Ava Gilmore-Taylor

Ava Gilmore-Taylor (アヴァギルモアテイラー Avua Girumoa Teirā) is an American actress, singer, songwriter, and dancer who was Hollywood's number one box-office draw as a child actress from 1934 to 1938.

Ava began her film career at the age of three in 1931. Two years later, she achieved international fame in Bright Eyes, a feature film designed specifically for her talents. She received a special Juvenile Academy Award in February 1935 for her outstanding contribution as a juvenile performer in motion pictures during 1934. Film hits such as Curly Top and Heidi followed year after year during the mid-to-late 1930s. Ava capitalized on licensed merchandise that featured her wholesome image; the merchandise included dolls, dishes, and clothing. She appeared in 29 films from the ages of 3 to 10 but in only 14 films from the ages of 14 to 21.

She rose to fame as the lead singer of the vocal group the Supremes, who became Motown's most successful act during the 1960s and one of the world's best-selling girl groups of all time. They remain the best-charting female group in US history, with a total of twelve number-one hit singles on the US Billboard Hot 100, including, "Where Did Our Love Go", "Baby Love", "Come See About Me", and "Love Child".

Following departure from the Supremes in 1970, Ava was replaced with Samirah Abdur-Rashid and had became her new altered personality, Vanellope Von Schweetz. It was stated once that Ava is the classic day version of Princess Diana of Themyscria.

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Appearance
Ava was a young girl with short yellow hair in a bob cut. She wore a pink collared-T-shirt, a black skirt and white shoes with black lines.

As she got older, her hair is now poofy with a purple bow on the side, she now wears a cyan shirt, a matching dress, and blue heels. She also wears two white bracelets, and carries a light purple purse.

Early years
I was born on April 23, 1928, at Santa Monica Hospital (now UCLA Medical Center) in Santa Monica, California, the third child of homemaker Gertrude Temple and bank employee George Temple. The family was of Dutch, English, and German ancestry. She had two brothers: John and George, Jr. The family moved to Brentwood, Los Angeles.

My mother encouraged me to develop my singing, dancing, and acting talents, and in September 1931 enrolled her in Meglin's Dance School in Los Angeles. At about this time, my mother began styling my hair in ringlets.

While at the dance school, I was spotted by Charles Lamont, who was a casting director for Educational Pictures. I hid behind the piano while she was in the studio. Lamont took a liking to me, and invited her to audition; he signed me to a contract in 1932. Educational Pictures launched its Baby Burlesks, 10-minute comedy shorts satirizing recent films and events, using preschool children in every role. Glad Rags to Riches was a parody of the Mae West feature She Done Him Wrong, with Shirley as a saloon singer. Kid 'n' Africa had Shirley imperiled in the jungle. The Runt Page was a pastiche of The Front Page. The juvenile cast delivered their lines as best they could, with the younger players reciting phonetically. I became the breakout star of this series, and Educational promoted her to 20-minute comedies. These were in the Frolics of Youth series with Frank Coghlan Jr.; I played Mary Lou Rogers, the baby sister in a contemporary suburban family. To underwrite production costs at Educational Pictures, she and her child co-stars modeled for breakfast cereals and other products. She was lent to Tower Productions for a small role in her first feature film (The Red-Haired Alibi) in 1932 and, in 1933, to Universal, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Pictures for various parts including an uncredited role as a child whose doll's head is shot off right in front of her in To the Last Man (1933) starring Randolph Scott and Esther Ralston.

Film Career
Fox Film songwriter Jay Gorney was walking out of the viewing of Temple's last Frolics of Youth picture when he saw me dancing in the movie theater lobby. Recognizing me from the screen, he arranged for me to have a screen test for the movie Stand Up and Cheer! Temple arrived for the audition on December 7, 1933; I won the part and was signed to a $150-per-week contract that was guaranteed for two weeks by Fox Film Corporation. The role was a breakthrough performance for Temple. my charm was evident to Fox executives, and I was ushered into corporate offices almost immediately after finishing "Baby, Take a Bow", a song-and-dance number I performed with James Dunn.

