The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America

by Kasson, John F.

  Reviewers praised Wee Willie Winkie as a notable departure from Shirley Temple’s usual films. Time magazine’s critic wrote, “In the most exacting role of her astonishing career, Producer Darryl Zanuck has metamorphosed her from a collection of dimples into a self-conscious, capable child actress.” Howard Barnes, a film critic for the New York Herald Tribune and one of Shirley Temple’s most thoughtful and balanced reviewers, similarly remarked, “The small star is not permitted to take refuge in cute antics in this offering. . . . She creates a solid and engaging portrait of an American youngster adjusting herself to the curious routine of an Indian army post in 1897.”31

  Nonetheless, in their reports to Motion Picture Herald on the response of moviegoers to Wee Willie Winkie, independent movie theater exhibitors divided between cheers for the movie’s innovations and chagrin over the disappointment of many Shirley Temple fans, especially children. The deeper and unmistakable question that consumed them was whether Shirley would remain box-office champion or fall into a slump—an anxiety that grew with every year. “Who said that Shirley Temple is slipping,” wrote a theater manager from a working-class district in Detroit about her performance in Wee Willie Winkie, adding enthusiastically, “They did not leave it all to Shirley . . . a swell production and a fine supporting cast.” “One of the best of the Temples,” an exhibitor from Anamosa, Iowa, declared. “Has production, story value and cast.” From Hazen, Arkansas, the manager of the Cozy Theatre exulted, “She is still the girl that will lift the mortgage.”32

  In contrast, other exhibitors grumbled over their meager returns from Wee Willie Winkie. “Lowest grosser of the Temple pictures,” lamented L. A. Irwin from Penacook, New Hampshire. “Shirley is excellent in her part,” the writer acknowledged, but “the fault lies in her part not being the sort of thing Temple fans expect of her. On its own, it’s a fine picture, but as a Shirley Temple picture, it’s a mistake and no fault of the star.” An exhibitor from Sodus in upstate New York agreed that “this is not the type of picture that appeals to most of our Shirley Temple fans,” even while observing “it pleased generally.” The manager of the Owl Theatre in Lebanon, Kansas, wailed, “For the first time a Shirley Temple picture fell flat at the box office. . . . Not even the kiddies manifested any interest in this one. . . . It is not the type of picture they like to see Shirley in, and, well, they just did not come.” “Why mix this wonderful star up with all these soldiers,” demanded an exhibitor from Bengough, Saskatchewan. “The kids come to see her as well as the grownups, and they don’t like shooting and too much of the military stuff.” “Too bad they are killing this little star with such material,” J. A. Fair of the Elite Theatre in Laurens, Iowa, wrote. An exhibitor in Westby, Wisconsin, similarly complained: “The story is not really suited to Miss Temple and [I] personally think it about the least entertaining of anything she has appeared in. At that, it is quite a show as compared to the rank and file of ordinary pictures.”33

  Zanuck might have liked to please Shirley’s critics, but he had to ensure Shirley’s hold on her fans. In subsequent movies, he placed her generally in either stories that had the prestige, if not always the substance, of childhood literary classics or else more contemporary song-and-dance situations in which she could play the plucky performer. To the extent possible, he did both at once.

  From Kipling’s “Wee Willie Winkie” he turned to Johanna Spyri’s 1881 novel Heidi. The adaptation included more melodrama and also more slapstick, more picturesque fantasy, and notably far less emphasis on religious faith. As the director, Allan Dwan, recalled, “The whole idea was to keep it light, because it can get awfully sticky if you really make those kind of stories seriously.”34 The movie brightened Heidi’s unquenchable optimism and darkened the souls of her scheming enemies: her selfish aunt Dete, who abducts her from her grandfather’s Swiss Alpine hut and takes her to Frankfurt to serve as a companion to a crippled rich girl, Klara Sesemann; and Fraulein Rottenmeir, Herr Sesemann’s housekeeper, who is transmogrified from a nervous martinet in the novel to a cruel and treacherous villain in the movie. As Herr Sesemann’s butler, Andrews, Arthur Treacher continues in the vein that he had established in previous Shirley Temple films (and others of the period, such as Thank You, Jeeves), repeatedly exclaiming, “My word,” just as he had in Curly Top.

