Scandale en Floride

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.

I really liked this movie. It's not one of the greats, but a great example of the many ordinary feature films of the 1940's.

If you think of Shirley Temple as just a child actor, or Ronald Reagan as a third rate actor who's popularity quickly waned, this film will disabuse you of these ideas.

The story is about a girl (Shirley Temple) growing up in a small town who is victimized by rumors of her being the illegitimate child of Ronald Reagan. This character study has strong characters and a thin story line, but the fine acting holds the movie together. The plot line, while not compelling in and of itself, still allows for a story that is interesting and keeps you wondering just what will happen and how things will turn out in the end. The supporting cast also does a fine job. The antagonists of the film are not so vile that you hate them, they are just unlikable, arrogant and pretentious.

The film is a good rendition of "the way things were" in an age when tongues wagged over sexual scandals, and where you came from predisposed people to think of other people in very stereotypical ways. Mary Hagen having been born out of wedlock (or so it is rumored), is presumed to be a "bad girl" whose every act is viewed with suspicion and seen in the worst possible light. The class structure of small American towns in the 1940's is accurately depicted. All in all, this is a good film, well worth watching. I recommend it highly. Not all movies can be great, but this film is well worth watching as a quality movie, an example of what Hollywood can do when it merely doing a good job. See it.

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.