Friday, December 09, 2011

Sparkle, Shirley, Sparkle! (part 5)

In July of 1936 20th Century Fox released Poor Little Rich Girl. This was the twelfth movie eight-year-old Shirley Temple had made since Stand Up And Cheer a little over two years earlier. This movie is about when I became disappointed with Shirley Temple movies. This was because by this point Shirley Temple was no longer a real child in her movies but an adult's version of what a child should be- which seems to be a miniature adult. That's not her fault but the fault of the studio and the people around her. The song she sings with Alice Faye and Jack (The Tin Man) Haley, But Definitely, is an example of  this troubling to me trend.


But Definitely from Poor Little Rich Girl (1936)

But this movie wasn't as bad as the movies after it. I did not like Wee Willie Winkie (1937), I did not like Heidi (1937), I did not like Rebecca Of Sunnybook Farm (1938), and I especially did not like The Blue Bird (1940). Then one night I watched The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer (1947) and there she was, the Shirley Temple I loved in Little Miss Marker. In The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer Shirley played a teenager who develops a crush on an artist played by Cary Grant.



Not one false note in the whole movie.

2 comments:

Ally Bean said...

Interesting take on Shirley's career development.  I only remember her as a little kid, not this older version of her as a child.  I do remember seeing her movie with Cary Grant-- or at least pieces of it-- on TV at some point.  I didn't even realize that the teenage girl was Shirley Temple, until the credits rolled.

la peregrina said...

Same here, I didn't see the beginning credits and started watching it because Cary Grant was in it.  Then the girl showed up  and I thought  there was something familiar about her voice.   At some point she made a facial gesture that clicked in my head and I thought, "That's Shirley Temple!"   Fun movie.