Shirley Temple by Anne Edwards

Author:Anne Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493026920
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2019-02-06T16:00:00+00:00

Her marriage had reached an impasse by the end of the summer. Agar refused to recognize that he had a drinking problem. A few days before Thanksgiving, Shirley’s lawyer, Grant Cooper, greeted Agar when he returned home late one night. Shirley and the baby were with George and Gertrude. “He [Cooper] told me to leave the house with my personal posessions only,” Agar recalls. “I wanted to see Shirley but he refused to allow it. . . . I tossed some clothes in a suitcase and left.” Agar spoke to Shirley on the telephone, but she would not see him, and on December 5, after a five-day thinking-through period in Palm Springs, she went to court to testify in the divorce action.

Agar was in Buffalo, New York, on a publicity tour to coincide with the release of I Married a Communist when—her hair coifed perfectly, her makeup discreet but artfully applied—Shirley Temple Agar entered the courtroom of Superior Judge Roy L. Herndon, wearing a chic gray suit, a small navy-blue veiled pillbox hat, impeccable white gloves and, about her collar, a silk scarf looped through a lucky-coin charm. Tears rimmed her eyes as she took the oath and glanced over to her father, who had accompanied her.

“When I was two months pregnant, he came home intoxicated at 2 A.M. He had lipstick on his face. When I was five months pregnant, he came home with a group of people, brought another girl into my bedroom, and asked me to go to a party with them. He left without me and didn’t come back till 4 A.M.” She told her lawyer, Grant Cooper, “After the baby was born he brought another girl with him [to their home] and danced with her in our playroom for two hours, kissing her many times.” She added that he often became “very drunk and belligerent,” and then tearfully admitted to a shocked and crowded courtroom that one night he had come home so drunk and abusive that, terrified, she had “jumped” into her “car and was going to drive over a cliff or something.”

Agar’s attorney, Clore Warne, rose to his feet at this point. “I feel I should say that when the differences arose—and they did arise—[Mr. Agar] acted at all times and has acted as a gentleman . . .”

Judge Herndon replied, “The court views your remarks as not inappropriate.” He then granted the divorce, and the right for Shirley to revert to her maiden name, but not before delivering a short speech to the packed courtroom.

“This court cannot fail to take notice of the well-known fact that this plaintiff occupies a special place in the hearts and affections of millions of people . . . throughout the country. Therefore, this appears to be a peculiarly fitting and appropriate reason upon which to reassert and re-declare the vital public concern with the problem of divorce and the urgent need for giving serious study to the environmental and sociological factors which contribute to it.

“We all

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