Passings: Shirley Temple Black

WOODSIDE, Calif. — Former child star and diplomat Shirley Temple has died at her home, the New York Times reports. She was 85. Temple rose to stardom as a child with features like Curly Top, Poor Little Rich Girl, and Heidi. She won an honorary Academy Award at the age of six and was even the subject of a painting by Salvador Dalí. After her marriage in 1950 to California entrepreneur Charles Alden Black, she became a major Republican Party fundraiser, running unsuccessfully for Congress in 1966 as an Independent conservative, challenging a liberal, anti-war Republican. For her efforts, she was appointed U.S. ambassador to Ghana by Gerald Ford and later served as the first U.S. ambassador to newly democratic Czechoslovakia in 1989. Her death, of natural causes, was confirmed by her publicist Cheryl Kagan.