SHIRLEY TEMPLE

Shirley Temple's new picture is dedicated to the simple things of life, with special reference to the power of the hello-neighbor smile in conquering the ills of humanity. So shameless is it in its optimism, so grimly determined to be cheerful, that it ought to cause an epidemic of axe murders and grandmother beatings in this sober vicinity. Shirley herself, far from showing signs of deterioration or overwork in "Curly Top," actually hints in her work at an increased maturity of technique. Her remarkable sense of timing has never been revealed more plainly than in the song and dance scenes in her new film, and she plays her straightforward dramatic scenes with the assurance and precision of a veteran actress. With all this, she has lost none of her native freshness and charm.

When Shirley is singing her "Animal Crackers" song or climaxing her sober impersonation of an old lady by breaking into an "Off to Buffalo" routine, "Curly Top" is completely bearable. It may be that the bald mediocrity of the photoplay as a whole is a shrewd bit of showmanship on Shirley's behalf. Perhaps there is a designed suspense during Shirley's absences from the screen, when John Boles, announcing that he wants to be loved just for himself, participates in cow-eyed romantic interludes with Miss Rochelle Hudson. It is a tenable theory because the little girl's reappearance after one of these exchanges becomes a joyous and triumphant occasion.

"Curly Top" has all that studious devotion to the banal which assures it of an enthusiastic reception with the family trade. Mr. Boles, when he is not singing his theme song, "The Simple Things in Life Are Around You Everywhere," is pretending that the feel of baby arms around his neck is worth more to him than all his millions. He therefore adopts Shirley and her big sister, Miss Hudson, from the orphanage, and soon his cheerless palazzo on Long Island has been transformed into a sunshine club. Except for Mistress Temple herself, the high moments in "Curly Top" arise out of Arthur Treacher's performance as the family butler. You may remember Mr. Treacher as the solemn English nobleman who was so funny in "No More Ladies."

Shirley Temple, the mighty moppet, continues to be the Sandow of the Cinema by pirouetting gracefully at the Radio City Music Hall under the weight of a formless and generally ridiculous script. As a picture, "The Poor Little Rich Girl" is virtually non-existent; as a display window for the ever-expanding Temple talents, it is entirely satisfying. Miss Temple, as some one has said, never looked lovelier. She dances in a manner which must delight her mentor, Bill Robinson; her voice has begun to take on torch-singer and crooner qualities. Beneath the fascinated gaze of a world-wide audience, a conscious artistry is developing—along Hollywood and Broadway lines. It is an engrossing phenomenon: The precocious infant becomes a knowing child.

Other than as an exercise in Templana, we are left virtually without words to discuss the new film. We have never read the Eleanor Gates-Ralph Spence "Poor Little Rich Girl" stories and, unless confronted with some such alternative as walking down Times Square in flowered culottes, we never shall. But of this we are certain: The authors could not have guessed that their luxury-laden heroine would one day run away from home to become the star of the Peck Soap Broadcasts — "while there's life there's soap."

As Little Barbara Barry, petted daughter of a soap king, she makes the transition from luxury to lux without appreciable effort. Slipping the parental leash on her way to a country school, she adopts an organ-grinder and his brood and passes glibly into the hands of Jack Haley and Alice Faye, a wedded song and dance team with radio aspirations. One audition tosses her into the lap of another soap emperor, whose shaggy brows and ferocious growls have long been the property of Claude Gillingwater. This rival purveyor of cleanliness in small packages engages her for his radio hour and, after prolonging the denouement to the breaking point, the script writers finally achieve the scene wherein the little rich girl's daddy hears his daughter singing on his competitor's time.

That is that. Miss Temple's new vocal efforts, obligingly limited to her range by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel, include a pleasant lullaby sung to her dolls, a torch number called "When I'm With You," another known as "But Definitely" (Miss Temple does not make the grade; pronounces it "definally") and a comic and cleverly worded ditty, "You've Gotta Eat Your Spinach, Baby." She also does a few occasional tap dances and one "feature-length" military routine with Mr. Haley and Miss Faye. All of which, as you can see, makes for a generous dose of Temple.

