Scandale en Floride

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.

"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.

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 ****

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.

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.