The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America (24 page)

In keeping with his determination to mount a new kind of Shirley Temple picture, Zanuck chose as director the brilliant but irascible John Ford, who had recently won an Academy Award for
The Informer
. Ford’s explosive temper and antipathy to studio executives were notorious, and he loathed child actors. “I’m going to give you something to scream about,” Zanuck told him. “I’m going to put you together with Shirley Temple.”
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To mollify Ford, Zanuck promised him a large budget and another chance to work with Victor McLaglen, who had won his own Academy Award for Best Actor in
The Informer
.

Although
Wee Willie Winkie
considerably varied the Shirley Temple formula, it retained its essence. Once again, Shirley plays a half-orphan, in this case Priscilla Williams; she and her mother are forced by poverty to leave their American home in 1897 and depend on the support of a stern, forbidding grandfather, Colonel Williams (played by the six-foot-four C. Aubrey Smith), commander of a British outpost near the Afghan border in colonial India. The colonel is locked in a struggle with a rebellious Afghan tribe, led by Khoda Khan (Cesar Romero). Rather like Shirley’s characters in
The Little Colonel
and
The Littlest Rebel
, Priscilla plays the part of peacemaker as her character simultaneously wins the admiration and affection of her grandfather and the Afghan chief. Ultimately, through her simple childish innocence, she brings the warring leaders to reconciliation, thus saving untold lives.

Along the way, there are many of the familiar elements of the old formula, including Shirley’s beaming smile and stifled tears, gift for mimicry and guileless trust, and longing for acceptance and for love. There are also a cute terrier puppy that is given limited exposure so as not to upstage Shirley’s own cuteness, and an older drummer boy, earnest and unsympathetic, to provide a foil for her winning charm. Yet there are distinct departures from the formula as well. Shirley does not dance, and she sings her one song with notable simplicity (albeit with offscreen accompaniment). Most importantly, more is demanded of her as an actress.

In fact, as Shirley Temple Black described the making of
Wee Willie Winkie
, she appears unconsciously to have transposed a major theme of the movie—Priscilla’s determination to learn to be a disciplined and courageous soldier and so win the affection and respect of her crusty grandfather—to her relationship as a child actress determined to win the respect and affection of crusty John Ford. Ford demanded much from his actors and gave little praise in return. Black later described how she thawed his icy facade and won his friendship and respect, culminating in her portrayal of the scene in which she visits Victor McLaglen, as the gentle giant Sergeant MacDuff, on his deathbed. Ford, whose dark glasses and gruff manner concealed a deeply sentimental streak, elicited the full measure of her tender affection without letting her fall into mawkishness. There had been numerous lullaby scenes in her films, but here she sings “Auld Lang Syne” straightforwardly to MacDuff. Told he is improving, she believes him to be merely falling asleep as he takes his last breaths and expires.
³⁰

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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.