Literary Gossip: Shirley Temple was the real reason Graham Greene fled to Mexico

2:02 pm - February 10, 2012: 10 notes

Literary Gossip: Shirley Temple was the real reason Graham Greene fled to Mexico

In 1937 [Graham] Greene was a film reviewer for Night and Day magazine. In a review of the Shirley Temple vehicle Wee Willie Winkie, he wrote: “Her admirers – middle-aged men and clergymen – respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire.”

Twentieth Century Fox sued on behalf of Temple, then aged eight, on the grounds that Greene had implied she played deliberately to “a public of licentious old men, ready to enjoy the fine flavour of such an unripe, charming little creature”, [Alberto] Cavalcanti wrote. He added: “Thanks to vigilant, quick-witted friends, Graham was warned that the Americans producing the film had introduced a writ of libel against him, meaning that not only would the backers of Night and Day pay a large fine, but he, Graham himself, faced a prison sentence. The only solution was to find a country without extradition. They chose Mexico and our poor Graham went away very quickly indeed. Very likely Shirley Temple never learned that it was partly thanks to her that, during his exile, Graham Greene wrote one of his best books.”

—Andrew Johnson for The Independent