Short of becoming a defeated candidate for Vice President, we can think of no better method of guaranteeing one's anonymity than appearing in one of the moppet's films. Listing her supporting players hastily, then, before we forget them entirely, we might mention Miss Faye, Gloria Stuart, Mr. Haley, Michael Whalen, Arthur Hoyt, Henry Armetta and John Wray as having been permitted a scene or two while Miss Temple was out freshening her costume.

Having left the Twentieth Century-Fox lot nearly two years ago, Shirley Temple at the ripe age of twelve is making a "comeback" in "Kathleen" at the Capitol. And crack out of the box we can tell you that MGM, her new sponsors, haven't done right by our Shirley. Out of her indubitable charm they have created a vexatious, pucker-faced little brat full of sugary day dreams to make an audience wince. They have confronted her proven talents as an actress with stilted situations that even a Duse couldn't carry off. Assigned to a vehicle for Mistress Temple, the script writer seems to have become all thumbs. The scenario either talks down to the young lady or fills her mouth with precocious baby-talk, which is worse.

As usual, the attempt has been to create a water-color in blues and pinks—only the colors have all run together in a mess. Shirley is a fretful little Mother Goose heroine whose father cruelly ignores her in favor of a rather offensive female of his own age. Left under the wing of a shrewish housekeeper, Shirley is so industriously unhappy that father finally brings in a Dr. Kent—in this case, Laraine Day, who apparently received an M. D. for her labors in the Dr. Kildare series—to diagnose his daughter's languishment. Presto, Miss Day dries Shirley's tears, marries Herbert Marshall, and "Kathleen" ends in a sacharrine sunrise.
Miss Temple tries hard and the other players, except Mr. Marshall, who seems mighty melancholy about the whole thing, try hard to look bright. Meanwhile, if Shirley's script writers must pluck the heartstrings we wish they'd be more gentle about it. In those wistful, winsome close-ups Miss Temple seemed to be trying to say just one thing: "Get me out of here!"

In his first screen production in four years—his first since "Rebecca" and "Gone With the Wind"—David O Selznick has surrendered again to his hankering for size and has turned out another massive picture in "Since You Went Away." For two hours and fifty-one minutes this new film at the Capitol delves with a warm and gracious sympathy into the heart of what it terms "the American home" and yearns with a mother and her daughters whose best-loved men go dutifully to war. Although it makes several passes at observing surface phases of home-front life, its chief concern is three females and their immediate circle of friends. Its humors are frequent and cheerful; its spirit is hopeful and brave. But it does come off, altogether, as a rather large dose of choking sentiment.

For Mr. Selznick, as writer of the screen play as well as producer of the film, let himself go in an excess of exhausting emotional detail. From a mild little volume of letters which Margaret Buell Wilder wrote—letters supposedly written by a wife to her husband off at war—he has gathered some fragments of story and magnified them into a towering tale of one mid-West family's experiences under the abnormal strains of war. He has hung on the wife's poignant moments of loneliness and despair with abundantly generous compassion which counts every moist and glistening tear. And he has detailed a daughter's pretty courtship by a bashful soldier from first blush to sad farewell.

He has also embellished the story with a wealth of domestic incident and sweetened it well with genial traffic with contiguous friends and pets. There is the charming old pal of the family, now arrayed in a Navy uniform, who bobs up quite often at the fireside to offer the flattering attentions of a male. There is a bumptious retired Army colonel who elaborately comes to lodge, full of abuse and selfish habits, but remains to grow mellow and sweet. And there is the loving old Negro servant who, despite the familiar rule, refuses to leave her "white folks" and stays on at a minimum of pay.

