The Little Princess

Between the ages of 7 and 10, little Shirley Temple was the biggest box office star in the world. But as she grew older, her popularity quickly began to wane. At 11 (though she believed herself to be 10 because her mother shaved a year off her age), Shirley was still quite a child when she made "The Little Princess." But because she was no longer as cute and cherubic as she was at 6, when "Stand Up and Cheer!" first made her a star, it was to be her last successful film in a children's role.

As Sara (a Hebrew name meaning "princess"), Shirley plays her standard rags-to-riches storyline in reverse: Sara's wealthy widowed father loses everything in the Boer War, and her cruel boarding school headmistress Miss Minchin makes her an underfed, overworked servant girl to pay the tuition debt her father owed. Sara goes from luxurious rooms and private tutors to friendless, freezing attics as suddenly as the swinging America of the 1920s sank into the dust storms, breadlines, and squattervilles of the 1930's Great Depression. But where did poor Americans turn to briefly forget all these problems during the Great Depression? To the movies, where Shirley Temple, her unwavering hopefulness (as present in "The Little Princess" as in any of her movies), and her cute song-and-dance numbers -- with titles like "Laugh, You Son of a Gun" (1934), "You Gotta Smile to be Happy" (1936), "Be Optimistic" (1938), and "Come and Get Your Happiness" (1938) -- cheered up the entire nation. The same singing and dancing cheers up Sara Crewe while she's working as a galley slave in 1899 London, as Shirley performs "The Old Kent Road" with her pal Arthur Treacher (her four-time co-star).

In short, "The Little Princess" is Shirley Temple's career in a nutshell. It is a must-see film for both longtime Shirley fans and newcomers.