Shirley Temple Trivia
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50 free Shirley Temple trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Shirley Temple trivia quiz covers the biggest child star Hollywood ever produced and the second career she built as a diplomat. The easy questions handle the basics: 'On the Good Ship Lollipop', Bojangles Robinson and the staircase dance, the Juvenile Oscar, her ambassadorship to Ghana and the mocktail that carries her name. From there it moves through the Baby Burlesks, her breakthrough in Stand Up and Cheer!, the salary fights with Fox, Curly Top and Heidi, and the strange rumours about wigs, teeth and dwarves. The harder half is for classic-film and history buffs: the Dalí painting, F. Scott Fitzgerald's screenplay, the Arthur Freed episode, her lone MGM film, the gun pointed at her on radio, her 1967 congressional run, the Kissinger party, the 1976 running-mate rumour, the Soviet tanks she watched in Prague in 1968 and her flight to Washington with Václav Havel. If you enjoyed our classic Hollywood or child stars quizzes, this is the deep dive on one life. Every answer was checked against Shirley Temple's encyclopaedia entry before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which young star ended Shirley Temple's four-year run as Hollywood's top box-office draw in 1939?
Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney, then starring in the Andy Hardy films, took over the theatre owners' poll and led it for three years running; Temple had topped it from 1935 to 1938.
Q 02Where was Shirley Temple born on 23 April 1928?
Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica, California stayed the family's home until 1936, when fans knocking on the door and peering through the windows drove them to a walled and gated house in Brentwood.
Q 03Which fact about Shirley Temple was falsified until her teens?
Her age
Her age was cut by a year when her career took off; she learned the truth at what she had been told was her twelfth birthday party, when she was really turning thirteen.
Q 04Which series of one-reel shorts, with small children playing every role, gave Shirley Temple her start in 1932?
Baby Burlesks
Baby Burlesks dressed toddlers as adults above the waist and in nappies below to spoof stars such as Marlene Dietrich; Temple later called it a cynical exploitation of childish innocence.
Q 05Which 1934 film, with the song 'Baby, Take a Bow', was Shirley Temple's breakthrough at Fox?
Stand Up and Cheer!
Stand Up and Cheer! gave her a single song-and-dance number, and within an hour of finishing it Fox had put the five-year-old under contract for a year.
Q 06Which novelist was sued for libel over a Shirley Temple film review?
Graham Greene
Graham Greene, then a film critic, suggested that her appeal to middle-aged men was far from innocent; Fox and the nine-year-old sued him and his magazine, and won.
Q 07Which 1934 film, written specifically for Shirley Temple, contains her signature song 'On the Good Ship Lollipop'?
Bright Eyes
Bright Eyes has her sing it to a cabin full of pilots aboard a taxiing airliner: the 'good ship' of the title is a plane, not a boat.
Q 08What special honour did six-year-old Shirley Temple receive in February 1935?
A Juvenile Academy Award
A Juvenile Academy Award, a miniature statuette, went to her first, after nine-year-old Jackie Cooper had lost the 1931 Best Actor race to an adult; no younger performer has ever received an Oscar.
Q 09Which tap dancer, Shirley Temple's favourite co-star, performed the famous staircase dance with her in The Little Colonel?
Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson
Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson made four films with her, a pairing often called Hollywood's first interracial dance team; Temple said she learned his steps by listening to his taps.
Q 10How many blond curls was Shirley Temple famously said to have?
56
56 ringlets, and no one but her mother, who first set them when Shirley was a toddler, was ever allowed to curl them.
Q 11Which president, praising Shirley Temple's films, called it 'a splendid thing' that 15 cents let Americans forget their troubles?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt was speaking in 1935, when, as he put it, the spirit of the people was lower than at any other time in the Depression; a cinema ticket to see her smile cost 15 cents.
Q 12Which 1935 film gave Shirley Temple the signature song 'Animal Crackers in My Soup'?
Curly Top
Curly Top has her sing it in an orphanage dining hall, skipping between the tables while the other children beat time with their knives and forks.
Q 13Which director, better known for Westerns, made Shirley Temple's 1937 film Wee Willie Winkie, one of her own favourites?
