(75 mins.) Released 1935-07-26
Director: Irving Cummings
Stars: Shirley Temple, John Boles, Rochelle Hudson, Jane Darwell
family, musical, romance
originally posted 27 Oct 2017 22:39
As a musical, meh. ST dances alone atop a piano, not great. Most famous song: Animal Crackers in My Soup, and she's just walking up and down the aisle of the drab orphanage mess hall. Both Boles and Hudson have solos too.
But as a fantasy (I want to be adopted by the nice, rich, handsome man), or as history lesson (why would audiences crave more of this little actress? Orphanages, what are they?), EXCELLENT. Really pulls at heart strings. The scene where she charms the butler is sublime. (This is the 1st of 4 films with Treacher; later they dance together.)
Our millionaire in this film goes in for reproductions. Among the paintings he re-imagines as Curly is Gainsborough's The Blue Boy (c. 1770), which Henry Huntington purchased in 1922, and resides, on display, in the Huntington Library to this day (will undergo restoration in 2018). I did appreciate that he chose the boy's portrait, rather than its companion, Lawrence's Pinkie (1794, also at the Huntington, facing BB, displayed together since the late 20's), who is a girl.
For the history lesson:
The rating is for the 1st 42 minutes. The rest is fine, but extraneous to my reasons for liking this.
Fox Film Corp, dir. Cummings; 7
