Greetings,
I am posting this on April 23rd, the day our beloved Shirley would have turned 86-years-old. In honor of that, I have chosen today to discuss what is my all-time favorite of her movies, Poor Little Rich Girl. Oh, friends, it is just glorious. There's so much singing and dancing and funny. Also, car accidents and kidnappings, sort of, and creepy creeper dudes and a ton of things that you could get away with in the 1930's that you SO could not get away with today. More on that later. I'd say that this review will have the most spoilers this week, probably because there is so much I want to talk about, what with this being my favorite. Hope you don't mind.
In Poor Little Rich Girl, Shirley plays a poor, little, rich girl named Barbara Barry. She is the daughter of a wealthy soap manufacturer played by Michael Whalen and no one else. Get it? Because she's Shirley Temple and she's not allowed to have two parents in a movie. Anyway, Mr. Barry begins to worry about her and the fact that she's alone too much with no friends. But wait, sir, she does have friends: her dolls. Say, do you remember when I mentioned that this film had some things that you could get away with in the 1930's that you couldn't today? Well, let me introduce you to the "Oh My Goodness" song. Whoa, boy!
Okay, so in the beginning of the movie, Barbara is confined to her room because her nanny thinks she's getting sick. She feels lonely so she starts to sing to her dolls. So far, so cute. Then, we get some instrumental music and the dolls start to dance on their own. Alright, she has an active imagination. Also, I'd say those were good special effects for the time. And THEN, she re-sings the song to each of the dolls, individually. Oh, did I mention that these are dolls of the world, each one a different nationality, featuring one Dutch, one Russian, one Japanese and one African-American? And as she sings she takes on their accents and, let's say, personas...in the 1930's. Um...yeah. Look, I can't even get into this and do it justice. It's a thing you need to see for yourself. It also may be the reason why I can't find this thing on DVD. Maybe. Moving on.
Anywho, since she has no friends and no mother and he works a lot, Mr. Barry decides to send her off to boarding school, as you do when you're rich. Of course, this is not before she sings a little song she made up for him, which also has a couple of creepy lyrics, though I'm sure the intention was for them to be cute. Again, go hear it for yourself. So Barbara goes off to the train station with her nanny, Collins, to send her to school. Whilst they are waiting with their luggage, Collins realizes that she misplaced her purse somewhere outside, so she leaves Barbara alone and then gets hit by a car. Wow! First, what happened in Bright Eyes and now this? Shirley Temple sure is dangerous to be around.
It doesn't matter, though, because, after a quick conversation with one of the train station employees that also might cause you to cringe a little, she just wanders off into the crowd. Why? Because she's, like, 8-years-old and she loves lollipops and everyone in the world is a good person who is pure of heart. No, not even in the 30's. So she runs into an Italian organ grinder named Tony. He has a monkey, a wife and about 87 children. They take her in after she tells them that her name is Betsy Wear, an orphan who ran away because they treated her badly. She's basically pretending to be a character she read about it a book. Hey, why not? That night, we get a glimpse of this guy who we saw earlier at the train station WATCHING HER THROUGH THE WINDOW AS SHE SLEEPS! What in the actual heck? Some people say that he knew whose daughter she was and was going to go all extortionist on us. My mind goes to a more sinister place, as it tends to do. But who knows?
Anyway, the next day she dances for all the kids and Tony as he plays his organ grinding thing, whilst above live a former Vaudeville couple, Jimmy and Jerry Dolan, played by the amazing Jack Haley and Alice Faye. Man, these people are fantastic in this movie. Jimmy's working on some new tap dancing moves, and he hears someone downstairs matching him, step for step. And it's Betsy, formerly Barbara. She feeds the Dolans her sob story and they decide to take her and make her part of their act, so that they can make a comeback. Wait, what? That easy, huh? Just find a kid, take a kid, I guess.
So they rename her Bonnie, say she's their kid and put her in the act. So, to recap, she has, in about ten minutes, gone from being Barbara Berry to Betsy Wear to Bonnie Dolan. This is getting harder to follow than Face/Off. Anyway, they go on an audition for a radio spot where they sing the song "But Definitely". Now Shirley does get her part, and she's so cute. But the part where Alice Faye performs is incredible. Besides the fact that her voice is gorgeous, they shot her in a way that made her look so unbelievably beautiful. The whole thing is breathtaking.
Now whilst we follow Shirley's character, there are also other things going on. Her father, Mr. Barry, starts getting flirty with a woman he met at the start of the film named Margaret played by Gloria Stuart. You youngsters will know her as older Rose from Titanic. The problem is, though, she works for Barry's biggest competitor, the Peck's Soap Company. Oh, no! And here's the thing with these two companies. Mr. Barry is all about using the radio to do advertising through hour long entertainment shows and whatnot. Mr. Peck, on the other hand, who is played brilliantly by Claude Gillingwater, is very much against radio, though his employees are trying desperately to talk him into it. In fact, the radio show that the Dolan's were auditioning for was for the Peck's Soap Company. What a twist! And after Barbara/Betsy/Bonnie melts his heart, Peck decides to go ahead with the radio show.
At this point, we get some great musical numbers and a boat load of moments where Mr. Barry almost finds out where his daughter actually is. It's not until a night when he and Margaret are having a date and listening to the show that he realizes what's been going on. Craziness ensues after this, but not to worry. Everyone is punished according to their crimes, sort of. Okay, creepy creeper dude is punished. Everybody else becomes friends with everybody and we get a nice big musical number at the end. Good times.
And that is my most favorite movie from Shirley Temple, Poor Little Rich Girl. I know I made some jokes about some of the things that go down in this film, and I stand by what I said about some of those things being a little off, but I still love it for some reason. It's got so much good music and the dancing is phenomenal. Seriously, the last number they perform has this part where there is no music, just tapping, and it's mesmerizing. Also, we get a song about spinach. What else, as an audience, do we need.
Love and full moons,
Becky the Writer
