Kathleen

'Kathleen' is a rather pedestrian take on Shirley's previous childhood vehicles. Once again, she has no mother, only a distant father (Herbert Marshall) engaged to a woman Shirley despises. When her behavior causes no end of trouble for her nanny, her father hires a young woman psychiatrist (Laraine Day) to counsel the girl. Naturally, he and Day fall in love and Shirley's problems end on a happy note. But none too soon.

While Shirley herself is charming and poised as the unhappy girl, the script is a dreary thing with no one able to overcome the inadequacies of the slim story. Laraine Day is her usual charming self, Marshall is stuffy and aloof as Shirley's father and Gail Patrick has a totally unsympathetic role as "the other woman" eager to get her clutches on a rich husband.

A musical sequence showing Shirley lending her voice to a dismal song is clearly dubbed and seems to belong to another picture, it's so out of whack with the rest of the film.

Clearly disappointing and only interesting to see Temple as a maturing 12-year old and given some nice glossy MGM close-ups. Some good moments, but not enough and apparently MGM decided not to release this one to video, at least not as of this writing.

Kathleen Davis (Shirley Temple) is a smart 12-year-old living in a large mansion with her servants. With her beloved mother dead, she is in a constant battle with her nanny. Her father John Davis (Herbert Marshall) is always away at work. Her father brings home girlfriend Lorraine Bennett who suggests bringing in Dr. Foster to examine her. Foster suggests hiring psychiatrist Dr. Angela Kent (Laraine Day) to look after her for the summer before she goes off to boarding school. Kathleen takes a liking to Dr. Kent especially for her father to replace Lorraine.

Shirley Temple is having trouble growing into her terrible teens. It's a tough thing to have an icon change in front of your eyes. That's the difficulty faced by an audience of her era. She's also stuck using the same acting tricks that had worked so well as a child actor. While it looks cute as a child, it looks like sentimental cloying as she gets older. I do have an issue with the dream dance sequence with full grown men. It has different meaning as she grows into a young woman. The other big issue is the lack of chemistry between the father and Dr. Kent. It's not enough for Lorraine to be a sneaky gold-digger. This has all the ingredients but the mixture is barely passable.

KATHLEEN (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1941), directed by Harold S. Bucquet, stars Shirley Temple, former child star for 20th Century-Fox (1934-1940) in her first and only film for the MGM studio. Though MGM could have cast Temple opposite someone like Mickey Rooney in a backstage musical or a dramatic story opposite Freddie Bartholomew in a horse racing theme similar in theme to NATIONAL VELVET (1944) that later made an overnight star of Elizabeth Taylor, Temple was offered a title role based on an original story by Kay Van Riper dealing with a poor young rich girl striving for the love and attention of her widowed father who is hardly around.

Kathleen Davis (Shirley Temple), is a 12-year-old girl whose mother died at the time of her birth. She lives in a luxurious home surrounded by servants who have looked after her more than her father, John Staunton Davis (Herbert Marshall), who is more away on business trips than spending quality time with his daughter. Kathleen has a strict governess, Mrs. Farrell (Nella Walker), whom she hates. Her only true friend happens to be Mr. Schonet (Felix Bressart), an elderly antique dealer who knows the truth behind Kathleen's imaginary friend, the girl on the hill, whose life echoes that of her own unhappy existence. Further complications ensue when Mr. Davis returns home with Lorraine Bennett (Gail Patrick), his female companion. Though unaware of her father's wedding plans to Miss Bennett, Kathleen takes an immediate dislike to her anyhow. Because of her strong dislike for Mrs. Farrell, Lorraine suggests Kathleen be examined by a child specialist. Doctor Montagu Foster (Lloyd Corrigan) finds nothing wrong with Kathleen but suggests Mrs. Farrell be dismissed and substituted by Doctor A. Martha Kent (Laraine Day), a child psychologist, who could remain with her until September before Kathleen is to be sent away to boarding school. At first Kathleen dislikes the young and down-to-earth lady doctor, but in time, grows fond of her enough to call her "Angel," based on her first name, Angela. While Kathleen hopes for Angela to become her father's new wife, she faces further disappointments when she learns of her father's upcoming wedding plans and extensive honeymoon trip with Lorraine, and having Angela cancel her proposed trip to South America to fill in for the responsibility actually intended for her neglectful father. Others in the cast include: Guy Bellis (Jarvis, the butler); Wade Boteler (The Policeman); and Joe Yule (The Sign Painter).

