Shirley Temple was a dimpled darling with blond ringlets who set the bar for child superstars in Hollywood before gracefully pivoting to a successful diplomatic career.  She was the fearless mom who made it OK to talk about breast cancer — at a time when the disease was shrouded by shame — by publicly announcing that she underwent a mastectomy and urging other women not to “sit home and be afraid.”  But she was never, ever, Lindsay Lohan.  Instead, the beloved actress, who died Monday, remained for much of her life the same sunny presence that lifted the nation’s spirits during the darkest days of the Depression — and entranced the generations of moviegoers who followed.  Unlike Lohan and many of the other child stars-turned-train wrecks who followed in Temple’s footsteps, there were no off-screen meltdowns, no mug shots, no public drunkenness — and not even a whiff of scandal.  “You can wake her up in the middle of the night and she has the same personality everybody knows,” her late husband, Charles Alden Black, told a reporter in 1988. “What everybody has seen for 60 years is the bedrock.”  PHOTOS: REMEMBERING SHIRLEY TEMPLE'S LIFE AND CAREER  Officially, she was 85, but to many Americans she was forever that precocious little girl with the adorable pout who sang about dreaming away “On the Good Ship Lollipop” in the movie classic “Bright Eyes.”  Playing an orphan, she melted criminal hearts in “Little Miss Marker.” She brokered a peace between the settlers and Indians in another Hollywood hit, “Susannah of the Mounties.” And she danced on a piano in “Little Miss Broadway.”  “I want to do that, too,” she told Bill (Bojangles) Robinson in another iconic film, “The Little Colonel,” where she gently toppled a taboo in 1930s America by taking the black performer’s hand and tap-dancing with him on the stairs.  From 1935 to 1939, Temple was the biggest little star in Tinseltown on the strength of movies like “Wee Willie Winkie” and “Heidi,” and helped save 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy with films like “Curly Top” and “The Littlest Rebel.”  More popular than Clark Gable, Bing Crosby or Greta Garbo, she won an honorary Oscar when she was 6 and made $3 million while still a child. That’s the equivalent of about $45 million today.  Moms dressed their daughters like her. Shirley Temple dolls became the rage. And they even named a drink after the starlet, a chaste but sweet concoction called the Shirley Temple that mixed ginger ale, grenadine and a maraschino cherry — and contained no liquor.  “As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right,” President Franklin Roosevelt declared.  Temple’s ride at the top was short, but she never let the fame go to her pretty head.  Unlike Dina Lohan, Temple’s mother, Gertrude, kept her grounded and was present for virtually every scene she filmed. Gertrude Temple, the actress told the Los Angeles Times, was a “super mother” who “kept my head on straight.”  Temple was also humble about her success.  “People in the Depression wanted something to cheer them up, and they fell in love with a dog, Rin Tin Tin and a little girl,” she said long after the she left the movie business.  Temple rarely dwelled on what it might have been like had she not grown up a child star. But she once told a reporter that she stopped believing in Santa Claus when she was 6.  RELATED: SHIRLEY TEMPLE LEFT LEGACY AS FACE (AND HAIR) OF AN ERA  “Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph,” she said.  Born April 23, 1928, in Santa Monica, Calif., Temple was pushed into the pictures by her mother, who the actress unfailing described as loving and persistent.  Blessed with the uncanny ability to cry on cue, a natural gift for mimicry and a phenomenal memory, Temple got her first big break in 1932 when she was cast in “Baby Burlesks.”  These were short films during which diaper-clad kids imitated the grownup stars of the day such as Mae West and Marlene Dietrich.  Two years later, Temple was cast in “Stand Up and Cheer!” — and America did just that when they got a look at her singing and dancing.  That was the start of a string of 40 films, most of them hits, almost all of them featuring a catchy song like “Animal Crackers in My Soup,” which kids for several generations would sing.  RELATED: SHIRLEY TEMPLE BLACK WON PRAISE IN DIPLOMATIC CAREER  But Temple’s career ended where most actresses begin — when she started growing up.  Moviegoers who adored Temple as a girl turned away when she became a young woman and co-starred with Cary Grant in “The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer” and with future President Ronald Reagan in “That Hagen Girl.”  The final blow to her career was when Temple failed to get the title role in “Peter Pan,” a play about a boy who never wants to grow up.  By 22, she was washed up in Hollywood and divorced from her first husband, actor John Agar, the father of her daughter Linda.  Five months after divorcing Agar, she married Black. And they stayed married for 55 years, a happy union that produced two children and ended with his death in 2005.  Temple did not fall into despair while she was figuring out her next career move. She did some television work. She did some corporate work. She raised her kids.  During that time, Temple moved to a San Francisco suburb where she became president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society and a prime mover behind the San Francisco International Film Festival.  A supporter of the Vietnam War, Temple tried her hand at politics but lost her run for Congress in 1967 to a more moderate Republican.  In 1969, President Richard Nixon tapped Temple to be part of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations and launched her on a distinguished diplomatic career.  Temple served as U.S. ambassador to Ghana under President Gerald Ford and was the first President George Bush’s ambassador to Czechoslovakia when communism fell in 1989.  “My main job (initially) was human rights, trying to keep people like future (Czech) President Vaclav Havel out of jail,” she told The Associated Press in 1999.  In 1972, Temple made headlines again after she underwent successful breast cancer surgery. And she was credited with giving other women the strength to battle the dreaded disease.  “I have much more to accomplish before I am through,” she told her fans.  Temple’s final years in Woodside, Calif., however, were quiet. And when she passed, it was in the company of those nearest and dearest to her.  “She was surrounded by her family and caregivers,” her family said in a statement. “We salute her for a life of remarkable achievements as an actor, as a diplomat, and . . . our beloved mother, grandmother (and) great-grandmother.”  The family did not reveal a cause of death.
Shirley Temple, whose charming smile and cheerful voice made her a superstar before she was 10, died Monday at the age of 85, her agent said in a statement.