Scandale en Floride

TV showings of 'That Hagen Girl' became more and more rare as the years went on--but lately it surfaced on TCM when they saluted Shirley's birthday with showings of four of her films. Basically it's a story of the effect gossip has on a small-town girl (Temple as Mary Hagen)and lawyer (Ronald Reagan). Good performances by Rory Calhoun, Jean Porter and others. The meanness of the small-town gossip is well realized under Peter Godfrey's direction and the background score by Franz Waxman adds much to the melodramatic proceedings. Not really as bad as many would have you think. Shirley seems more poised and assured than usual (except in an embarrassing rendition from 'Romeo and Juliet') and she herself regards it as her best adult performance. Despite all of its flaws, it's worth viewing to watch the nineteen-year old actress opposite Ronald Reagan. His primary love interest in the film is Lois Maxwell (who later became Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond films). The ending is rather unresolved and unsatisfying--a curious ending for an odd film.

"That Hagen Girl" is a fairly formulaic condemnation of small-town values. Mary Hagen is a young woman whose questionable parentage has caused her to be the subject of gossip and discrimination by the town elite. Her teacher, Miss Lane, tries to encourage her personal growth, the rest of the town conspires to keep her in her place as a second-class citizen, and her presumed real father returns to town to complicate things.

I watched this mainly to see Shirley Temple as an adult rather than a tyke and Lois Maxwell play something other than Miss Moneypenny. Temple is surprisingly pretty and her acting is at least as good as everyone else's in the picture. I found the romantic turnarounds a bit confusing, though -- young Ken turns into a spineless mama's boy, Miss Lane and Tom Bates decide they are just "good friends", and Bates (who for most of the movie is suspected to be Mary's father) is now in love with her! That was a little creepy and not terribly convincing. It's not a movie I would recommend exactly, but it was certainly watchable and of archival interest, if nothing else.

I have heard about this film for years and finally saw it on Turner Classic Movies this month. I had always read that the movie was a stinker, the performances were awful, and the subject matter odd. I found the film to be very suspenseful with a sense of mystery. I was incredibly surprised that the acting was like that in many other films of the day, and that the subject matter added to the bizarre creative twist of the plot. My only complaint with the movie is that the ending is somewhat quick and a disappointment after so much of a build up. The story has a good start and keeps you interested and then wraps everything up far too quickly without much explanation or reason. I am glad to finally get to see this film as it is one of those oldies that rarely ever makes it to television. Much less VHS or DVD.

Years ago I owned a book called "The Fifty Worst Movies" by dreaded film critic Michael Medved (you know the guy, he plugs his ears when he hears a naughty word). This Warner Bros. melodrama was one of his 50 worst; seeing it today, I'm amazed Medved hated it so much (he probably longs for something refined like this now after viewing today's new-jack street dramas). It's a fairly ridiculous soaper concerning adorable teenager Shirley Temple who is--gasp!--adopted. Worse, she has (sort of) acquired a crush on a much-older man who, gossips say, is her biological father! Campy adaptation of Edith Roberts' book is full of howlers and mediocre acting. Shirl and Ronald Reagan try very hard to sell the material, but the ending seems to come out of nowhere. Still, I had fun watching the dumb thing and imagining what audiences in 1947 tried to make of it. ** from ****

Why wouldn't the moviegoing public accept Shirley Temple as a grown-up after being a child star? As a 19-year-old in this film she is as beautiful as she was cute as a child; and if she hadn't yet proved herself to be a great actress, her more mature screen persona beats her insufferably cute act as a child any day as far as this viewer is concerned.

Actually this movie's bad reputation is not hard to understand. Amazingly, Ms. Temple plays a high school student widely believed by the residents of her small town to be (gasp) illegitimate! to use an unfortunate term. Although she's as clean-cut and moral a young woman as you'll ever see, the small-minded townspeople think the worst of her in any slightly suspicious situation. Even though the movie is rather light-heated in tone, and never uses words like "illegitimate" or "pregnant," it's obvious the American public could not accept Temple in such a role.

The few dark moments that intrude into this overall lightweight movie don't mesh very well, and the film is really a rather prosaic soap opera, but it does hold some interest for latter-day viewers because of its stars. Ronald Reagan plays the man assumed to be Temple's father. It's become a cliche of Reagan's political opponents to say he's a bad actor, but the truth is he doesn't show much range in this film and it doesn't appear to be the kind of role he's suited for. Still, I find the older Shirley Temple interesting to watch and for this reason I'd recommend it to any of her fans, or movie fans in general.