User reviews

TV showings of 'That Hagen Girl' became more and more rare as the years went on--but lately it surfaced on TCM when they saluted Shirley's birthday with showings of four of her films. Basically it's a story of the effect gossip has on a small-town girl (Temple as Mary Hagen)and lawyer (Ronald Reagan). Good performances by Rory Calhoun, Jean Porter and others. The meanness of the small-town gossip is well realized under Peter Godfrey's direction and the background score by Franz Waxman adds much to the melodramatic proceedings. Not really as bad as many would have you think. Shirley seems more poised and assured than usual (except in an embarrassing rendition from 'Romeo and Juliet') and she herself regards it as her best adult performance. Despite all of its flaws, it's worth viewing to watch the nineteen-year old actress opposite Ronald Reagan. His primary love interest in the film is Lois Maxwell (who later became Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond films). The ending is rather unresolved and unsatisfying--a curious ending for an odd film.

"That Hagen Girl" is a fairly formulaic condemnation of small-town values. Mary Hagen is a young woman whose questionable parentage has caused her to be the subject of gossip and discrimination by the town elite. Her teacher, Miss Lane, tries to encourage her personal growth, the rest of the town conspires to keep her in her place as a second-class citizen, and her presumed real father returns to town to complicate things.

I watched this mainly to see Shirley Temple as an adult rather than a tyke and Lois Maxwell play something other than Miss Moneypenny. Temple is surprisingly pretty and her acting is at least as good as everyone else's in the picture. I found the romantic turnarounds a bit confusing, though -- young Ken turns into a spineless mama's boy, Miss Lane and Tom Bates decide they are just "good friends", and Bates (who for most of the movie is suspected to be Mary's father) is now in love with her! That was a little creepy and not terribly convincing. It's not a movie I would recommend exactly, but it was certainly watchable and of archival interest, if nothing else.

I really liked this movie. It's not one of the greats, but a great example of the many ordinary feature films of the 1940's.

If you think of Shirley Temple as just a child actor, or Ronald Reagan as a third rate actor who's popularity quickly waned, this film will disabuse you of these ideas.

The story is about a girl (Shirley Temple) growing up in a small town who is victimized by rumors of her being the illegitimate child of Ronald Reagan. This character study has strong characters and a thin story line, but the fine acting holds the movie together. The plot line, while not compelling in and of itself, still allows for a story that is interesting and keeps you wondering just what will happen and how things will turn out in the end. The supporting cast also does a fine job. The antagonists of the film are not so vile that you hate them, they are just unlikable, arrogant and pretentious.

The film is a good rendition of "the way things were" in an age when tongues wagged over sexual scandals, and where you came from predisposed people to think of other people in very stereotypical ways. Mary Hagen having been born out of wedlock (or so it is rumored), is presumed to be a "bad girl" whose every act is viewed with suspicion and seen in the worst possible light. The class structure of small American towns in the 1940's is accurately depicted. All in all, this is a good film, well worth watching. I recommend it highly. Not all movies can be great, but this film is well worth watching as a quality movie, an example of what Hollywood can do when it merely doing a good job. See it.

I have heard about this film for years and finally saw it on Turner Classic Movies this month. I had always read that the movie was a stinker, the performances were awful, and the subject matter odd. I found the film to be very suspenseful with a sense of mystery. I was incredibly surprised that the acting was like that in many other films of the day, and that the subject matter added to the bizarre creative twist of the plot. My only complaint with the movie is that the ending is somewhat quick and a disappointment after so much of a build up. The story has a good start and keeps you interested and then wraps everything up far too quickly without much explanation or reason. I am glad to finally get to see this film as it is one of those oldies that rarely ever makes it to television. Much less VHS or DVD.

Why wouldn't the moviegoing public accept Shirley Temple as a grown-up after being a child star? As a 19-year-old in this film she is as beautiful as she was cute as a child; and if she hadn't yet proved herself to be a great actress, her more mature screen persona beats her insufferably cute act as a child any day as far as this viewer is concerned.

Actually this movie's bad reputation is not hard to understand. Amazingly, Ms. Temple plays a high school student widely believed by the residents of her small town to be (gasp) illegitimate! to use an unfortunate term. Although she's as clean-cut and moral a young woman as you'll ever see, the small-minded townspeople think the worst of her in any slightly suspicious situation. Even though the movie is rather light-heated in tone, and never uses words like "illegitimate" or "pregnant," it's obvious the American public could not accept Temple in such a role.

