Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Watching the delightfully sunny smile and pouty mannerisms of curly Shirley Temple is always a treat, including her singing and dancing to her heart's content. Underneath the formulaic notions of a predictable love story between a millionaire composer and a young orphan woman (not Temple), there is nothing more in "Curly Top" than the adorable presence of a young girl who wants to make the world, her world, a happy place.
Temple plays a 7-year-old orphan girl, Elizabeth, living in a rather dank orphanage known as Lakeside. Elizabeth's older sister, Mary (Rochelle Hudson) does a lot of the cooking and cleaning of this place. Elizabeth has a habit of getting herself in trouble - like too much singing and dancing during group meals, and wanting to make sure the pony doesn't get pneumonia for standing in the rain. So Elizabeth brings the pony to an adjoining bed! When the trustees do their regular inspection of the orphanage, a certain Mr. Edward Morgan (a dapper as always John Boles) turns out to be one of the trustees - he has recently inherited some wealth. Thanks to the newspaper article making this claim, Lakeside's rigid superintendent, Mrs. Higgins (Rafaela Ottiano), hopes he will double his donations. Morgan is struck by Elizabeth and her mimicry of one of the other trustees. He finds her to be such a winsome young girl that he decides to adopt her (though he lies and says that there is another benefactor). Bright Elizabeth makes it clear that if she is adopted, her older sister must come along as well.
"Curly Top" is not exactly a stirring cinematic venture (based on a 1912 novel named "Daddy-Long-Legs" that is uncredited, though I see more of a similarity with "Annie") and it's clear that the love between Mary and Edward will come to fruition despite a young Navy sailor getting in the mix. No, this movie is all Shirley Temple (in one scene, Boles imagines her as the figure of every one of his historical paintings) and she sings various songs including "Animal Crackers in My Soup" and "When I Grow Up" that seem to occupy more than a third of the film's 74 minute running time. This is not a complaint, just a fact because Temple is memorable in every scene and the songs are spirited and memorable as well.
A curious thing happens in "Curly Top." In one scene, Temple recites her own poems to Boles and we get the impression she is not just speaking to him but to us as well - her eyeline shifts and she looks straight at the audience for a lengthy time (not to mention breaking the fourth wall in the last scene). No wonder Miss Temple was America's darling - she loved us too.
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