Release calendarTop 250 moviesMost popular moviesBrowse movies by genreTop box officeShowtimes & ticketsMovie newsIndia movie spotlight
    What's on TV & streamingTop 250 TV showsMost popular TV showsBrowse TV shows by genreTV news
    What to watchLatest trailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb SpotlightFamily entertainment guideIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsEmmysToronto Int'l Film FestivalHispanic Heritage MonthIMDb Stars to WatchSTARmeter AwardsAwards CentralFestival CentralAll events
    Born todayMost popular celebsCelebrity news
    Help centerContributor zonePolls
For industry professionals
  • Language
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Watchlist
Sign in
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Use app
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
IMDbPro

Adventure in Baltimore

  • 1949
  • Approved
  • 1h 29m
IMDb RATING
6.1/10
548
YOUR RATING
Shirley Temple, John Agar, and Robert Young in Adventure in Baltimore (1949)
Coming-of-AgePeriod DramaTeen ComedyComedyDrama

The liberated daughter of a 1905 minister innocently starts a scandal.The liberated daughter of a 1905 minister innocently starts a scandal.The liberated daughter of a 1905 minister innocently starts a scandal.

  • Director
    • Richard Wallace
  • Writers
    • Lionel Houser
    • Lesser Samuels
    • Christopher Isherwood
  • Stars
    • Robert Young
    • Shirley Temple
    • John Agar
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.1/10
    548
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Richard Wallace
    • Writers
      • Lionel Houser
      • Lesser Samuels
      • Christopher Isherwood
    • Stars
      • Robert Young
      • Shirley Temple
      • John Agar
    • 15User reviews
    • 4Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Photos12

    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster

    Top cast89

    Edit
    Robert Young
    Robert Young
    • Dr. Sheldon
    Shirley Temple
    Shirley Temple
    • Dinah Sheldon
    John Agar
    John Agar
    • Tom Wade
    Albert Sharpe
    Albert Sharpe
    • Mr. Fletcher
    Josephine Hutchinson
    Josephine Hutchinson
    • Mrs. Sheldon
    Charles Kemper
    Charles Kemper
    • Mr. Steuben
    Johnny Sands
    Johnny Sands
    • Gene Sheldon
    John Miljan
    John Miljan
    • Mr. Eckert
    Norma Varden
    Norma Varden
    • H. H. Hamilton
    Carol Brannon
    • Bernice Eckert
    • (as Carol Brannan)
    Charles Smith
    Charles Smith
    • Fred Beehouse
    Josephine Whittell
    Josephine Whittell
    • Mrs. Eckert
    Patti Brady
    Patti Brady
    • Sis Sheldon
    Gregory Marshall
    • Mark Sheldon
    Patsy Creighton
    • Sally Wilson
    Erville Alderson
    Erville Alderson
    • Vestryman
    • (uncredited)
    Monya Andre
    • Townswoman
    • (uncredited)
    Mary Bayless
    • Townswoman
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • Richard Wallace
    • Writers
      • Lionel Houser
      • Lesser Samuels
      • Christopher Isherwood
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews15

    6.1548
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10

    Featured reviews

    7bkoganbing

    Sheldon Family Values

    I'm not sure what kind of adventure folks were having in 1905 Baltimore, but it's clear to me that RKO was trying to cash in on a bit of the nostalgia gold that MGM found with Meet Me In St. Louis. There's no musical score in Adventure In Baltimore, but Shirley Temple taking the place of Judy Garland provides a nice wholesome image of a young woman who was questioning just what woman's place was in society as so many thousands of others were doing in America in 1905.

    Shirley's a preacher's kid and her father is an amused and tolerant, but slightly put out Robert Young. The film opens with her returning to Baltimore because she's been expelled from a Ladies Finishing School, the kind of places that would shortly go out of date and style. She's been espousing such radical ideas as woman's suffrage and she wants to be an artist.

