Out of curiosity, I looked up a Shirley Temple movie that's about to begin in a few minutes on TCM:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Hagen_GirlCRITICAL RECEPTION
In one scene [in the film], Temple attempts suicide. A critic wrote that it was too bad the attempt failed.[7]
The New York Times thought the script amateurish and of Reagan and Temple wrote, "Ronald Reagan keeps as straight a face as he can while doing what must have struck him as the silliest job of his career [...] [b]ut it is poor, little put-upon Shirley who looks most ridiculous through it all. She acts with the mopish dejection of a school-child who has just been robbed of a two-scoop ice cream cone."[8]
The film was included in the popular 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time.[4]
Ouch!
Shirley Temple, while a superstar child actor up till 1941, was less than successful when she emerged as a young adult actress in 1947-1949.
But starting in 1967 she began a political/diplomatic career, and held foreign diplomat positions under Presidents Nixon, Ford, and G.H.W. Bush.
