There are days in my remembrance I sometimes feel like Forrest Gump trying to “recollect” his first “Christmas or my first out-door picnic”… but I do remember the most special Christmas when I got the “finest” Christmas gift ever. I was told I would have to share my beautiful plastic Shirley Temple doll with my sister Carrie, as we “shared” everything. But there she was in her beautiful polka-dot “Baby Take a Bow” costume, with beautiful golden curls all pinned with little bobby pins and frills under her skirt, white “Mary Jane” shoes and little knit socks. She was meant to be given to me for Christmas morning when Santa Claus would come, but the older children in the house had begged to open all the gifts this first time on Christmas Eve. I had hesitated, knowing I would be sorely disappointed if “Santa” did not make an appearance the following morning, but the older kids won out and I was given my “baby doll” the night before.
I can’t remember the first Shirley Temple movie I saw as a child; she was just always there most of the time dancing in black and white pictures across the stages of “canned” movie plots with a smile on her face, cheering up everyone that stopped to watch her movies. There were so many of the old movies that we could watch and watch and never get tired of them.
In the early nineteen seventies when we kids were home with four channels and nothing to do on Sunday afternoons, or shown as part of a late-night “million-dollar movie” segment, Shirley Temple was there singing and dancing her way into generations of hearts. Predictable movie plots always with a happy ending and catchy songs warmed our hearts and made me want “tap dance” lessons.
My mother had grown up with Shirley Temple in the movie theaters and was so impressed that she would sing along with the movie and attempt her own version of Shirley Temple’s dance moves on the linoleum floor. It was then I was given a glimpse of one of my mother’s joys as a child. She shared in the history of Shirley Temple and all her characters, as well as the other actors and actresses, who also played in many other films. I was also told that my mother had been named “Alice Faye” after one of the actresses in a Shirley Temple movie. I was impressed that my mother had been named after a “famous actress”. Apparently my grandmother had a love for the movies as well, naming her girls after those “old black and white” actresses.
With so many Shirley Temple movies to love, I must say my favorite is “Heidi” (1937). It was a dramatic movie with a very good story line and one of the few movies she had less singing and dancing to do, however it was a very heart-warming story, and will always be my first choice. My second choice would have to be the “Captain January”( 1936) movie with Buddy Ebsen, singing and dancing on the make-believe wharf again in “black and white.” Last but not least, “The Littlest Rebel” (1935) with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson tap-dancing on the steps of a plantation house is a favorite movie as well. The surprise and genuine appeal of Shirley Temple’s talent has lasted throughout 3 generations in my family and I am sure at some point will be passed on to the next generation of my grandchildren. I look forward to the time that I can sing along with the songs, dance along and share the stories that were shared with me by my mother to my grandchildren. They will be shown the pretty little doll that was given to me when I was eight years old and the story of how she came to me the “night before Santa Claus came.”
