Lecture Date: March 26, 2015
This past April marked the eightieth anniversary of Stand Up and Cheer!—the movie that catapulted six-year-old Shirley Temple to unparalleled heights of stardom—and what would have been the eighty-sixth birthday of the child actor turned ambassador: Shirley Temple Black. During the Great Depression, Shirley Temple served as ambassador of cheer, thrift, and resilience to the American public. As John Kasson demonstrates in THE LITTLE GIRL WHO FOUGHT THE GREAT DEPRESSION: Shirley Temple and 1930s America (published in April 2014 by W. W. Norton & Company), an essential part of the nation’s recovery was the “circulation of a new emotional currency.” The politician who embodied this best was FDR; the entertainer who did so was Shirley Temple. Indeed, this book reveals the ways in which Shirley’s work of emotional healing in her films (mending the rifts of estranged lovers, family members, and broken hearts) worked in tandem with Roosevelt and his New Deal policies to help Americans survive the hardships of the Great Depression. In his lecture, John Kasson will present aspects of his book, play songs, and show scenes from some of Shirley’s early films, including Stand Up and Cheer!, Little Miss Marker, and The Little Colonel.
Lecture Photos
Speaker: John Kasson
John Kasson has written widely on the cultural history of the United States. His new book, The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America, was published by W. W. Norton in April 2014. His previous books include: Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America (Hill & Wang, 2001);Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (Hill & Wang, 1990); Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century(Hill & Wang, 1978); and Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776-1900 (Grossman/Viking, 1976). He has held fellowships from the national Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among other institutions. Since 1971 he has taught history and American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He and his wife, the cultural historian Joy Kasson, have two children and one grandson.