Parenting & Family Quote by Totie Fields

Totie Fields nails a whole cultural mythology in two crisp beats: the American obsession with the gifted child, and the quiet discomfort when that child insists on becoming an ordinary adult. The line is built like a magic trick. First, the setup flatters Shirley Temple with a universally recognized credential - childhood charisma, the kind that can sell tickets, soften hard times, and turn a kid into a national mascot. Then Fields snaps the illusion: “it cleared up.” Charisma becomes a temporary rash, not a sacred essence.

The intent is comic misdirection, but the subtext is sharper: fame isn’t just fickle, it’s ageist and transactional. Temple’s appeal was never only “talent”; it was a carefully packaged innocence that audiences wanted to consume, especially in an era when her image functioned as morale during the Depression. Fields implies that what the public calls charisma is often a costume we demand from children because it reassures adults. Once the child grows out of the costume, the spell breaks and the audience blames the performer.

As a comedian who made a career out of puncturing polite fantasies, Fields also slips in a bit of self-aware cruelty: the joke works because it’s slightly unfair. That edge is the point. It exposes how entertainment culture treats people as phases - cute, hot, tragic, washed - and calls it destiny. Temple did, in fact, reinvent herself beyond stardom, but Fields’ punchline suggests the public rarely counts that as success. It only wants the child back.