Shirley Temple and Bill Robinson perform a street dance
The slingshot scene was written into the movie by screenwriter Edwin Burke after he learned of Temple's natural ability to use the slingshot. She was perfectly on target and needed only one take for the scene. Temple made international headlines when in the context of trying to keep noisy doves on the prison set (which the director explained did not belong in war) she asked "Why doesn't someone make Mussolini stop?" Someone overheard her comment and it made it into the newspapers, angering Mussolini.[2]
Critical reception
Upon release
Writing for The Spectator in 1936, Graham Greene gave the film a mildly poor review, explaining that he had "expected there [would be] the usual sentimental exploitation of childhood", but that he "had not expected [Temple's] tremendous energy" which he criticized as "a little too enervating".[3]
Modern criticism
Bill Gibron, of the Online Film Critics Society, wrote: "The racism present in The Littlest Rebel, The Little Colonel and Dimples is enough to warrant a clear critical caveat." However, Gibron, echoing most film critics who continue to see value in Temple's work despite the racism that is present in some of it, also wrote: "Thankfully, the talent at the center of these troubling takes is still worthwhile for some, anyway."[4]
Adaptations
The Littlest Rebel was dramatized as an hour-long radio play on the October 14, 1940 broadcast of Lux Radio Theatre, with Shirley Temple and Claude Rains.[5]
Edwards, Anne (1988), Shirley Temple: American Princess, New York: William Morrow and Company
Windeler, Robert (1992) [1978], The Films of Shirley Temple, New York: A Citadel Press Book/Carol Publishing Group, ISBN0-8065-0725-X
Bibliography
Basinger, Jeanine (1993), A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960, Middleton: Wesleyan University Press, pp. 262ff The author expounds upon father figures in Temple films.
Thomson, Rosemarie Garland, ed. (1996), Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, New York: New York University Press, pp. 185–203, ISBN0-8147-8217-5 In the essay, "Cuteness and Commodity Aesthetics: Tom Thumb and Shirley Temple", author Lori Merish examines the cult of cuteness in America.
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