    In addition to a slightly exasperated father, Shirley's also got a more than slightly exasperated young man who is interested in her in her then real life husband John Agar. One of the funniest scenes in the film is Agar at an oratorical society meeting delivering a speech expressing Temple's progressive ideas. The problem is she did not change the pronouns and poor Agar is making a big old fool of himself. Later on a 'scandalous' painting Temple does of Agar causes great concern and is used against Young who is being touted for the position of Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Baltimore.

    Robert Young was made up to look a great deal older than he was at the time the film was made. With his graying hair and with it curled the way it was, Young looks like Robert Donat as he was in Goodbye Mr. Chips. It made me think that Donat might have been who RKO had in mind originally for the plot. Nevertheless Young does fine in the role and his scenes with Shirley have some real tenderness to them.

    Adventure In Baltimore is not as good as Meet Me In St. Louis, but the film is nice family entertainment.
    Doylenf

    Routine comedy did nothing for Shirley's young adult career...

    After a few successful teen-age roles (and a couple of ill-fated ones), Shirley's uneven career as a young lady was not helped by this routine romantic comedy of the early 1900s in which she plays a rebellious daughter of a minister (Robert Young) with shocking ideas about love. As a crusader for women's suffrage, Shirley seems more petulant than feisty, playing a girl who crusades for women's suffrage. Nice to see Robert Young in his pre-Father Knows Best days. The film has an attractive look with handsome photography and a good feel for the period atmosphere, but the script is too lightweight to carry much conviction. Pleasant enough if you want to see what Shirley Temple looked like at this stage in her career. She had three more "clinkers" to go before quitting the screen.

    Her then-husband John Agar wasn't much help--here he comes across as a wooden actor, not well suited to comedy. Pleasant enough film, but just a trifle.
    3Handlinghandel

    Has Problems

    It is beautifully filmed by Robert de Grasse. And Robert Young's character is appealing and even admirable. This seems like a dry run for his most famous role, the title character in "Father Knows Best." Here he is a father in two ways: He has children, including Shirley Temple. And he is an Episcopal priest (under consideration for Bishop of his Diocese.) Shirley Temple is the main character. She is meant to be saucy and ahead of her time. But she's very hard to like. The escapade in which her boyfriend, John Agar, borrows a speech from her for a debating contest isn't admirable. And right here, it's hard to imagine that a priest would laugh off his daughter's involvement in such dishonesty.

    Then she paints Agar. She promises she will just use his body as a starting point -- no face. But the painting is exhibited in a show and everyone sees that she has painted him in a bathing suit. That would have been extremely risqué for 1905. What would be the equivalent 101 years later? Something on the Internet or in an X-rated video.

    All this while her father is being considered for Bishop. I wonder what Christopher Isherwood's original story was like. Maybe she was a forerunner to Sally Bowles. Here, however, she is sullen, pampered, and selfish.
    3marcslope

    Where's the adventure?

    Mild sitcom, from a story by Christopher Isherwood of all people, about a pastor's rebellious daughter in the stuffy upper-middle-class Baltimore of 1905. Though it's handsomely photographed, there's no Baltimore atmosphere here; it could as easily be Milwaukee or St. Louis, and in fact, the strong-family-ties theme, aggressive nostalgia, boy-next-door puppy love, and sleeve-tugging sentimentality play like a less well-written "Meet Me in St. Louis." Robert Young, top-billed and with a mustache and silly hair, does a tolerable warmup for "Father Knows Best"; he furrows his brow a lot and makes pronouncements. (But the height of the plot arc, in which he delivers a give-'em-hell sermon to his hypocritical congregation, is unaccountably omitted from the script.) The only real surprise of the movie is how amazingly uninteresting a 21-year-old Shirley Temple is. She simpers, she searches for her key light to be never anything but as attractive as possible, she tries to convey adolescent feistiness, but her line readings are monotonously alike, and she has no inner life. Nor is it wise to pair her with then-husband John Agar, in what's essentially the Tom Drake role; he's as dull as Tom Drake. The script puts the two through some very contrived roadblocks on the road to love, including a hard-to-believe episode of her unintentionally instigating a riot, a harder-to-believe one of him reading a speech of hers out loud and forgetting to change the pronouns, and an unpalatable one of her lying to him about painting his portrait. I wouldn't even root for such a selfish young miss. RKO must have figured, well, she's Shirley Temple, the audience will be on her side no matter what. I wasn't, and while the denouement is rushed to the point of incoherence, I wasn't sorry to see this one end.
    7planktonrules

