Of natural causes at age 85.
USA Today reminds readers that the child singer, dancer, and actress helped lift the spirits of Depression-era America and saved film studio 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy. Shades of Obama (/sarc).
New York’s Daily News observes that Temple won her first ambassador appointment after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger heard her discussing Namibia at a party and was surprised that she had heard of the place. Shades of Obama’s ambassador picks (/sarc).
More from the Daily News:
A Republican (she ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1967), she served in Richard Nixon’s administration as a member of the delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. She later served Gerald Ford as ambassador to Ghana and then as chief of protocol.
During the administration of Ronald Reagan — her former co-star — she served as a State Department trainer. And in the first Bush administration, she was ambassador to Czechoslovakia during the historic days when the Iron Curtain fell.
