mark.waltz Can Shirley Temple do no wrong? Not in the eye of her Fox employers who continuously cast her as the type of child genius that could reconcile estranged couples, bring peace to waring families and make cranky elders smile even without the benefit of smiling muscles. No temper tantrums or behavioral adjustment medications for her. Not our Miss Shirley.Sometimes this formula worked ("Little Miss Marker", "Heidi"), sometimes it didn't. But audiences of the 30's didn't mind and many don't today. In the case of "Our Little Girl", it is cute at first, but truly unrealistic. Joel McCrea is a hard-working doctor, Rosemary Ames his housewife and Temple their child psychiatrist who weathers their storms of tempted infatuations and runs away seemingly just to teach them a lesson.One scene in the film truly disturbed me, where McCrea, driving down a curvy country road, allows Temple to climb all over him and then try to grab something in the convertible's back seat. Another has Ames and McCrea out for the evening (seperately) and Temple left without an apparent baby sitter. I felt that these sequences should have been accompanied by subtitles which stated "Do Not Try This at Home".

kidboots "Our Little Girl" was what the movie going public of the mid 1930s thought of Shirley Temple, but it didn't have quite the success of her earlier films. She wasn't required to burst into song and dance everyone's troubles away, she was needed to be a Little Miss Fixit but only as a little girl caught up in the affairs of wayward adults (Nova Pilbeam was far more convincing in "Little Friend"). This must be one of her only films that give her both a father and a mother, with nothing dire happening to either one of them along the way.Donald Middleton (Joel McCrea) is a small town doctor who let domesticity get in the way of his dreams but he is more than making up for it with countless important "experiments" taking him away from Elsa (Rosemary Ames) and little Molly. Trouble is brewing early on when Don almost misses "May Saturday", a picnic at idyllic "Heaven's Gate" where Don and Elsa first met and it is there that they meet new neighbour Ralfe Brent (Lyle Talbot). Donald, being as obtuse as he is, keeps throwing Elsa and Ralfe together, even though Ralfe comments "I wouldn't like to leave my wife with me" etc and Nurse Boynton (Erin O'Brien Moore) is only too eager to console Don.Of course Shirley Temple is the star so there are lots of cute scenes of Shirley testing a cake, playing with Sniff, patting little foals and enjoying the park. But strangely enough no singing except for a pretty mournful lullaby to her doll. By the time "September Saturday" comes around the parents are headed for the divorce court and daddy ends up taking Molly to the circus but, as usual, is called away to the hospital and in the confusion Molly decides to take Sniff for their own "Heaven's Gate" picnic. Along the way she meets a philosophical tramp (J. Farrell MacDonald) who ends up giving Don a lecture on what is important in life!!Joel McCrea was between contracts in 1935 hence his appearance in "Our Little Girl" (apparently Shirley developed a big crush on him) but he was seen to better advantage as yet another overworked doctor in "Private Worlds". Rosemary Ames was promoted as Fox's big new star in "I Believed in You" (1934) but it was a disaster and Fox believed no more in Rosemary.

lugonian OUR LITTLE GIRL (Fox, 1935), directed by John Robertson, a domestic drama taken from a story "Heaven's Gate," stars Shirley Temple, Joel McCrea and someone by the name of Rosemary Ames (in her final screen appearance following a very brief movie career). Similar in theme to RKO Radio's WEDNESDAY'S CHILD (1934) that revolves around a boy (Frankie Thomas) whose happy home is disrupted by the separation of his parents (Edward Arnold and Karen Morley), OUR LITTLE GIRL centers around the moppet Temple facing the same situation of her own, but without any courtroom or child custody battles, which might have helped quicken the pace or added more interest to a somewhat slow scenario.Set in a small town, the plot introduces the Middletons as a happy family: Donald (Joel McCrea), a respectable doctor; Elsa (Rosemary Ames), his loving wife, and their little girl, Molly (Shirley Temple) who looks forward to their twice a year family picnic each May and September Saturday at a park called Heaven's Gate. Donald works long and hard on his experiments along with his assistant, Sarah Boiton (Erin O'Brien-Moore), a nurse who's secretly in love with him. Because he's away from home too often, Elsa spends much of her lonely hours with Rolfe Brent (Lyle Talbot), her former horse breading beau who recently has moved into town from Europe. Due to Donald's misunderstanding and jealously towards Elsa and Rolfe, the couple argue, leading little Molly to find herself caught in the middle of things, and unable to comprehend why her father will no longer be living with them anymore. After overhearing a conversation between her mother and Rolfe that has her believing that she's the cause for her parent's separation, Molly decides to take matters into her own hands by leaving home.A minor Temple drama with little of the Temple formula intact. Aside from singing a lullaby to her doll and later playing Stephen Foster's "Banjo on My Knee" on the piano, there are no songs nor dance numbers. Considering its theme, song interludes have no precedence in the story, though some slight doses of humor including Temple on the seesaw with her dog, Sniffy, as examples that keep the narrative from becoming strictly melodramatic. Unlike her more recent releases, OUR LITTLE GIRL, is the only one of Temple's leading roles that can be categorized as strictly "B" product, considering it being the shortest (63 minutes) of her starring film roles.Others in the supporting cast consist of Poodles Hannerton as the Circus Performer; Margaret Armstrong (Amy, the Middleton housekeeper); Ruth Owin (Alice) and Leonard Carey (Jackson), each as Brent's servants; and best of all, J. Farrell MacDonald billed as Mr. Tramp, playing a homeless man who comforts little Molly by listening to her story as to why she's leaving home. This little scene is well handled, with some humor in spoken dialog by Shirley thrown in for good measure. Watch for it. OUR LITTLE GIRL became one of many Temple movies to become available on video cassette during the late 1980s and then on DVD in both black and white and colorized formats. Formerly presented on The Disney Channel in the 1980s in colorized version, it then turned up on American Movie Classics as part of its Sunday morning "Kids Classics" (1996-2001), and finally on the Fox Movie Channel in its original black and white format. Bob Dorian, former host of AMC, once commented in his profile about OUR LITTLE GIRL in saying that its working title "Heaven's Gate" had been changed prior to release due to it the name suggesting a cemetery, leaving an indication as being a movie about death.Although OUR LITTLE GIRL didn't turn out as interesting as the rarely seen WEDNESDAY'S CHILD (1934), nor become the Academy Award winner as KRAMER Vs. KRAMER (1979), it's one of those little movies that might have been better had it not been hampered by a weak script. Had it not been for "Our Little Girl" Shirley Temple in the title role keeping the story alive with her know-how performance, then this minor effort of hers would certainly have ended up along with many old Fox Films to be either lost, forgotten or both. (**1/2)

ccthemovieman-1 Shirley Temple was in a few - not many - movies that just were not appealing. In most of her films, she overcomes a bad start in life (orphanages, etc.) or overcomes an evil, nasty person (usually Edna Mae Oliver or someone similar) but is seen happy most of the time and singing and dancing here and there. It's when the negative elements of the story are overemphasized (i.e. Blue Bird, Baby Take A Bow) that her films often lose appeal. That's the case in this movie."Our Little Girl" is simply too depressing, a negative storyline in which Shirley's parents are ready for a divorce. Her mother has an affair with a friend and the father is away all the time on business, ignoring the family.When Temple ("Molly Middleton") is happy or cute, she's too cute in here, her sugary personality overdone. Meanhwhile, there is only one song and no dance numbers. People buy or rent Shirley Temple movies to feel good, not to get depressed or weighed down with broken-family soaps. There are plenty of other movies like that.