    It starts off rather poorly but gets better as it progresses...so keep watching.

    I wasn't that impressed by the first half or so of this film. Shirley Temple plays Dinah Sheldon--a very liberated and modern young woman who ruffles many folks' feathers in this turn of the 20th century slice of life film. Now Dinah is never bad--just way ahead of her time and the narrow-minded folks back in 1905 couldn't stand a woman pushing for equal rights. Much of this portion seemed kooky and silly--and very inconsequential. Fortunately, midway through the film, things picked up. Dinah enters a very nice picture in a contest--and the local gossips begin ripping her apart and impugning her good name. This is particularly hard for her father, the Reverend (Robert Young)--as stands firmly behind Dinah regardless of the consequences to himself. He plays a guy very much like Jim Anderson from "Father Knows Best"--very wise, gentle and kind. This portion was both heartwarming and interesting--far more than the earlier part of the film. Overall, a nice little family film that starts slowly (and a bit too kooky) and ends on a very high note.

    More like this

    Woman in Hiding
    6.9
    Woman in Hiding
    The Locket
    7.1
    The Locket
    A Kiss for Corliss
    5.8
    A Kiss for Corliss
    The Saint Strikes Back
    6.2
    The Saint Strikes Back
    Arsène Lupin Returns
    6.7
    Arsène Lupin Returns
    The Scarlet Coat
    6.3
    The Scarlet Coat
    Mr. Belvedere Goes to College
    6.8
    Mr. Belvedere Goes to College
    That Hagen Girl
    6.2
    That Hagen Girl
    Third Finger, Left Hand
    6.9
    Third Finger, Left Hand
    Second Chance
    5.9
    Second Chance
    Success at Any Price
    6.4
    Success at Any Price
    Should Ladies Behave
    5.8
    Should Ladies Behave

    Related interests

    Elsie Fisher in Eighth Grade (2018)
    Coming-of-Age
    Emma Watson, Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, and Eliza Scanlen in Little Women (2019)
    Period Drama
    Lacey Chabert, Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, and Amanda Seyfried in Mean Girls (2004)
    Teen Comedy
    Will Ferrell in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)
    Comedy
    Mahershala Ali and Alex R. Hibbert in Moonlight (2016)
    Drama

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      "The Screen Guild Theater" broadcast a 30-minute radio adaptation of Adventure in Baltimore (1949) on March 30, 1950 with Shirley Temple reprising her film role.
    • Goofs
      At 1:02:39, a boom microphone can be seen when Lily Sheldon, the mother, announces to her children that her husband has been nominated to become a bishop.
    • Quotes

      [first lines]

      Narrator: [voice over narration] What could be more symbolic of America than the modern American schoolgirl? Intelligent, restrained, dignified and...

    • Crazy credits
      The opening credits appear on a large pad with a hand tearing off the individual pages.

    Top picks

    Sign in to rate and Watchlist for personalized recommendations
    Sign in

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • April 19, 1949 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Baltimore Escapade
    • Filming locations
      • RKO Studios - 780 N. Gower Street, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA(Studio)
    • Production company
      • RKO Radio Pictures
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 1h 29m(89 min)
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb App
    Sign in for more accessSign in for more access
    Follow IMDb on social
    Get the IMDb App
    For Android and iOS
    Get the IMDb App
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • License IMDb Data
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Your Ads Privacy Choices
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2025 by IMDb.com, Inc.