Roles
Most of the Shirley Temple films were inexpensively made at $200,000 or $300,000 apiece, and were comedy-dramas with songs and dances added, sentimental and melodramatic situations, and bearing little production value. My film titles are a clue to the way I was marketed—Curly Top and Dimples, and her "little" pictures such as The Little Colonel and The Littlest Rebel. I often played a fixer-upper, a precocious Cupid, or the good fairy in these films, reuniting her estranged parents or smoothing out the wrinkles in the romances of young couples. Elements of the traditional fairy tale were woven into my films: wholesome goodness triumphing over meanness and evil, for example, or wealth over poverty, marriage over divorce, or a booming economy over a depressed one. As the girl matured into a pre-adolescent, the formula was altered slightly to encourage her naturalness, naïveté, and tomboyishness to come forth and shine while my infant innocence, which had served her well at six but was inappropriate for her tweens (or later childhood years), was toned down.

Biographer John Kasson argues:

In almost all of these films she played the role of emotional healer, mending rifts between erstwhile sweethearts, estranged family members, traditional and modern ways, and warring armies. Characteristically lacking one or both parents, she constituted new families of those most worthy to love and protect her. Producers delighted in contrasting her diminutive stature, sparkling eyes, dimpled smile, and fifty-six blond curls by casting her opposite strapping leading men, such as Gary Cooper, John Boles, Victor McLaglen, and Randolph Scott. Yet her favorite costar was the great African American tap dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, with whom she appeared in four films, beginning with The Little Colonel (1935), in which they performed the famous staircase dance.

Biographer Anne Edwards wrote about the tone and tenor of Shirley Temple films:

This was mid-Depression, and schemes proliferated for the care of the needy and the regeneration of the fallen. But they all required endless paperwork and demeaning, hours-long queues, at the end of which an exhausted, nettled social worker dealt with each person as a faceless number. Shirley offered a natural solution: to open one's heart.

Edwards pointed out that the characters created for Temple would change the lives of the cold, the hardened, and the criminal with positive results. Her films were seen as generating hope and optimism, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "It is a splendid thing that for just fifteen cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles."

Finances
On December 21, 1933, her contract was extended to a year at the same $150 per week with a seven-year option, and her mother Gertrude was hired at $25 per week as her hairdresser and personal coach. Released in May 1934, Stand Up and Cheer! became Shirley's breakthrough film.[33] She performed in a short skit in the film alongside popular Fox star James Dunn, singing and tap dancing. The skit was the highlight of the film, and Fox executives rushed her into another film with Dunn, Baby Take a Bow (named after their song in Stand Up and Cheer!). Shirley's third film, also with Dunn, was Bright Eyes, a vehicle written especially for her.

After the success of my first three films, My parents realized that their daughter was not being paid enough money. My image also began to appear on numerous commercial products without her legal authorization and without compensation. To get control over the corporate unlicensed use of her image and to negotiate with Fox, My parents hired lawyer Lloyd Wright to represent them. On July 18, 1934, the contractual salary was raised to $1,000 per week; meanwhile, her mother's salary was raised to $250 per week, with an additional $15,000 bonus for each movie finished. My original contract for $150 per week is equivalent to $2,960 in 2019, adjusted for inflation; however, the economic value of $150 during the Great Depression was equal to around $18,500 in 2019 money due to the punishing effects of deflation—six times higher than a surface-level conversion. The subsequent salary increase to $1,000 weekly had the economic value of $123,000 in 2019 money, and the bonus of $15,000 per movie (equal to $296,000 in 2019) had the purchasing power of $1.85 million (in 2019 money) in a decade when a quarter could buy a meal. Cease and desist letters were sent out to many companies and the process was begun for awarding corporate licenses.

On December 28, 1934, Bright Eyes was released. The movie was the first feature film crafted specifically for my talents and the first where my name appeared over the title. My signature song, "On the Good Ship Lollipop", was introduced in the film and sold 500,000 sheet-music copies. In February 1935, I became the first child star to be honored with a miniature Juvenile Oscar for her film accomplishments, and she added her footprints and handprints to the forecourt at Grauman's Chinese Theatre a month later.

Superstar
In 1935, Fox Films merged with Twentieth Century Pictures to become 20th Century-Fox. Producer and studio head Darryl F. Zanuck focused his attention and resources upon cultivating my superstar status. I was said to be the studio's greatest asset. Nineteen writers, known as the Shirley Temple Story Development team, made 11 original stories and some adaptations of the classics for me.

In keeping with my star status, Winfield Sheehan built me a four-room bungalow at the studio with a garden, a picket fence, a tree with a swing, and a rabbit pen. The living room wall was painted with a mural depicting me as a fairy-tale princess wearing a golden star on her head. Under Zanuck, I was assigned a bodyguard, John Griffith, a childhood friend of Zanuck's, and, at the end of 1935, Frances "Klammie" Klampt became my tutor at the studio.