The few dark moments that intrude into this overall lightweight movie don't mesh very well, and the film is really a rather prosaic soap opera, but it does hold some interest for latter-day viewers because of its stars. Ronald Reagan plays the man assumed to be Temple's father. It's become a cliche of Reagan's political opponents to say he's a bad actor, but the truth is he doesn't show much range in this film and it doesn't appear to be the kind of role he's suited for. Still, I find the older Shirley Temple interesting to watch and for this reason I'd recommend it to any of her fans, or movie fans in general.

I'm not as critical of the ending as everyone else here. I figure Ronnie's character was around 42 by the final scene, she 38. That's if she did spend 4 years at university between the last 2 scenes, as suggested during the film. Otherwise, he's about 38 and she 18. It's a little confusing at the end, as the 2 townies at the end talk and one says "What'll we talk about now?". With Shirley's dad saying 'take care of my girl. She's all I got left', Ronnie wearing a dark pinstripe suit for his train ride out of town and she with her bobbin-lace collar over her travel suit, Ronnie's big grin while waving goodbye as the train pulls out- it has all the look of the beginning of their honeymoon to me. That seems more than enough for that town to talk about all the way to their graves! Scandalous, eh?

I must admit that this movie was the sort that you can't stop watching after it starts. Shirley Temple plays a 17-year-old (Mary Hagen) that has mystery surrounding her birth and who her parents are - and as a result is mercilessly discriminated against by the entire "town elite". Temple is splendid in this role as I believe is the best performance of her career. Solid performance by co-star Ronald Reagen as he played the man who everyone suspected was Mary Hagen's father. The entire cast puts in solid performances as well.

Give "That Hagen Girl" movie a chance, I don't care what the average rating is!

This unremarkable film got a lot of notoriety in the 1970s when it was included in the book "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time". The film isn't good but it's nowhere near one of the worst films ever made! Mary Hagen (Shirley Temple) is believed to be the illegitimate child of Tom Bates (Ronald Reagan!). He left town when she was a baby and Mary was adopted by the Hagens--a kindly elderly couple. He returns when she's 18 and in high school. The rumors start up again and the town starts to do everything to make Mary feel like it's her fault that she's illegitimate.

This easily has some bizarre casting. Temple maybe being the illegitimate kid of Reagan is pretty silly but then we have Lois Maxwell as a kind teacher and Rory Calhoun playing her boyfriend! Casting aside this film is obvious and pretty silly by today's standards. The script is dreadful--full of bad dialogue and incredibly clichéd situations. A deathbed confession actually had me laughing out loud! Still, it is a somewhat interesting view of how small towns (and minds) treated illegitimate kids back in the 1940s.

The acting is pretty bad by the leads--Reagan seems unsure of what he's doing and seeing Temple trying to act--well it's not pretty! Maxwell and Calhoun easily give the best performances. This was well made on a small budget and was (for its time) a pretty risky subject. Worth seeing for camp value alone. Wait'll you see Temple playing Juliet in the school play! Most puzzling line: "Why don't you go away and catch yourself you foul ball!" (???????????)

Years ago I owned a book called "The Fifty Worst Movies" by dreaded film critic Michael Medved (you know the guy, he plugs his ears when he hears a naughty word). This Warner Bros. melodrama was one of his 50 worst; seeing it today, I'm amazed Medved hated it so much (he probably longs for something refined like this now after viewing today's new-jack street dramas). It's a fairly ridiculous soaper concerning adorable teenager Shirley Temple who is--gasp!--adopted. Worse, she has (sort of) acquired a crush on a much-older man who, gossips say, is her biological father! Campy adaptation of Edith Roberts' book is full of howlers and mediocre acting. Shirl and Ronald Reagan try very hard to sell the material, but the ending seems to come out of nowhere. Still, I had fun watching the dumb thing and imagining what audiences in 1947 tried to make of it. ** from ****

I disagree with the person who said the story line of "That Hagen Girl" is "totally improbable." Scandals involving premarital and extramarital sex and illegitimate children were prevalent in small towns in the 1940s and still are. Also, in the 1940-1960s many small towns (including the one where I grew up) still had an influential white collar class of people who acted and dressed exactly like the characters in "That Hagen Girl." As for the Ken Freneau character being a spineless Mama's boy, there are people of this sort in every generation and in every community. I grew up in a small town in Indiana where my ancestors were the founders, and I moved back here after living in a big city for a few years. "That Hagen Girl" does an excellent job of depicting the nature and the populace of small towns in the Midwest.

