Friday, December 23, 2011

Wherein googleproofing may have been inadvertently invented 80 years ago

From the Wikipedia entry on the Shirley Temple cocktail:

The cocktail may have been invented by a bartender at Chasen's, a restaurant in Beverly Hills, California, in the 1930s to serve to the child actress Shirley Temple to help her deal with her growing alcohol addiction. By offering a non-alcoholic alternative to drink when not on-set, establishments frequented by the actress were able to hide her problem from the public.


Upon reading this, my first thought was to google up confirmation of whether Shirley Temple had an alcohol addiction. And I wasn't able to, because the search results were dominated by discussion of the drink, including statements that it's non-alcoholic and recipes for alcoholic ones.

If the drink was invented to help Shirley Temple hide her alcohol addiction, it was far more successful than they could possibly have imagined.

8 comments:

laura k said...

I thought the drink was called Shirley Temple because it was something Shirley Temple herself could drink when she celebrated with the cast and crew. Since she was a child star, the drink let her have something fun that looked like a cocktail - but not necessarily because she was a young alcoholic.

I would think if she had been an alcoholic, some bio of her online would mention it, and I don't see it anywhere.

Tangent: Later, as Shirley Temple Black, she may have been the first famous woman to speak openly about her breast cancer and mastectomy. She was a huge hero to so many people because of this. It was so brave.

impudent strumpet said...

The weird thing is the wikipedia citation is an actual book. Obviously I haven't checked the book itself, but it makes me wonder if another online bio does mention it and it's been buried by drink-related google results.

laura k said...

Right! The book may have revealed the drinking problem.

On the other hand, she was so famous later in her life (UN ambassador, breast-cancer spokesperson) that I would think something else would mention alcoholism. I Googled her full name (Shirley Temple Black), no alcoholism mentions.

impudent strumpet said...

What's interesting is this post is now getting quite a few hits from other people googling for whether Shirley Temple is an alcoholic.

Any googlers want to let me know whether you were googling that because of the wikipedia article or because of something else? Anonymous comments welcome!

Anonymous said...

Fellow googler (is that even a word) here. I was also curious about the wikipedia entry and, like you, was only able to find information about how to make an alcoholic version of the drink.

Anonymous said...

I came her due to the wikipedia reference to her having an "alcohol addition in the 1930s". That did not seem to make sense given that she was born in 1928. Was she a child alcoholic? Seem unlikely.

impudent strumpet said...

I just looked up the book cited for that statement, and it turns out it's a fiction book, and appears to be available only on Kindle.

Does Wikipedia have a "better citation needed" tag?

laura k said...

Fiction! Ah-ha! Wiki does have something like that but unfortunately I don't know the procedure.

Given STB's outspokenness as an adult, if she had been a child alcoholic, it's likely she would have been public about it, and she never was.