As a typical American family, the one which Mr. Selznick has devised might be seriously questioned, however—except as a radiant ideal. There is a great deal of talk and anxiety about the family's financial plight. (Papa is only a captain and they must presumably subsist on his pay.) Yet their home is an absolute vision of well-decorated luxury. And the wardrobes of mama and the daughters seem inexhaustible.

True, Mr. Selznick has slipped in a scalding reflection here and there on people who trade at black markets, hoard and do other hateful things. He has even created a character—an odiously selfish female—who points up the wretched hypocrisy of a certain aggrandizing type. But he has oddly forgotten to caution the more pleasant characters to set a visible example in the saving of food and drink. At least five times we caught them in flagrant and thoughtless waste. Vaguely, we got the impression that a double-standard prevails.

As the mother and center of the family, Claudette Colbert gives an excellent show of gallantly self-contained emotion, and Jennifer Jones is surpassingly sweet as a well-bred American daughter in the first bloom of womanhood and love. Robert Walker is uncommonly appealing as the young soldier whom she tragically adores, and Shirley Temple, now grown to 'teen-age freshness, is pert as the young sister. Monty Woolley makes a full-blown character of the man who comes to lodge; Joseph Cotten is droll as the Navy playboy, and Hattie McDaniel does an Andy-act quite well. Several score other actors pop up for a line or two, including Lionel Barrymore, who recites the last verse of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in a church. John Cromwell has directed everyone with his customary finish and style.

No doubt, this would have been a sharper picture if Mr. Selznick had played it in much less time, and it would have been considerably more significant had he kept it somewhat closer to average means. Two hours and fifty-one minutes is a lot of time to harp upon one well-known theme—lonesomeness and anxiety. And that is all this picture really does.

We wouldn't be able to tell you whether Sidney Sheldon, the fellow who wrote "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer," which came to the Music Hall yesterday, has suffered personal harassment at the hands of modern youth. But whether he has or hasn't, he certainly understands that dreadful fate. And, furthermore, he knows how to make it seem delightfully bewildering on the screen—which may not be wholly consistent but which makes for most agreeable film fare.
For, in "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer," Mr. Sheldon has caught the wry frenzy of a gay, debonnaire, indifferent and slightly naughty man-about-town who suddenly finds himself the victim of a fanciful high-school girl's crush—than which no other attachment of a female is more profound. And he has also invented a hilarious sequence of events by which the baffled hero must submit to the willful child's designs. As a consequence—and while the swoony fever is upon the bashless tot—this poor, victimized bystander is taken for a most amazing ride.

Detailed descriptions are annoying, so we're not going to mar your fun with a windy report on how the bachelor is snagged in the bobby-soxer's snare, how he is innocently compromised by a new twist on the old Army game, how he is made to romp with the kiddies and how he finally gets out of it. (The bobby-soxer has an older sister who is a judge; we will tell you that much.) Neither will we go into spasms over the events at a high-school picnic and the gall of the younger generation. We will let you go into them yourself.

But we must tell you that the performance of Cary Grant as the gentleman involved is one of the brightest and sharpest of his many light-comedy jobs. Being perhaps the most accomplished looker-askance in films, not to mention fumer and frowner, Mr. Grant has his opportunities here. And so, too, does Shirley Temple have a full chance to show her natural charm as a clear-eyed, imaginative, persistent and overpowering 17-year-old. Myrna Loy is likewise attractive as the solemn but flexible judge and Rudy Vallee is remarkably comic as a humorless suitor for her hand.

And we also must tell you that the texture of Mr. Sheldon's farce is firm and uncloyed with cuteness, which is just the way it should be, and that Irving Reis' direction has kept it in that solid shape. In fact, it is all reminiscent of some of those gay, galvanic larks that Gregory LaCava and Leo McCarey used to make ten or more years ago. And a higher recommendation we can't give to a light summer show.

On the stage at the Music Hall is a revue, "Melody Time," featuring Paul Haakon, Marjorie Williamson, Ken Davidson (badmin ton expert) and the Parks, plus the Corps de Ballet, choral ensemble and the dancing Rockettes.