BRIGHT EYES (1934)

I don't quite know how I got to be 40-something without ever having seen a Shirley Temple movie. Strictly speaking, that's not quite true since I've seen two moviesfrom the mid-1940's in which she played supporting roles (SINCE YOU WENT AWAY and I'LL BE SEEING YOU), but I had never seen any of her child star movies of the 30's until now. This, featuring one of her first starring roles, is famous for her rendition of her signature song, "On the Good Ship Lollipop," and who knew that the ship in question was actually not a boat, but an airplane? Temple is the daughter of Lois Wilson, maid to the wealthy, snooty Smythe family. Temple's father was a pilot who died in a "crack-up" some years ago and the little girl has become something of a mascot to the local pilots ever since; she especially idolizes James Dunn, who treats Temple like a daughter. The Smythes don't like the pilots hanging around the house and decide, after Christmas, to fire Wilson. However, on Christmas day, Wilson is hit and killed in a car accident. The family agrees to keep Temple briefly, but plan on shipping her out to an orphanage as soon as possible. Dunn wants to adopt her, but so does Uncle Ned (Charles Sellon), a grumpy old man who is tolerated by the Smythes only because they stand to inherit a bundle from him, and who is happy only in the presence of Temple (and who insists on puncturing the family's pretensions by pronouncing their last name "Smith"). Entering this custody battle is Judith Allen, a visiting socialite who had been engaged at one time to Dunn; gee, if only she and Dunn could patch things up and make a traditional family for Temple! There is virtually no suspense as to the outcome, so a scene in which Temple stows away on Dunn's plane during a terrible storm is thrown in to give some tension to the last half of the film. It's not a bad movie--Temple is good and not nearly as syrupy as I had been led to expect. She has a fine antagonist in Jane Withers, playing the bratty daughter of the Smythes, who steals most of the scenes she's in. Dunn, best known as the alcoholic father in A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, is also fine, and Jane Darwell has a small role as the family cook. The "Lollipop" number is a bit strange, occurring as it does in a passenger plane with a dozen or so butch pilots crooning along. I was rather hoping that Temple would wind up living with the hunky single pilots at the airport, though I suppose that unorthodox family situation would have been way too subversive for the time. [FMC]