April 26 movie: The Little Princess. I love this movie! It's schmaltz of the highest order. Seriously, if you like corn, you have to see this. Shirley Temple is a sweet, generous little rich girl whose father goes off to the Boer War and is presumed dead. At which point the evil headmistress of Shirley's boarding school makes her wear rags and sleep in the attic and work as a servant. Plucky little Shirley spends the rest of the movie being a sweet, generous poor girl, until Queen Victoria shows up at the end and helps her find her daddy. I am so not kidding.
I read this book as a kid, and in retrospect it seems a bit masochistic the way the suffering is piled on this girl we're obviously supposed to identify with. There's something almost romance novelish about it. I haven't read any romance novels in a long time but back in the 80s it seemed like in every one the heroine had to bravely (and passively) endure a series of horrible punishments. Maybe they weren't all like that; maybe I was just bad at picking them.
(I was going to say the suffering is piled on this unfailingly cheerful girl, but then I realized that while Temple is unfailingly cheerful, I can't remember if the character in the book was.)
Anyway, back to the movie, it features dancing from Arthur Treacher, and Cesar Romero as an Indian manservant.
I think I have this one on tape. My memories of it keep getting tangled up with an Edward Gorey take on it, which does not end the same way.
Also have a couple of Temples in Lux Radio Theater. I've listened to Captain January which, sadly, has no Buddy Ebsen singing "At The Codfish Ball." (I saw that movie decades ago, and have very little memory of any of it. None of Ebsen, which shows just how long ago it had to have been.)
Today's child actors don't seem to be able to pour it on the way Shirley Temple could. The end of Little Princess where she is crying and trying to get her dad to recognize her -- that gets me every time. Another child actor who was good at plucking heartstrings was Margaret O'Brien.