.  Shirley only discovered the change when her mother told her about it on her thirteenth birthday.
• Shirley's career was modeled after that of another "girl with the curls," silent-film-star Mary Pickford.  At least two of Temple's movies (Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Little Princess) were remakes of Pickford films.
• Shirley Temple married former airman Jack Agar in 1945 at the age of 17.  The couple had a daughter and then divorced in 1949.  She then married Charlie Black in 1950.  The couple had two more children and were together until Black's death in 2005.
• Besides her film career, Shirley Temple also hosted the TV series Shirley Temple's Storybook through the 1950s.  She was the ambassador to Ghana and later to Czechoslovakia through the 1980s.  In 1988, she published her autobiography, Child Star, which was adapted into a made-for-TV movie in 2001.

We will always love you Shirley.  May you fly that "Good Ship Lollipop" always.

It was 50 years ago today...

that four longhaired Liverpudlians performed on the Ed Sullivan show.  And music was never the same again.

Wrapping up and lighting up

When I became a Bat Mitzvah (a week after my college graduation--figure that one out), I bought myself a tallis to commemorate.  It was pink and black silk with silver thread woven into the atara, and came with a matching tallis bag and kippa.  I still have it.  I was never sure what to do with it.  Cut off the tzitzit and atara and turn it into a headwrap?  Keep it as a relic?  Donate it?  To whom?  No boy would be caught dead in a pink tallis, and we certainly wouldn't want to give it to a girl--since of course, any girl who wants to wear a tallis is some evil feminist with either an agenda or a score to settle.  One morning, I decided on a lark that I would wear it again while davening at home.  (The Things were not there to witness my transgression.)  Before I even got to Shema, I took it off.  Somehow, after all those years of not wearing it, it just felt wrong somehow.
I think about my pink tallis, sitting on a shelf in my closet, now that the explosion is starting to settle down.  The explosion of course is the Orthodox yeshiva SAR permitting two girls to wear tefillin during in-school Shacharit.  I can't say that I've ever had the experience of wearing them, but I can sort of relate.
The halacha is very clear.  Women are exempt from time-bound positive mitzvot.  This includes things like tefillin, since they are to be worn during Shacharit.  This also includes davening with a minyan, hearing the megillah and the shofar, sitting in a sukkah, hearing Parshat Zachor--wait a minute!
Even in uber-frum Boro Park, plenty of women rush to shul for Zachor.  Some shuls even have later readings which are packed with women.  Same with megillah leinings.  As for shofar--even homebound women get to hear it, thanks to wandering shofar-blowers.  And I've never been ordered away from a sukkah.
Moreover, if that's the benchmark, why are women obligated to light Shabbos candles?  That's one of the main mitzvot for women.  However, since the lighting is from the commandments of "keep Shabbos" and "remember Shabbos," aren't those both positive?  And it's certainly timebound.  I can't, for example, decide to keep Shabbos on any day of the week I feel like.  And, as any balabuste can tell you, the minute is set in stone.  Miss the time, and you're mechalel Shabbos.  Bad Jew!
Frequently, I hear appeals to emotion like "most women don't really care about wearing tefillin" or "you women don't know how good you have it, not having to get up early" or "my wife would rather not wear tefillin, and doesn't understand why anyone would."  That's nice.  Unfortunately, these sentiments have no place in a discussion about halacha.  Either it's allowed or it's not.  And if women can sit in a sukkah or hear Zachor, and have to play "Beat the Clock" every Friday for the rest of their lives, then apparently the time-bound rule is a little fuzzier than we thought.