Curly Top (1935)

Curly Top
Directed by Irving Cummings
1935/USA
Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing

Reynolds: My word, miss. You *are* a package.

This is the kind of movie that gives Shirley Temple a bad name in some circles.  Elizabeth Blair (Shirley Temple) and her grown-up sister Mary (Rochelle Hudson) are orphans living in an asylum.  One day when the trustees are visiting the home, a new, immensely wealthy, handsome young trustee Edward Morgan (John Boles) espies Elizabeth singing “Animal Crackers” to her fellow orphans and it is love at first sight.  He brings the sisters to his Southhampton summer home where everyone, including the servants, goes gaga over the little moptop and Morgan falls in love with Mary.

I’m proud to be a Shirley Temple fan but this one is not good.  She is almost too cute and nothing rings true.  The songs are OK, though Boles has a couple of numbers that I could have lived without as well.

“Animal Crackers”