With the possible, and I say possible, exception of Judy Garland, who almost single-handedly changed popular music female vocal singing style from bel canto (think "opera warbling," e.g. Deanna Durbin) to a "jazzy" form of female crooning; she could also act, though her dancing wasn't up to Temple's standards. The difference between Garland and Temple was that Temple was allowed to grow up, while Garland was put on drugs to try to force her to keep her child figure, and by the time she was allowed to be an adult in movies, the drugs had taken hold, and never let go from then on.
“The difference between Garland and Temple was that Temple was allowed to grow up...”
I don’t think this is an apt comparison. Judy Garland wasn’t a “child actor” like Shirley Temple.
Garland wasn’t even signed by MGM till she was thirteen. She had a big, grown-up voice, and sounded much the same at sixteen as she did at forty. With the exception of Dorothy, whom she played as a sort of a ageless every girl/teen/woman, she never played a child in the movies.
Shirley Temple’s career flatlined as an adult precisely because she cemented her film identity as a child. Audiences loved her as a child. And nobody could mistake the voice of “On the Good Ship Lollipop” as that of anything but a kid. Subsequently she was forced to retired at 21 because she wasn’t Shirley Temple, little girl, anymore, and no one would go see her movies.
Meanwhile, at 21, Judy Garland was enjoying one of her greatest film successes, “Meet Me in St. Louis.”
And L.B. Mayer didn’t drug Garland up to “keep her child figure.” He doped her up because he thought she was fat. He wanted her camera skinny.