  Heidi gave Shirley Temple fans more of her dancing (a pleasure denied them in Wee Willie Winkie), although instead of the tap-dancing that had been her staple ever since her “Baby Take a Bow” number in Stand Up and Cheer!, it placed her in a sugar-plum fantasy. As her grandfather reads the sleepy Heidi a storybook, the camera dissolves through the page to a production number, “In My Little Wooden Shoes,” that is thickly coated with cuteness. Shirley accentuates her own childish appearance in a folkloric Dutch song and dance, lisping shamelessly as she sings of taking “a twip wherever we choose.” Then, as the scene shifts to an eighteenth-century court ball, she dances a minuet looking like a porcelain doll.

  Heidi might be seen as a charming Old World fairy tale, but it nonetheless resonated powerfully with the fears and fantasies of Depression America. Both the Alpine pastoral simplicity and the luxuries of Herr Sesemann’s household expressed longings prominent in the 1930s. In addition, the story of how Shirley’s Heidi taught lame Klara Sesemann the courage to rise from her wheelchair and gradually to walk again (a recovery significantly different from that in the original novel) carried special meanings for a nation whose own president, they believed, had, through indomitable courage, overcome paralysis.

  When Heidi was released in October 1937, the New York Herald Tribune’s Howard Barnes observed, “It is no secret by now that Shirley Temple is being guided into and through a difficult transition period in her acting career. The tiny star is no longer a precocious infant with an extraordinary gift for snatches of make-believe, but a youngster rapidly approaching the conventional limits of child star popularity.” Striving to be fair, Barnes delivered an ambiguous verdict. Her acting, he noted, “still lacks emotional power, but the Heidi she creates is more Heidi and less Shirley Temple than one might have expected.”35

  Most local exhibitors agreed, many calling Heidi Shirley’s best picture in some time. A representative comment came from the Green Lantern Theatre in Claymont, Delaware: “This has been reported as her best to date, and I agree with this estimate of the picture. It has the elements that make pictures good—well acted, some comedy, action. What more can be asked for?” From the opposite side of the country in McMinnville, Oregon, came an echoing cheer. “Splendid,” wrote the manager of the Lark Theatre. “Just what the cash customer want[s]. Real entertainment for old and young. A story that touches the heart and one that makes the exhibitor feel glad to show.”36

  Following Heidi, Zanuck plucked another children’s classic off the shelf: Kate Douglas Wiggin’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), a much lighter, more humorous story of a winning bright-eyed girl’s adventures with her spinster aunts, schoolmates, teachers, and a rich male benefactor, set in a Maine village in the late nineteenth century. From Zanuck’s first story conferences, it is clear that he and his scriptwriters intended to strip the original novel of all but its cover and to turn it into a vehicle for the kinds of songs and dances that had made Shirley famous. Criticizing an early story outline, Zanuck said, “In order to be a musical, this has got to be funny.” They planned to have Shirley play her usual role of trouper and Cupid, but precisely how she would do so developed more slowly. “She is now in no real jeopardy,” Zanuck observed in another story conference, “and we need an exciting element to give us suspense and the feeling that Shirley is in danger.” Zanuck and his team laced the story with the principal ingredient of so many Shirley Temple films: the competition among potential guardians to protect (or exploit) a priceless radio child star. Ultimately, Shirley’s crass stepfather is foiled and her deserving aunt and grown-up cousin are each united with the man of her dreams. For good measure, Shirley brings together still a third pair of
lovers—a record score in a Temple picture.37

  In much of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, the line between Rebecca’s character and Shirley Temple’s own career is intentionally blurred. Rebecca is portrayed as coolly professional, as much at ease in a radio studio as on a swing, as, according to countless testimonies, Shirley was in the film studio. In addition, Shirley had previously played a similar role of a radio child star (“America’s Sweetheart of the Air”), with business rivals and potential guardians vying for her in Poor Little Rich Girl. Indeed, the distinction between Rebecca and Shirley’s other roles drops when, as part of a supposed radio debut, Shirley sings a medley of her hit songs from previous films especially to her fans, “On the Good Ship Lollipop”, “Animal Crackers in My Soup,” “When I’m with You,” “Oh My Goodness,” and “Goodnight, My Love.” The plot of the film as a whole implicitly defended Shirley Temple, her family, and the terms of her career (including the contract with Twentieth Century–Fox) from any charges of exploitation.

