Of course, you can't think of Shirley Temple without also remembering a young Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in all those fun "let's put on a play" movies that were rebroadcast in the fifties on Saturdays when I was a kid:
Two other young actor/singers who came to mind were Deanna Durbin and Bobby Breen, though these two are going way back - even past my childhood - but I also remember hearing them sing in old movies on the Saturday Matinee when I was a kid:
Then I started thinking of all the teenage television stars I grew up watching who cut some vinyl in their bids for rock and roll stardom. These were the days before they actually created TV shows around rock music like The Monkees and The Partridge Family. Though technically not child stars, I thought it would be fun to find some of the more obscure recordings of these singing attempts.
I remember buying 45s of Johnny Crawford (Mark from the Rifleman), Paul Peterson and Shelly Fabares (Jeff and Mary from The Donna Reed Show) and I also had Richard Chamberlain's recording of the theme song from Dr. Kildaire so I was a prime target for the cross-over attempts, lol.
Here's a rare and mostly forgotten Johnny Crawford recording:
Though he never really did make a singing bid like many of his fellow actors, I though you'd get a kick out of this clip of a very young Kurt Russell singing at Disneyland:
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