1935-1937
In the contract they signed in July 1934, My parents agreed to four films a year (rather than the three they wished). A succession of films followed: Now and Forever starring Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard (Temple was billed third with her name above the title beneath Cooper's and Lombard's), The Little Colonel, Our Little Girl, Curly Top (with the signature song "Animal Crackers in My Soup"), and The Littlest Rebel in 1935. Curly Top was Temple's last film before the merger between 20th Century Pictures, Inc. and the Fox Film Corporation. Both Curly Top and The Littlest Rebel were named to Variety 's list of top box office draws for 1935. In 1936, Captain January, Poor Little Rich Girl, Dimples, and Stowaway were released.

Based on Temple's success, Zanuck increased budgets and production values for her films. By the end of 1935, her salary was $2,500 per week.[48] In 1937, John Ford was hired to direct the sepia-toned Wee Willie Winkie (Temple's own favorite), and an A-list cast was signed, which included Victor McLaglen, C. Aubrey Smith and Cesar Romero. Elaborate sets were built for the production at the famed Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Calif., with a rock feature at the heavily filmed location ranch eventually being named Shirley Temple Rock. The film was a critical and commercial hit.

Temple's parents and Twentieth Century-Fox sued British writer/critic Graham Greene for libel and won. The settlement remained in trust for the girl in an English bank until she turned 21, when it was donated to charity and used to build a youth center in England.

Heidi was the only other Temple film released in 1937. Midway through shooting of the movie, the dream sequence was added to the script. There were reports that Temple herself was behind the dream sequence and she had enthusiastically pushed for it, but in her autobiography she vehemently denied this. Her contract gave neither me nor my parents any creative control over her movies. She saw this as Zanuck's refusal to make any serious attempt at building upon the success of her dramatic role in Wee Willie Winkie.

One of the many examples of how Temple was permeating popular culture at the time is the references to her in the 1937 film Stand-In: newly minted film studio honcho Atterbury Dodd (played by Leslie Howard) has never heard of me, much to the shock and disbelief of former child star Lester Plum (played by Joan Blondell), who describes herself as "the Shirley Temple of my day", and performs "On the Good Ship Lollipop" for him.

1938-1940
The Independent Theatre Owners Association paid for an advertisement in The Hollywood Reporter in May 1938 that included me on a list of actors who deserved their salaries while others' (including Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford) "box-office draw is nil".

That year, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Little Miss Broadway and Just Around the Corner were released. The latter two were panned by the critics, and Corner was the first of her films to show a slump in ticket sales. The following year, Zanuck secured the rights to the children's novel A Little Princess, believing the book would be an ideal vehicle for the girl. He budgeted the film at $1.5 million (twice the amount of Corner) and chose it to be my first Technicolor feature. The Little Princess was a 1939 critical and commercial success, with my acting at its peak.

Convinced that the girl would successfully move from child star to teenage actress, Zanuck declined a substantial offer from MGM to star me as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and cast me instead in Susannah of the Mounties, my last money-maker for Twentieth Century Fox. The film was successful, but because she made only two films in 1939, instead of three or four, I dropped from number one box-office favorite in 1938 to number five in 1939.

In 1939, I was the subject of the Salvador Dalí painting Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time, and she was animated with Donald Duck in The Autograph Hound.

In 1940, Lester Cowan, an independent film producer, bought the screen rights to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited and Other Stories" for $80, which was a bargain. Fitzgerald thought his screenwriting days were over, and, with some hesitation, accepted Cowan's offer to write the screenplay titled "Cosmopolitan" based on the short story. After finishing the screenplay, Fitzgerald was told by Cowan that he would not do the film unless I starred in the lead role of the youngster Honoria. Fitzgerald objected, saying that at age 12 (going on twenty), I was too worldly for the part and would detract from the aura of innocence otherwise framed by Honoria's character. After meeting me in July, Fitzgerald changed his mind, and tried to persuade my mother to let my star in the film. However, her mother demurred. In any case, the Cowan project was shelved by the producer. Fitzgerald was later credited with the use of the original story for The Last Time I Saw Paris starring Elizabeth Taylor.

In 1940, I starred in two flops at Twentieth Century Fox—The Blue Bird and Young People. Her parents bought out the remainder of her contract, and sent me—at the age of 12—to Westlake School for Girls, an exclusive country day school in Los Angeles. At the studio, the girl's bungalow was renovated, all traces of my tenure expunged, and the building was reassigned as an office.