Kathleen

After Shirley Temple was released from Twentieth Century Fox, this was her attempt to transition to mature roles. At the time, Temple was in her preteen phase and had outgrown the type of characters she usually played. KATHLEEN was her first, and only film, at MGM. Temple was left out of the teenybopper movies that were being made with the likes of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. KATHLEEN is still a decent effort though the story is a bit uninspired. The lead character Kathleen (Temple) is a restless child who only wants to win the affection of her father (Herbert Marshall) who is marrying a woman who does not love him (Gail Patrick). After Kathleen drives away her governess, Dr. Martha Kent (Laraine Day) has been enlisted to get to the root of Kathleen's nasty behavior. I enjoy this film because Shirley still gave us a good performance and handled her dramatic scenes well. She would go on to work with David O. Selznick who gave her better material.

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.

I first saw this film when I was about 13 and loved it then. It's a good film for the right age group. I was fascinated with the tricks Kathleen plays on her nurse, the strict household she lived in and how she gets away. It was also interesting to see the difference in the manners of the 40's. For example, Kathleen politely says "how do you do" to an adult she hates. She accepts a decision her father makes which she feels is unfair. I can see how this film might not be very interesting to an adult seeing it for the first time. But is good classic entertainment for the right audience. It's also great seeing Shirley in a role where she's not a sweet little tyke!

I saw "Kathleen" thanks to someone who taped it off TCM.com then put it up on YouTube. It's still on YouTube if you're interested. It has never been released on DVD or VHS.

In Shirley Temple's autobiography "Child Star", there's a photo of her on the set of "Kathleen" with bongos strapped to her waist. She's in a shell-shaped bandstand with other cast members performing a calypso number.

She writes that the stage undulated (moved in a wave fashion), making it very difficult for the dancers to get the scene down right. Everybody had to stay late for constant re-shoots.

So, in the movie from YouTube, the scene is not in there. There's just one song and dance routine but it's not a calypso with the bongos. The one from YouTube ran almost an hour and a half.

'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.