Età inquieta

That Hagen Girl is a curious film. It stars Shirley Temple and Ronald Reagan, along with a supporting cast of other well-known actors.

It's uncomfortable and odd viewing. In the film, Tom Bates, the male lead, is suspected by the entire village - and Janie herself - of being her true father (though he's not). He meets her as a young woman, when she is aged about seventeen and he is approximately twice that. He tries to help her, encouraged by a local teacher. The townfolk get meaner and meaner, because they view Janie as being "of bad stock" because she's believed to be illegitimate and adopted. Then suddenly right at the end Tom has proposed and they're getting married. There's no build up, there is no relationship progression. It's not apparent that he has ever had romantic feelings for her, let alone her for him. So it's rushed and jarring and odd.

Ronald Reagan apparently viewed the age gap as problematic, and wanted to change the ending. This left me wondering whether - rather like Girls' Dormitory (1936) - they changed the ending of the original story. In the play Girls' Dormitory is based on, the headmaster ends up marrying a teacher colleague of a similar age who has loved him for years. In the film, Herbert Marshall ends up proposing to Simone Simon, his teenage student, leaving his poor colleague with a broken heart.

I was so curious that I managed to source a copy (they are rare and it was expensive). As it turns out, for the most part - and particularly the start - the movie is quite faithful to the book. Both conjure up a similarly convincing atmosphere of poisonous small minds in a small town. The ending is also the same, in that Tom Bates does end up with Janie, not with the teacher of similar age who loves him.

However the book shows Tom Bates' romantic interest in Janie clearly developing from early on, and to a lesser extent, hers in him. This isn't entirely satisfactory on his side because she is in love with and engaged to someone else, Tom leaves, then Janie is jilted, and eventually she starts seeing someone else whom she doesn't really care for. Then at the eleventh hour, Tom returns and suddenly they're both going off into the sunset. The book feels rushed as well, though not nearly so much as the film does.

Ultimately, the conundrum remains unresolved. My speculation is that scenes between Temple and Reagan were cut - either from the script, or in editing - because they just weren't deemed palatable. Temple had been a child star, after all. It's one thing for her to evolve to "grown up" roles, like other child stars (Hayley Mills managed this smoothly). It's another to cast her alongside a much older man, in a story with deliberate and pervasive nuances of incest.

I would definitely recommend seeing this movie, as it has many points of quality and interest. Just don't expect a conventional story, or a satisfying (or realistic) ending.

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.

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.

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.

The premise of this movie, in the 40s, might have been worth exploring but the pairing of teenage Shirley Temple and 40ish Ronald Reagan-who said many times he wished this was a role he had never touched-is just too bizarre, especially considering the circumstances in which they were thrown together. I've seen a few top 10 worst lists that this movie is on, and it really is pretty bad. Shirley fans might enjoy her grownup and gorgeous, though.