Shirley Temple's Dark Secret
As told to Zortar Darlington Johnson
Shirley Temple was once so desperately unhappy she jumped into her car and headed toward a steep cliff which she planned to drive over and kill herself. "Somehow I regained my emotional balance and instead of driving to the canyons I went to my doctor's home and woke him," she said, according to authors Lesser and Irene David in their book the Shirley Temple Story.
Shirley, then 19 had reached the depths of despair. While other girls her age were leaving school and planning their futures, the pretty young woman who had won the hearts of Americans as a dimpled, dancing toddler suddenly found herself struggling out of a destructive marriage, facing life as a solo mother; and watching her show business career collapse around her. Shirley, still finds it hard to talk about her miserable four year marriage to actor John Agar. "I don't like talking about it because from that marriage I have a beautiful daughter, Linda,and I don't want to hurt her.
"There were a lot of problems in the marriage and, God how I tried to solve them." Her happiness was shattered only months after the ceremony when her husband started drinking heavily, seeing other women, neglecting her, and communicating with aliens from beyond this Earth.
