A catfish farmer, a pineapple pusher, and a high-ranking spy — Charles Black
was a lot of things, but he was best known as the second husband of Shirley Temple.
Stay tuned to learn more about their fascinating romance.
In 1950, at the age of 22, Shirley Temple ended a four-year marriage
with actor John Agar. Very shortly thereafter, she met Charles Black at
a cocktail party in Honolulu — practically by mistake. Black lived there at the time,
working for Dole Hawaiian Pineapple, but he spent most of his time out on the longboard.
Had surf conditions been good that day, he might have never met his future wife of 55 years.
When the two were introduced, it immediately became clear that Black
did not recognize the curly-haired former child star — universally dubbed ‘America's
sweetheart.’ According to SFGate, he asked if she was a secretary, to which she answered:
"I can't even type. I make films."
Temple told SFGate years later in an interview:
"It was very refreshing to me — a handsome guy who wasn't
interested in Hollywood or anything about it."
With over 40 films on her resume, she was on the verge of leaving show business behind. Shirley
Temple Black had become active in the Republican party, going on to serve overseas as a diplomat.
But she would not be the only renaissance person in the relationship. Charles Black
had a busy life before he met Shirley, which might explain why he had never
seen any of her movies. Born in Oakland and raised in San Francisco, Black was
descended from Cherokee chief Oconostota and also had ancestors on the Mayflower,
according to SFGate. His father was James Black — president of Pacific Gas and Electric.
Charles Black attended Hotchkiss, a prestigious residential high school in Connecticut. He then
moved on to Stanford University, where he graduated in just three years. Afterward,
Black started a long and decorated military career, joining the Navy
in 1941 as an intelligence officer. He rode torpedo boats during World War II,
scouting and disrupting supply chains behind enemy lines in Indonesia. Patrolling by small
boat armed with torpedoes was a dangerous mission with high casualty rates. Black
made over 100 such missions, which earned him the Silver Star for valor.
“Please, Mr. Flanner, please find him for me. Every minute is precious.”
After the war ended, Charles Black lived in Tahiti, where he could sail
in more peaceful waters. He traveled back over 7,000 miles to the U.S. by sailboat.
Charles wooed Shirley by singing a Tahitian love song. The former child star,
who had sung to millions on screen, was fittingly won over by serenade. The couple
was later married at Black's parents' house on California's Monterey peninsula.
Black was thrust into fame when he married Temple. But, according to their son,
he took it in stride. Charles Black Jr. said of his dad in an SFGate interview:
"When I was a young kid, I heard him called 'Mr.
Temple.' Some men would have been bothered by it ... He didn't care."
He didn’t mind getting upstaged politically either. When Shirley Temple Black was
appointed as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, Charles accompanied her.
According to the U.S. Embassy in the Czech Republic, he also accompanied his wife when
she served as an ambassador to Ghana under President Gerald Ford in 1976,
and when she was an ambassador to Czechoslovakia under President George H. W. Bush in 1989.
Through all his support for his wife's career, Charles Black did not ignore his own. According
to SFGate, he went back into the Navy during the Korean War and later worked in aquaculture. He
founded Mardela Corp., which farmed salmon and catfish. According to his son, he continued his
involvement with espionage, working with the CIA to help raise a sunken Soviet submarine from the
bottom of the Pacific in the 1970s. According to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute,
he was a trustee of Santa Clara University and a member of the board of the College of Notre Dame.
Despite their demanding careers, the couple found time for each other.
In his interview with SFGate, Charles Black Jr. said his parents:
"[...] didn't sleep apart from each other for more than a couple of days."
Charles Black died of complications from bone marrow cancer on August 4,
2005. Shirley Temple Black said of her husband:
"He was the love of my life."
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