  To preserve the full flavor of the Shirley Temple formula in Rebecca, Zanuck cast the roles as from a Temple stock company. Helen Westley, a veteran stage and movie actress who had appeared variously in warm-hearted, selfish, and malevolent guises in Dimples, Stowaway, and Heidi, played Aunt Miranda. Slim Summerville, Gloria Stuart, and Jack Haley had each appeared in an earlier Shirley Temple movie, and Franklin Pangborn, a newcomer to a Temple picture, would return in her next. For the leading male role, Zanuck again chose a tall, strapping hero, Randolph Scott, newly free from his contract with Paramount. Already a veteran of many movie westerns, Scott would again play opposite Shirley Temple the next year in Susannah of the Mounties.

  Finally, the enormously popular Bill “Bojangles” Robinson made his third appearance with Shirley as Aunt Miranda’s farm hand Aloysius. Wearing a straw hat and overalls, he waits good-naturedly through the action for his big dance number, “The March of the Wooden Soldiers,” which, like a similar number in Poor Little Rich Girl, concludes the film. The dance might, with greater dramatic relevance, have appeared in several other Shirley Temple movies, for here the number is presumably unseen by its ostensible radio audience. But no matter, for, unlike John Ford’s Wee Willie Winkie, which aimed for dramatic coherence, Rebecca was intended to provide an engaging story that could support songs, dances, and pratfalls wherever they might be most entertaining.

  Yet one small variation in the formula signaled the growing division between Gertrude Temple and Darryl Zanuck. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm began and ended with Shirley wearing her iconic fifty-six curls, but when she went to stay with her aunt, Miranda immediately combed out her curls and tied her hair in two ribbons, one behind each ear. It was a concession to Gertrude Temple, who itched to change Shirley’s screen persona in more major ways. “I’d like to see Shirley, just once anyway, in a role which was a complete reversal of things she had done before,” Mrs. Temple told a reporter. “Let her get down and play in the mud—let her be human.”38

  Despite Gertrude Temple’s qualms, this time the formula worked. Zanuck’s radically transformed Shirley Temple version of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm pleased virtually all who consumed it, despite the misleading label of the Wiggin novel. “Why they name it ‘Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm’ is one of those mysteries,” Variety mused. “More fitting title would be ‘Rebecca of Radio City.’ ” Frank Nugent of the New York Times, an early detractor of the Shirley Temple formula, marveled at her achievement, albeit somewhat ironically. Observing that the original character of Rebecca scarcely existed in Zanuck’s version, he acknowledged that this radical departure was beside the point: “We had ceased to think of her as Rebecca, at all. She was just Shirley to us, and so far as we are concerned, Sunnybrook Farm could go peddle its produce.” Waving aside the blithe disregard for Wiggin’s treasured story, he declared, “Any actress who can dominate a Zanuck musical . . . with Jack Haley, Gloria Stuart, Phyllis Brooks, Helen Westley, Slim Summerville, Bill Robinson, et cetera, can dominate the world. We go even further: we venture to predict for Miss Temple a great future, and that includes singing, dancing, straight dramatic acting, or all three combined, if her fancy runs that way.”39

  Motion Picture Daily similarly applauded the movie as, above all, a vehicle for Shirley Temple’s extraordinary talent: “Singing, dancing, mimicking, exercising her magic personality . . . she is the Shirley of old.” The trade journal noted the enthusiasm of the preview audience. “Rattling in applause continuously and erupting into a roar at the conclusion, [it] gave emphatic evidence that Shirley’s ‘Rebecca’ should take rank with the most successful in which she has been starred.”40

  Motion Picture Herald’s William R. Weaver, perhaps attending the same preview, fervently joined in the applause for Shirley. Unlike earlier versions of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, “tenderly sentimental works aimed at the cardiac and lachrymal reflexes,” the Temple version “pointed at eye, ear and, in a sense, intellect. Rhythm and its uses, humor unrooted in precocity and, most of all, sheer professional ability to perform entertainingly, comprise the stuff with which this expert young lady demonstrates that she doesn’t need curls, tears and Jean Hersholt [her grandfather in Heidi]—or anybody else—to put her over.” Weaver confidently—and accurately—predicted that this box-office champion of 1935, 1936, and 1937 would win the title again in 1938. Far less accurately, he added, “There isn’t the slightest reason for thinking she’ll drop out of that top spot in the next ten or fifteen years.”41

