The Shirley Temple doll came along soon after the success of "Stand Up and Cheer". Ideal Novelty and Toy Co. gained exclusive rights to manufacture the doll using her name. They hired the best doll artist (Bernard Lipfert) to design the mold for the doll, the hired the best clothes designer (Mollye Goldman) to design the outfits for the doll. The Shirley Temple was the most successful dolls ever made up to that time. The face on these dolls was beautiful, with the golden curls, hazel eyes, big smile, and, of course, those dimples!! Every little girl wanted a Shirley Temple doll...it was the most successful doll ever sold up to that time, with over six million Shirley Temple dolls being sold!!

This little child could lift their spirits like no other person could. After "Stand Up and Cheer", Fox knew they had a gold mine; there would be no bankruptcy for them with Shirley Temple around. She was loaned to Paramount for a star-making turn in "Little Miss Marker", and then Fox began working full time on getting Shirley into every movie they possibly could. The quickly hired the best screenwriters to make storylines devised specifically for Shirley, and the best songwriters to write her songs, the best dancers (Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Buddy Ebsen) to dance with her. Shirley starred in eight movies in 1934, four starring roles in 1935, and four in 1936. In 1937, Shirley was directed by john Ford in the classic tale of "Wee Willie Winkie". Daryl Zanuck (who ran Fox at the time) declared the her appeal was endless. She was the top box office star for the years 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1938, an amazing accomplishment, never duplicated. As she got older however, Fox began the resort back to the same themes that they had been using with Shirley since she was 5 years old. In 1939, Shirley's box office draw started to wain, simply because she was getting older, she wasn't that tiny little child any more, Shirley's last big successful picture as a child star was "The Little Princess", which almost every generation of children in the years following has seen, it was a beautiful story, and showed that Shirley could do more than just be cute on screen.

In 1940, a deal to loan Shirley out to MGM to star in "The Wizard of Oz" fell through due to the death of Jean Harlow, so Fox studios decided…