…20th Century Fox has released three more entries in their ongoing series of Shirley Temple DVD reissues.
But, first, welcome to a new feature on Premium Hollywood, where we make note of some new releases that possess a certain degree of merit, even if, y’know, I wouldn’t buy them, personally.
Anyway, back to Shirley Temple.
This time around, fans may thrill to “Dimples,” “The Little Colonel,” and “The Littlest Rebel.”
The All Movie Guide recommends “The Little Colonel,” albeit with some reservations, due to the fact it comes across as “severely dated” and has a story that’s “pure cornball hokum,” but, in addition to containing both Lionel Barrymore (Drew’s kin) and Hattie McDaniel (from “Gone with the Wind”), the site admits unabashedly that the dance sequence that teams Temple with the legendary Bill “Bojangles” Robinson is “three minutes of sheer magic and is able to transport the viewer out of the picture and into a little slice of heaven.” Robinson also appears in “The Littlest Rebel,” a Civil War based film which manages to team Shirley with…Abraham Lincoln himself? Sure enough. As far as “Dimples,” Robinson isn’t actually in the film…but he WAS responsible for choreographing Temple’s tap-dance routines in the film.
It’s hard to know how kids today will react to films like these, which are so unrelentingly cheerful for the most part. They’re more likely to be barred from watching them by their parents because they’re period pieces that don’t follow today’s stringent political correctness guidelines. Still, they’re presented here in both the original black-and-white as well as a colorized version, so if the kids DO get to see them, at least they won’t be able to whine that because it’s in black and white, it’s booooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrring. Each disc also includes a Movietone clip, two of which cover her birthday parties: her 6th and her 7th.
Movietone: the “Entertainment: Tonight” of its day.
