Cable channel AMC is having a Shirley Temple movie festival all day. I’ve tuned in from time time to time and you know what?
They are uniformly bad, bad, bad.
Heh. My husband’s been landing on there during the channel hopping. I keep hearing odd bits of stilted (to modern ears) dialogue. He must be very familiar with her movies, because he’d commented that during “Heidi”, Shirley’s character refers to “the” grandfather instead of “my” grandfather. He called out to me to listen, for some reason, when it came up. Anyway, I wasn’t watching, just heard it in the background throughout the afternoon. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than five minutes of a Shirley Temple movie.
You know what surprised the heck out of me? Finding out she’s still alive .
I was surprised when reading an obituary of Abe “The Hebrew Hercules” Coleman (who died at 101 last week) that Shirley had a brother, George (1919-1997), who was a professional wrestler (for some years and of some regional renown it would seem from other research).
I have a photograph of my mother from 1937 when she was two years old and my grandmother had very obviously taken her to the beautician and told them to “Shirley her up”. I read somewhere that she’s also the actress who has the most kids named after her- on imdb it says Shirleys Jones and MacLaine were named for her and I’ve known at least one Shirley the same age who was.
Out of curiosity, did Shirley keep her money or did she get "Coogan"ed by her parents?
Some of them are cheesy, but first off, her personality shines through the cheese. Second, Wee Willie Winkle, despite the cringey title, is a John Ford film, and transcends the genre. Third, she was the top box office star of the 1930s, the golden age of American movies. A bigger star than Clark Gable. So there was something there to appeal to millions of Americans.
I looked it up out of curiosity: she wasn’t left as destitute as Coogan or Baby Peggy or some others, but her parents definitely weren’t good (or principled) managers. When she turned 18 she learned that of the $3.2 million she earned as a child (and that during the Depression so we’re talking a VAST fortune today) she had a trust fund of $44,000 and the deed to a cottage worth $45,000. Her parents were worth much more from the money they’d basically embezzled and she could have sued them but she chose not to. Cite if interested (others as well).
Of course $89,000 was not an insignificant amount in the late 1940s- probably equivalent easily to $1 million or so today- but when you think what type of real estate opportunities were available during the Depression to people with $3 million- she could have had Oprah money.
From that same article (which in turn came from her autobio):
I grew up with Shirley Temple (she is 6 years younger) so as far as her personality goes you ar preaching to the choir. That’s why I said that I feel the passage of time. By 30’s standards they were not bad movies, but things change and I couldm’t sit through them now.
I remember having the same reaction when I saw The Public Enemy one of Jimmy Cagney’s notable films. By todays production standards is was as primitive as a high school play. In this film the dialog and story are far superior to the Temple pieces of fluff, but it looked and sounded quite stagy.
I don’t have any problem looking past the production standards and special effects of earlier movies, I think that’s just having an historic sense. Amusingly, I find the 1930s KING KONG to be far, far superior to the Peter Jackson remake, despite the see-through special effects. Kong himself has more personality and is more “human” in the earlier version.
And some plots and dialogs, I can see past and forgive as well. They were churning out movies at an incredible rate in those days, remember, and audiences didn’t see as much as they do today (what with TV and cable and DVDs and so forth.) We’ve built up a vocabulary, so that some earlier movies seem trite now even though they were ground-breaking (or, at least, original) back then. I guess Shakespeare has the same problem: he’s always writing in cliches.
Possibly part of the overacting and other artificiality of early talkies (there’s a word you don’t hear much any more) might be a hangover from silents. The only way to get emotions across in silents was through gestures.
And the Temple movies were still pretty bad on the whole. I suspect that they figured as long as they had Shirley Temple, and a Bill Robinson or Buddy Ebson with a little song, a little dance, a little selzer down the pants, it would sell. And they were right.
“The grandfather” is a literal translation from the novel by Johanna Spyri. She was Swiss and wrote in German. “The” followed by a name is a German endearment. “The grandfather” is actually an affectionate term.
I know, it’s odd. When I was first introduced to the family of my German fiance (now husband), I was disconcerted to hear them refer to me as “die Sonia.” I interpreted it to mean something cold, on the order of calling me “that woman.” My fiance had to reassure me that the word “the/die” was actually affectionate. A German speaker who likes you might refer to you as “die Savannah.”
I bought “The Little Princess” for $3 one day as a lark. Put it in for my seven year old daughter and she LOVED it - ate it up. Black and white, cheesy dialog and all. So, I think they hold up quite well - it isn’t any cheesier in its acting than “Cody Banks 2: Destination London” - just far less in the way of special effects.
Yeah. That’s about the right age group. 
My five year old was riveted. It helped that ST was wearing the same patterned dress (different cut though! :eek: ) that Sophie wore to church that morning.
One thing we youngsters have to remember is that in those days movies filled a lot of roles that would later be taken by television. Newsreels, serials, and so forth of course, but also a lot of second-rate stuff churned out as fast as possible. Instead of turning on the TV and watching a second-rate sitcom people would go to the movie theatre and watch a second-rate movie.
I don’t think that’s the problem. Few silent stars had successful careers in the talkies. Most '30s stars came from the stage, or were movie studio finds. In any case, speech and diction classes were regular parts of the studio regimine. If anything, '30s acting styles show stage mannerisms, not silent acting.
Didn’t they (the studios) insist on a certain accents and speech patterns? That may have added to the stilted dialogue.
I’ve never been a fan of Shirley Temple films, but I respect her a great deal. She was lauded as being very professional by many adult film stars and directors (read that somewhere, god knows where). She seems to have always been a nice, caring person-not an easy thing in Hollywood or life, really. Kudos to her-and that sucks about her parents (how terrible).
My MIL’s name is Shirley and she had red hair. She still curls her hair (although not in that style, thank god). My own mother had straight thick black hair-she hated being Shirleyed and disliked the movie star because of it!
I get the same experience watching Marx Brothers movies. The brothers themselves were geniuses. But when was the last time you actually sat down and watched one of their movies? The actors making Police Academy 12 had better material to work with.
Now that you mention it, The Public Enemythat I mentioned above resembled nothing so much as a filmed stage play. There were outdoor scenes with cars and the like but a lot of it, as I recall, was actors talking to each other indoors.
Of course all of the actors in the films weren’t stars and I suppose a lot of supporting cast was from silents. And a lot of them came from vaudeville. I remember a funny film, whose name I can’t remember, withBilly Gilbert and Shemp Howard, both from vaudeville, about two vaudville performers trying to make it in radio. It consisted mostly of them doing vaudeville routines with a little story thrown in to connect it together
I remember seeing a Katharine Hepburn interview during the 90s when the interviewer was expressing “You have always been so discipline and devoted to your craft” and she cut him off with “Oh craft my foot… Shirley Temple was doing it perfectly well at three.” (Furthermore Shirley probably showed a lot more versatility in her pre-teen movies than La Hepburn showed in 70 years, which is to say that Shirley didn’t make a career of playing Katharine Hepburn.)