Howard) has never heard of Temple, much to the shock and disbelief of former child star Lester Plum (played by Joan Blondell), who describes herself as "the Shirley Temple of my day", and performs "On the Good Ship Lollipop" for him. 1938–1940 The Independent Theatre Owners Association paid for an advertisement in The Hollywood Reporter in May 1938 that included Temple on a list of actors who deserved their salaries while others' (including Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford) "box-office draw is nil". That year, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Little Miss Broadway and Just Around the Corner were released. The latter two were panned by the critics, and Corner was the first of her films to show a slump in ticket sales. The following year, Zanuck secured the rights to the children's novel A Little Princess, believing the book would be an ideal vehicle for the girl. He budgeted the film at $1.5 million (twice the amount of Corner) and chose it to be her first Technicolor feature. The Little Princess was a 1939 critical and commercial success, with Shirley's acting at its peak. Convinced that the girl would successfully move from child star to teenage actress, Zanuck declined a substantial offer from MGM to star her as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and cast her instead in Susannah of the Mounties, her last money-maker for Twentieth Century Fox. The film was successful, but because she made only two films in 1939, instead of three or four, Shirley dropped from number one box-office favorite in 1938 to number five in 1939. In 1939, she was the subject of the Salvador Dalí painting Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time, and she was animated with Donald Duck in The Autograph Hound. In 1940, Lester Cowan, an independent film producer, bought the screen rights to F. Scott Fitzgerald's Babylon Revisited and Other Stories for $80. Fitzgerald thought his screenwriting days were over, and, with some hesitation, accepted Cowan's offer to write the screenplay titled "Cosmopolitan" based on the short story. After finishing the screenplay, Fitzgerald was told by Cowan that he would not do the film unless Temple starred in the lead role of the youngster Honoria. Fitzgerald objected, saying that at age 12, the actress was too worldly for the part and would detract from the aura of innocence otherwise framed by Honoria's character. After