John Ford
Q 21What two-word instruction did Shirley Temple's mother give her before every take?
Sparkle, Shirley!
Sparkle, Shirley! was Gertrude Temple's cue before each take; she coached her daughter herself, ignoring the director, and drew a studio salary for doing it.
Q 22Shirley Temple's 1942 CBS radio series, based on Sally Benson's stories, was called what?
Junior Miss
Junior Miss cast the 13-year-old as Judy Graves, a teenager Sally Benson had modelled on her own daughter and her friends; the series ran only from March to August.
Q 23What kind of stories did Shirley Temple present when she returned to television as a host in 1958?
Fairy tales
John Ford, a maker of rugged outdoor films, directed her as a girl who wins over a British army post in India, and cast her again eleven years later in Fort Apache.
Q 14Which surrealist painted Shirley Temple in 1939 as 'The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time'?
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí pasted her head, cut from a newspaper photograph, onto the body of a red lioness with a vampire bat perched on top; the work is also known as the Barcelona Sphinx.
Q 15Which 1934 Shirley Temple film was based on a Damon Runyon story?
Little Miss Marker
Little Miss Marker casts her as a child left with a bookie as security for her father's bet; Fox lent her to a rival studio for the part, and she wins over the whole gang of gamblers.
Q 16Which MGM producer did Shirley Temple's memoir accuse of exposing himself to her?
Arthur Freed
Arthur Freed threw her out of his office when she answered with nervous giggles, she wrote; MGM had signed her only months after Fox let her go.
Q 17Shirley Temple's only film for MGM was which unsuccessful 1941 picture?
Kathleen
Kathleen was the one vehicle MGM found her: the studio, which signed her eight months after Fox dropped her, was already grooming Judy Garland as its own young star.
Q 18Which 1947 comedy paired Shirley Temple with Cary Grant?
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer casts her as a schoolgirl with a crush on Grant's playboy artist, who is told to keep dating her until it wears off; the script won an Oscar.
Q 19Which actor played Shirley Temple's rumoured father in That Hagen Girl (1947)?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan, the future president, played the lawyer the town gossips about, yet the script has the pair leave town together as newlyweds.
Q 20What was the title of Shirley Temple's last film, released in 1949?
A Kiss for Corliss
A Kiss for Corliss revived her teenage role from Kiss and Tell opposite David Niven; within a year she had left the screen at 22, saying she had had enough of pretend.
Fairy tales brought her back: with her old films a hit on television, she hosted and sometimes acted in Shirley Temple's Storybook, an anthology that ran until 1961.
Q 24Which cartoon character was Shirley Temple's only rival as a seller of 1930s merchandise?
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse alone matched her pull: her look-alike dolls were the best-selling dolls of the decade, and her face sold dresses and dishes.
Q 25A false rumour about the young Shirley Temple claimed she was really what?
A 30-year-old dwarf
A 30-year-old dwarf: the tale, which a 1930s interviewer traced to England, fed on the fact that film audiences never saw her with a missing tooth.
Q 26Shirley Temple often said Depression audiences fell in love with a little girl and which canine film star?
Rin Tin Tin
Rin Tin Tin was her own comparison: people in the Depression wanted cheering up, she liked to say, so they fell for a dog and a little girl.
Q 27How did Shirley Temple hide the gaps from her lost baby teeth on screen?
Dental plates and caps
Dental plates and caps filled each gap during filming; that, a reporter was told at the time, was the truth behind a rumour that her teeth had been filed down to look like baby teeth.
Q 28In 1967 Shirley Temple Black ran unsuccessfully for what office?
US Congress
US Congress: she lost a special-election primary to Pete McCloskey, a more moderate Republican, while 'On the Good Ship Lollipop' kept being played at her campaign rallies.
Q 29By Shirley Temple Black's account, whose surprise at hearing her discuss Namibia at a party led to her first ambassadorship?
Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger, then secretary of state, was, in her words, surprised that she even knew the word; her first embassy posting followed in 1974.
Q 30Which president appointed Shirley Temple Black a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon picked the Republican fund-raiser for the five-member US delegation, where she spoke up on refugees, the aged and the environment.