Actress Shirley Temple has died at the age of 85 — 75 years after a celebrated call on Bermuda brought the Island’s attractions to international attention.

Hollywood’s child starlet in the 1930s, she was at the height of her fame when she visited the Island in 1938, garnering intense local excitement along with overseas headlines.

She arrived on the ocean liner Queen of Bermuda and stayed at the Castle Harbour Hotel. During her vacation she visited a number of the Island’s attractions, including the Aquarium in Flatts.

While sailing to Bermuda she had met American millionaire and philanthropist Vincent Astor, a fellow passenger on the Queen of Bermuda. He invited the young movie star to ride on the narrow gauge private railway, which ran through his 22-acre estate at Ferry Reach.

The Bermudian magazine reported that one of her young local admirers, nine-year-old David Wadson, worked up the courage to leave a message for the child star at her hotel, asking her to call him. “When Shirley called David he asked her to a party at her house but Shirley’s mother regretfully declined,” said the magazine. “However, David was asked to one of Shirley’s parties.”

Remembered best for her singing and tap-dancing role in such films as 1934’s ‘Bright Eyes’, she died on Monday night at her California residence.

She made her last feature film appearance in 1949, before pursing a career in television. Ms Temple married Charles Aiden Black in 1950, her second marriage. For the rest of her life she preferred to be known as Shirley Temple Black.

In the late 1960s she became involved in politics, representing the US at the United Nations in 1969 and in 1974 becoming the US ambassador to Ghana.

But like many child stars, she remained frozen in the public’s consciousness in her earliest role.

In later life she took a relaxed view of her precocious childhood success. She said: “People in the Depression wanted something to cheer them up — and they fell in love with a dog, Rin Tin Tin, and a little girl.”