Shirley Temple
Collection (Passport)
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: D Main Content: C
The Little Princess (1939): B-
Shirley Temple has lost her luster as a star. Between the adult political Shirley Temple
Black, time, a lack of syndication of the star’s work, the improvement in child
actors when they are not given stupid precocious roles, and the politically
incorrectness of some of the work produced, Shirley Temple has not seen any
significant revival since the 1970s.
After watching Passport’s Shirley Temple Collection, some of that
makes sense.
You can now see more than ever what a distraction she
actually was during the Depression Years, but probably more disturbing and
under-examined is the issue of the commodification of children her success
represented. Immediately, especially in
a short where in an all-kids world, she is a 4-year-old hooker in Washington,
all one can think about is Jon Benet Ramsey’s murder. Outside of that, it is still outrageous and was never truly
funny. It reminds us of how disposable
children have been in most societies and after a peak of concern and care; this
seems to have been sliding very backwards since the 1980s.
The first three DVDs offer live action shorts where she
first received attention and are as follows:
DVD 1:
1) Glad
Rags To Riches
2) War
Babies
3) Pie
Covered Wagon
4) Dora’s
Dunking Donuts
DVD 2:
5) Polly
Tix In Washington (the hooker short)
6) Kid In
Hollywood
7) Kid In
Africa
8) Managed
Money
DVD 3:
9) Pardon
My Pups
10) Merrily Yours
11) What’s To Do?
The earliest shorts are like very bad Our Gang/Little
Rascals knock-offs dubbed Baby Burlesk/The Baby Stars that Fox Films
were making before their merger with 20th Century Pictures, a deal
that retained Temple and saw her journey into womanhood and full-length
features, like The Little Princess.
That 1939 consolation project for Fox not loaning her out to do The
Wizard Of Oz the same year, still holds up well, though the print and sound
here is not exemplary of how good the production was in its time. It is the only thing on DVD 4.
DVD 5 ends the set with Shirley Temple: Rarities,
which offers a good career retrospective of her life and how she left show
business for good to have a life and entered politics. Kid Stuff: Inside Hollywood’s Child Stars
has appeared on other Passport sets and is re-included here for obvious
reasons. These are curios and have a
few moments of note, but are at this point in time not for children and there
is some argument that some of them never really were. The Shirley Temple Collection is for older fans only.
- Nicholas Sheffo