Though the plot for KATHLEEN could have been a Temple vehicle for 20th Century-Fox during her teenage years, this new MGM edition resumes the traditional Temple format originated by her own studio, that of a daughter of a single parent or an orphan. Temple even gets to have one song number, "Around the Corner," performed during her dream sequence rather than being part of the plot. Now a teenager and no longer a cute little child with the blondish curls, Temple's physical appearance gets reinvented through her darker and longer 1940s hairstyle along with her more mature speaking voice of a teenager. Being the only child for its entire 88 minutes, it would have been interesting had KATHLEEN been slightly altered by having two Temples for the price of one playing twin sisters scheming to get their father to realize his marriage to a woman they dislike would be a mistake. This idea was later put to good use for the Walt Disney classic, THE PARENT TRAP (1961) starring Hayley Mills playing the twin sisters. Having Temple in a dual role might have been too costly and time consuming for a standard movie project, yet might have been more pleasing for Temple fans.

As it stands, KATHLEEN is satisfactory entertainment with moral lesson learned by a father who lets others raise his daughter, who's a stranger to him, rather than by himself. Laraine Day is good as the pretty doctor who fills in as Kathleen's pretend older sister while Felix Bressart gives a likable performance as an elderly grandfather type to Kathleen. Gail Patrick stands out in her "other woman" role she's been doing quite often in other films around this time. As much as Herbert Marshall and Laraine Day do their parts well, it's interesting that in their previous pairing in Alfred Hitchcock's FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (United Artists, 1940) they were cast together playing father and daughter. Though MGM never acquired further services from Temple, the studio would soon get a child star of its own, Margaret O'Brien, the Shirley Temple of the 1940s.

Unlike Temple's films for 20th Century-Fox, KATHLEEN was never distributed to video cassette nor, though currently available on DVD. It was never even part of Shirley Temple film festivals, but did get some exposure during the after midnight hours on the "late-late show" during the 1970s. KATHLEEN often plays on Turner Classic Movies cable channel, the home of the MGM film library. (**1/2)

Kathleen (Shirley Temple) is a lonely young lady. Her mother is deceased and her father is never home. Because of this, she has a governess--a woman who is just plain nasty. As for Kathleen, she's a bit of a brat--mostly because she's so emotionally neglected and lonely. However, her clueless father (Herbert Marshall) takes her to see a psychotherapist instead of giving her what she needs--his time and attention. Fortunately, the therapist quickly realizes the situation and tells the father that the governess is evil. Instead, the therapist recommends a child psychologist (Laraine Day) becomes the child's governess--at least temporarily. Almost immediately, Kathleen decides that this woman would make a perfect mother for her. Unfortunately, the manipulative girl has a problem with her plan--Dad already has a woman picked out to be his new wife. And, this wife-to-be is a superficial and annoying woman indeed (Gail Patrick). What's Kathleen to do?!

"Kathleen" is an odd film. It isn't bad, but along with other films like "The Blue Bird", it managed to alienate the public from Temple because the films were such a departure from the sweet Temple films of the 1930s. Part of this, of course, is because Shirley was older and the old style films wouldn't have worked as well with a child about to become a teen. Part of it, however, is that the studios didn't really seem to know what to do with her.

I liked the Kathleen character. Her manipulative personality was pretty funny and I liked some of her bratty moments. However, what I didn't like about her were the fantasy scenes. These involved musical interludes that just weren't necessary and really slowed down the film. In fact, had they cut them all out, the movie would have worked much better--especially since music seemed inappropriate to this style of film. Plus, while Shirley was great singing as a child, here she seems a bit out of her element in these production numbers.

So is it worth seeing? Sure. The negatives about this one are far outweighed by the good. Shirley's performance is very nice and the story quite clever. And, although the ending was a bit sticky, I did like it. A very different sort of film for the actress, that's for sure--but a nice one. But also it's so different that I could easily see folks disliking it.

By the time Shirley Temple makes Kathleen in 1941 she had been cut loose from 20th Century Fox by Darryl Zanuck as the budding teen Shirley was no longer box office. Imagine being a has been at 12.

Still MGM grabbed her for Kathleen where she's a girl entering puberty and quite frankly in this film a bit spoiled. She's a rich kid, daughter of Herbert Marshall who is all about business. She misses her late mom and Shirley also cannot stand the housekeeper/governess Nella Walker. And the one she really can't stand is Gail Patrick, the woman who Marshall wants to marry.

These films are usually so loaded in the sense we watch and can't believe that Marshall is such a blockhead that he can't see that Patrick is a bad woman and the lady psychologist that is there to treat Temple, Laraine Day is the woman for both of them.

Kathleen is not in a league with some of Shirley's best work at 20th Century Fox, but it is reasonably entertaining.