BABY TAKE A A BOW!

Shirley Temple’s starring “debut” is pretty good, but it’s in the same bag as Elvis’ first movie. BOTH ELVIS AND SHIRLEY were the names above the titles in their first starring movies, but neither has much more than a bit part in either film.

Elvis has little to do other than warble Love Me Tender and a few other extremely moderate rockabilly tunes and one cool gospel (“We’re Gonna Move!”) and is a ghost for the second half of the film.

Shirley basically just runs around and mouths a few lines and looks cute and pouts while James Dunn and Thelma what’s-her-name do all the work and are in most of the scenes. It’s basically a ‘30s crime drama, w/Shirley thrown in almost as an afterthought.

Plot has James Dunn as an ex-con who has made good after his stretch at Sing Sing. He’s married his long-time sweetheart and they now have a beautiful daughter, Shirley Temple. Trouble is Dunn’s a chauffer for a rich guy whose wife’s pearl’s get robbed and a hostile, frumpy, pompous, colicky old insurance investigator with extremely bad breath wants to pin the crime on him. Dunn and Shirley sing and hoof their way through a few uplifiting songs, but basically this is a pretty straight and somewhat grim depression-era crime film about the difficulties of going straight after paying your debt to society. It’s definitely not Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm!

None the less, it’s a wonderful film, though it lacks the Shirley Temple formula/trademark scenes of all of her subsequent pictures (no speech by Shirley to her downtrodden mom; adopted mom; father; stepfather; benefactor; grandmother; grandfather; etc. about how she/he should put a smile on ‘cuz things are gonna get better!).

Baby also contains some pretty disturbing scenes with the bad ex-con “Shooter” abducting Temple and using her as a human shield while the cops are shooting at him—not exactly a trip on the good ship, Lollipop. Very fast-paced socially-conscious drama which probably doesn’t deliver to later generation Shirley Temple fans, but everybody has to start somewhere.