In 1958, Temple returned to show business with a two-season television anthology series of fairy tale adaptations. She made guest appearances on various television shows in the early 1960s and filmed a sitcom pilot that was never released. She sat on the boards of many corporations and organizations including The Walt Disney Company, Del Monte Foods, and the National Wildlife Federation. In 1967, she ran unsuccessfully for United States Congress, and was appointed United States Ambassador to Ghana in 1974 and to Czechoslovakia in 1989. In 1988, she published her autobiography, Child Star. Temple is the recipient of many awards and honors including Kennedy Center Honors and a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

In 1945, seventeen-year-old Temple married Army Air Corps sergeant John Agar, who, after being discharged from the service, entered the acting profession. The couple made two films together before Temple divorced him on the grounds of mental cruelty in 1949. She received custody of their daughter Linda Susan and the restoration of her maiden name in the process. In January 1950, Temple met the conservative scion of a patrician California family and United States Navy Silver Star recipient Charles Alden Black. She married him in December 1950 following the finalization of her divorce and retired from films the same day, to become a homemaker. Her son, Charles Alden Black, Jr. was born in 1952 and her daughter, Lori Alden Black was born in 1954.

Weighing six pounds eight ounces, Shirley Temple was delivered without complications on Monday April 23, 1928, at the Santa Monica Hospital in Santa Monica, California by Dr. Leonard John Madsen to George Francis Temple and his wife Gertrude Amelia Krieger Temple.

Mrs. Temple tried to influence her daughter's future by prenatal association with music, art, and natural beauty. During her pregnancy, she listened to phonograph records, read books aloud, and attended dance recitals and concerts. In the child's first years, Mrs. Temple read storybooks to her toddler, altering the pitch of her voice according to the character's gender, and enacted the story and characters. Her daughter began to mimic her.

The early years of the Great Depression left but little impact on the Temples. Their house and car were paid in full and Mr. Temple had been cautious with investments. Mrs. Temple began focusing her attention upon her daughter. She taught the tot words to favorite popular songs, noted the child was able to bring expression to the words, had perfect pitch, and could easily repeat simple dance steps.

Early in 1931, Mrs. Temple took the first steps in bringing her daughter to the screen. She was convinced her three-year-old daughter had exceptional talent, and, at the prompting of her husband, enrolled the youngster in the highly competitive Meglin's Dance School in Los Angeles, California on the Mack Sennett lot (leased at the time to Educational Pictures, a Poverty Row studio) for twice weekly dance lessons beginning on September 13, 1931.

At home, Mrs. Temple initiated the morning ritual of styling her daughter's lengthening and thickening hair into precisely fifty-six ringlets in imitation of the hairstyle worn by the young Mary Pickford. The process involved dampening the hair with a wave solution, wrapping a length of hair around a finger, securing it with a bobby pin, and gently combing the ringlet when dry.

Shortly after Temple's third birthday, Educational Pictures planned a series of one-reelers called Baby Burlesks to compete with the popular Our Gang comedy shorts.[note 2] Charles Lamont, a film director with Educational, conducted a talent search among the children at the Meglin School, found Temple hiding behind a piano, and encouraged her to audition for the series. She did, and was signed to a two-year contract in January 1932 at $10 a day for a typically four day shooting schedule.

Temple appeared in all eight films in the series, and graduated to a series of Educational two-reelers called Frolics of Youth portraying Mary Lou Rogers, a youngster in a contemporary suburban family. She was paid $15 a day or $50 a picture. In order to underwrite film production costs at Educational, Temple and her juvenile co-stars were peddled as models for chewing gum, breakfast cereal, cigar, and candy bar promotional gimmicks and photographs.

While under contract for Educational, Temple was loaned to other studios. Her first appearance in a feature film was a barely visible role in The Red-Haired Alibi for Tower Productions, Inc. in 1932. In 1933, she made several short films for Educational, and, again, was loaned for bit parts in feature films at Universal, Paramount, and Warner Bros..