It was love at first sight for 22-year-old Shirley Temple, who met Hawaiian Pineapple executive Charles Black at a party in Honolulu in 1950. “I fell in love with him at first sight. It sounds corny, but that’s what happened. But, I don’t think he did with me.” Black had not seen any of her films and did not recognize her.
“We were introduced,” the former child star recalled, “and he said ‘What do you do, are you a secretary?’ I said, ‘I can’t even type. I make films.’ It was very refreshing to me – a handsome guy who wasn’t interested in Hollywood or anything about it.”
Shirley Temple was separated at the time from her first husband, Jack Agar. She and her new beau spent a lot of time touring Oahu, and going for swims. A friend, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, ran a background check on Black and learned that he had been a naval intelligence officer during World War II and had been awarded a Silver Star.
They married later that year and spent 55 years together until Charles died in 2002. The most famous child star in history came to the Islands many times, the first in 1935 in the midst of the great depression.
Over 15,000 people came to meet her ship at Aloha Tower, and at first, the childstar was afraid of the huge crowd. But then she spotted Duke Kahanamoku in the crowd and called out to him. A few minutes later, she was sitting on his shoulders. Shirley Temple stayed at the Royal Hawaiian, which created a drink made with ginger ale, grenadine syrup, orange juice, a maraschino cherry and a slice of lemon. Temple broke into movies in Stand Up and Cheer in 1934 at the age of five. She performed in several more films that year, including Bright Eyes, where she first sang “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” She was the top box-office star in America when she first visited Hawaii in 1935.
