I didn't know this! Interesting

Sugarfoot Anderson remembers Shirley Temple as a ‘little lady’

Stampeder great shared screen time with child star

It was 1948 when child star Shirley Temple was still trying to establish herself in dramatic adult roles in the movie industry in Hollywood; and Ezzrett ‘Sugarfoot’ Anderson was getting his first big break in films during a blip in his professional football career.

The pair came together that year as co-stars in The Story of Seabiscuit at Warner Brothers Studios and got to know each other quite well on and off the set for a couple of months. She was then still just 20 and he was 28.

“They didn’t give her too much credit, because she had always played little kids,” Anderson recalled on Tuesday, one day after Shirley Temple Black died at age 85 — ironically on the longtime transplanted Calgarian’s 94th birthday.

“It’s very sad to hear that. It’s really hard to go back and dig up that stuff.”

Anderson played Walkin’ Murphy, the Kentucky thoroughbred stable owner’s ‘boy’ whose duties included odd jobs including walking the prized horses daily, among them Seabiscuit, the legendary horse of the 1930s and early 1940s which also appeared in the movie.

“I remember going every day making the picture at Warner Brothers that we would go to lunch. There was always something funny going on,” said Anderson.

“Every time we’d leave the dining table after lunch breaks, she’d tell me, ‘You gotta remember your lines, Murphy.’ She was quite the young lady and I was pretty much thrilled to meet her at that time of her life. She was very popular and a very nice person. When she joined the Screen Actors Guild, she wasn’t the type of person like (superstars) Bette Davis or Joan Crawford. She was just a little lady waiting for her chance in the world of acting.”

Anderson had just been cut in training camp that summer by the Los Angeles Dons after a stellar rookie 1947 season with the team in the all-American Football Conference, a major pro circuit that would merge with the National Football League a couple of years later.

He did not play football that season, instead concentrating on developing his acting skills. Meanwhile, old friend and former teammate Woody Strode, who helped Anderson get his first small roles in Hollywood after the Second World War, had been recruited to play with the Calgary Stampeders in Canadian pro football and was helping them win their first Grey Cup title.

Strode went back to Los Angeles after that with coach Les Lear and they convinced Anderson to join them in Calgary to help them try to repeat their success.

By the time Seabiscuit hit the big screens in 1949, Anderson and Strode were strutting their stuff as the premier receivers with the Stampeders, who would go all the way to the Grey Cup again, only to lose this time to the Montreal Alouettes. Anderson scored a touchdown in the championship game on a fumble return, but it was not enough.

He would continue to land roles in movies, including a part in The Snows of Kilimanjaro in 1952, but none of the more than two dozen films in which he appeared would be as high-profile and create as many fond memories as Seabiscuit.

He continued to star with the Stampeders through the 1954 season, occasionally heading back in the off-season to act in motion pictures, while Temple Black was making a name politically in the United States. She packed in her movie career in 1950 and began her new vocation.

Unfortunately, time passed and they would never meet again.

“Shortly after the movie Seabiscuit, I came to Canada to further my football career,” he recalled. “She stayed in Washington, D.C., then they made her an ambassador, so I didn’t see or hear too much of her at all.

“I was always waiting for her to come to Canada as ambassador or something, so that I could see and talk to her. It never happened.”

Anderson still works part time for the Stampeders and has now lived in Calgary for 65 years.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/calga ... story.html