Starring Shirley Temple, Charlotte Greenwood, Jack Oakie, and George Montgomery
Directed by Allan Dwan
Music by Harry Warren; Lyrics by Mack Gordon
We celebrate Mother's Day and unconventional families with Shirley Temple's last movie as a child star. By this point, she was 12, and just starting to outgrow melodramatic stories like this one. When her previous fantasy movie The Blue Bird was a flop, Fox tossed her back into something closer to the movies she'd been making since 1935. Were they right to do this, or should this be shunned? Let's begin onstage with Joe (Oakie) and Kit (Greenwood) Ballantine as they receive a certain basket from a mysterious older woman (Mary Gordon) and find out...
The Story: The basket contains not birds, but the infant daughter of their dear friend Barney O'Hara. He was about to pass on and wanted his daughter to be well cared-for. Kit and Joe not only take little Wendy (Temple) in, they keep the New England farm O'Hara left them, too.
When Wendy turns 12, they move to the farm in the hope of starting a new life away from the stage. Though they try to be friendly, most of the townspeople consider them to be too brash and loud and shun them. It doesn't help when they align with the town's newspaper editor Mike Shea (Montgomery) against snooty Hester Appleby (Kathleen Howard) and her pretty niece Judith (Arleen Whelan) on the idea of progress. After Wendy's simple class dance offends the parents, they're ready to leave town but are prevented by a hurricane. It takes an act of selflessness from the trio to prove to the town that there's nothing wrong with being different, and maybe progress isn't such a bad thing.
The Song and Dance: Though the focus is on Temple, Oakie and Greenwood are the ones who really steal the show as the seasoned troopers who want to give a better life to a child that has come to mean so much to them. Oakie in particular has some very funny moments when he's clashing with the townspeople in the second half. Temple also does her best onstage in numbers with her onscreen parents and the hilarious song and dance at the school that got the parents so upset.
The Numbers: We open onstage at a vaudeville house, as faux southerners Kit and Joe sing about "The Mason-Dixon Line." We see Wendy grow up in sequences from two previous Temple films with Joe singing and Kit clowning, "On the Beach at Waikiki" from Curly Top and the title song of "Baby Take a Bow" with her in the infamous polka-dot dress. (The latter lets Greenwood parody Temple in her own short dress and babyish voice!) "Fifth Avenue" is the top hat-and-cane routine that introduces the 12-year-old Wendy. They sing it again later when getting ready to leave after being shunned.
"I Wouldn't Take a Million," says Joe when he and his two favorite ladies are driving home from the town meeting. The children sing the gentle hymn "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton" at school, but it's too quiet for Joe and the young men. Wendy and the children, dressed as adults, insist that they're "Young People" and deserve to be treated more like grown-ups. Their assertiveness is shocking enough, but then they start tap dancing! Wendy reprises "I Wouldn't Take a Million" to explain how much she loves her parents, even if they aren't her birth parents. The film ends with the trio singing "Tra La La" to celebrate their staying at Stonefield.
What I Don't Like: On one hand, Oakie and Greenwood's genial presence (and the fact that no one tries to take Temple away from them) keeps this a bit lighter than some of her other melodramas. It still hits a lot of the cliches, though, from the well-meaning old grouches who don't know how to have fun to the superfluous young lovers who are there for Temple to play matchmaker. Neither Montgomery nor Whelan are terribly memorable in underwritten roles. The songs are also far from the best to appear in her movies. "I Wouldn't Take a Million" is sweet, but "Fifth Avenue" sounds like a parody of "Lullaby of Broadway," and "Tra La La" is a generic cheer-up ditty.
The Big Finale: Temple's final movie from her child star days isn't her best, but it's worth checking out with your kids this Mother's Day weekend if they or you are a fan of her films.
Home Media: Easily found on DVD and streaming.
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