I believe the film was not appreciated initially because it was ahead of its time, for all that it presented social issues in a very tasteful and diplomatic way. No one has mentioned the mental illness of Grace (the high school girl friend of Tom Bates) or the reason for her condition. I believe the film implied that Grace's parents had pressured her to avoid scandal by having an abortion in Chicago and that afterward Grace was treated for a mental and emotional breakdown during the months she was absent from home. The Tom Bates character also hinted to Mary Hagen that Grace's "going away" and subsequent months in a psychiatric facility were the "reason" Mary could not be the illegitimate child he and Grace were suspected of conceiving.

"That Hagen Girl" is very much like "Peyton Place," another film that shows the dark side of a small town. I believe "That Hagen Girl" is an equally well-written and well-acted film that deals with serious social problems. The film's tasteful approach to moral problems is what I would like to see in today's films. -- Mrs. Barney Beers

That Hagen Girl is a curious film. It stars Shirley Temple and Ronald Reagan, along with a supporting cast of other well-known actors.

It's uncomfortable and odd viewing. In the film, Tom Bates, the male lead, is suspected by the entire village - and Janie herself - of being her true father (though he's not). He meets her as a young woman, when she is aged about seventeen and he is approximately twice that. He tries to help her, encouraged by a local teacher. The townfolk get meaner and meaner, because they view Janie as being "of bad stock" because she's believed to be illegitimate and adopted. Then suddenly right at the end Tom has proposed and they're getting married. There's no build up, there is no relationship progression. It's not apparent that he has ever had romantic feelings for her, let alone her for him. So it's rushed and jarring and odd.

Ronald Reagan apparently viewed the age gap as problematic, and wanted to change the ending. This left me wondering whether - rather like Girls' Dormitory (1936) - they changed the ending of the original story. In the play Girls' Dormitory is based on, the headmaster ends up marrying a teacher colleague of a similar age who has loved him for years. In the film, Herbert Marshall ends up proposing to Simone Simon, his teenage student, leaving his poor colleague with a broken heart.

I was so curious that I managed to source a copy (they are rare and it was expensive). As it turns out, for the most part - and particularly the start - the movie is quite faithful to the book. Both conjure up a similarly convincing atmosphere of poisonous small minds in a small town. The ending is also the same, in that Tom Bates does end up with Janie, not with the teacher of similar age who loves him.

However the book shows Tom Bates' romantic interest in Janie clearly developing from early on, and to a lesser extent, hers in him. This isn't entirely satisfactory on his side because she is in love with and engaged to someone else, Tom leaves, then Janie is jilted, and eventually she starts seeing someone else whom she doesn't really care for. Then at the eleventh hour, Tom returns and suddenly they're both going off into the sunset. The book feels rushed as well, though not nearly so much as the film does.

Ultimately, the conundrum remains unresolved. My speculation is that scenes between Temple and Reagan were cut - either from the script, or in editing - because they just weren't deemed palatable. Temple had been a child star, after all. It's one thing for her to evolve to "grown up" roles, like other child stars (Hayley Mills managed this smoothly). It's another to cast her alongside a much older man, in a story with deliberate and pervasive nuances of incest.

I would definitely recommend seeing this movie, as it has many points of quality and interest. Just don't expect a conventional story, or a satisfying (or realistic) ending.

Tom Bates (Ronald Reagan) left his home town of Jordan, Ohio to study law after being prevented from seeing his girlfriend Grace. Years later, he returns to Jordan to practice law. Mary Hagen (Shirley Temple) finds herself the subject of rumors that she is illegitimate and Tom is secretly her biological father. She faces many hurdles from the town and gets support from her teacher Julia Kane. Ken Freneau asks Mary to the dance but his mother disapproves.

Reagan is as stiff as a board. I can see him play a stoic cowboy but he's completely lost in this role. The role is problematic anyways. Shirley Temple is struggling as a teen star. Her acting lacks subtlety but she's not the biggest problem. Ken would be better played by Barbie's Ken doll. It's a movie full of poor acting from real actors and would function a lot better with a lot less Reagan. Tom Bates should be an idea more than an actual character. The movie should sink or swim with Temple by herself. Instead of being rescued by Tom, she should be a female empowerment figure by rescuing herself. The final ending with the bridal veil is a little awkward for its suggestion. Again, this story would be so much better without Reagan. It probably wouldn't work solely on Temple's shoulders but it's worth a try.