  Despite such enthusiasm, Time magazine’s critic refused to buy the Temple formula. He especially balked at her glib dismissal of the importance of money in the Samuel Pokrass and Jack Yellen song “Come and Get Your Happiness.” When Shirley sang to her radio listeners, “with well-rehearsed and gleefully interpolated chuckles,” of the riches pouring down on those in ragged trousers on which they paid no income tax, “they will see that this Rebecca is a $2,400-a-week Hollywood specialist with no mortgage to pay off” or any of the other obstacles that the original Rebecca faced in Wiggin’s novel—and that millions still faced in the Great Depression.42 It was a rude reminder to Twentieth Century–Fox that for the vast majority of Americans, unlike the Temple family, a high income tax bracket was not the most pressing problem.

  Zanuck dispensed with even the pretext of a juvenile classic in Shirley’s next two movies, dropping her squarely into Depression New York and contriving ways for her to put on a show. The first of these, Little Miss Broadway, threw in all of the most familiar Temple elements: girls in an orphanage, vaudeville veterans, a lovable uncle, a rich, imperious dowager, and a young romantic couple. The movie ends with Shirley and friends putting on a triumphant variety show and then leading her new mother and father to get a marriage license. Cupid has done her work once again. As the couple kiss, she exclaims what had become her signature line, “Oh my goodness!”

  Although in one scene Shirley’s character blows out seven candles on her birthday cake, she was in fact ten, and her cuteness could not last indefinitely. The opening scenes in the orphanage posed special perils: possible invidious comparisons between Shirley and the other girls. The talented and attractive jazz trio the Three Brian Sisters, with whom Shirley sang the perky song “Be Optimistic,” presented the greatest risk. The eldest of the three, Betty, was five years older than Shirley, Doris only two years older, and Gwen exactly Shirley’s age, although Shirley was shortest. Pitch-perfect and adept at close harmonies, they exposed the limitations of Shirley’s pleasant but unremarkable voice. Ultimately, in the trio with Shirley, Betty wore glasses to make her appear studious, and Gwen was eliminated entirely. The sisters later attributed these decisions to Gertrude Temple’s vigilant protection of her daughter against potential rivals. Yet even in early story conferences, Zanuck himself had warned against “writing too cute lines for the other children.”43

  Little Miss Broadway pleased those who liked their Shirley Temple straight up. As William Weaver wrote in Motion Picture Herald, “If D
arryl Zanuck had set out to produce for the young lady’s grandchildren one film which they could regard in reverent awe as the ‘typical Shirley Temple picture’ this would be it.” The story, he observed, was a quintessential Temple vehicle: “She is a cheerful, tearful tot in an orphanage. She is the precocious idol of a theatrical boarding house. She is persecuted by a rich old spinster in black alpaca. She cajoles a judge on the bench and she fixes things for a romantic couple. And she sings a lot and dances a lot and spends all her screen time being just Shirley Temple.”44

  Yet was “just being Shirley Temple” still enough? A number of the local movie theater exhibitors who wrote to Motion Picture Herald did not think so. A faithful contributor, A. E. Hancock of the Columbia Theatre in Columbia City, Indiana, declared, “I’ll tell Fox and the whole world that they will have to come better than this one to keep Shirley on top. The scenario is trite and has not a new idea in it. All had been done before, the little orphan, the cruel aunt who breaks down finally under the winsome Shirley. . . . Too bad,” he concluded. “She has been a wonder but she is growing up.”45

  L. A. Irwin of the Palace Theatre in Penacook, New Hampshire, still believed in Shirley’s talent but lamented the fare that Twentieth Century–Fox was giving her: “There sure is a gosh awful lot of orphans to scribble about. If Shirley does a story about each and every one of them, folks sure will get mighty sick of this type of story and most of our patrons are feeling that way about this routine plot already.”46