Honeymoon

Honeymoon wasn't the biggest hit, for one very simple reason: no one wanted to watch Shirley Temple get de-flowered. Ten years earlier, she was Heidi.

In 1947, she plays a young lady who gets swept away by her hormones and elopes with the ridiculously handsome Guy Madison. Guy is a soldier, and there's a bunch of red tape involving his transfer and Shirley's ability to come with him. So, they're not allowed to have a wedding night until their marriage is verified by the Powers That Be. So, as these two crazy kids try to ignore their raging hormones, they enlist an old fuddy duddy, Franchot Tone, to help them, since he's a diplomat. Do you see why this wasn't a good role for Shirley? By all means, put her in a romantic comedy. Just don't put her in a role where she spends eighty minutes trying to get de-flowered.

And, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out how insulting it was to put Franchot Tone in this role. He's handsome, charming, and elegant. He's not an old fuddy duddy. He shouldn't just be the chaperone to the young romantic couple. There's no reason why he couldn't have been the love interest himself! Oh well.

This is an engaging little trifle, the kind of innocuous fluff that was a staple of the studios during the Golden Age.

Shirley Temple's films as a young adult are a mixed lot at best but this one does show off her genuine gift for comedy, certainly not as well as her next film The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer would but she does handle her role here with a deft touch. Made when she was just eighteen it also shows that as a young girl she was quite a lovely lass.

Franchot Tone, that marvelous actor so often ill used by Hollywood, brings his exasperated charm to bear on his role of a put upon diplomat trying to help out Shirley and the young and impossibly handsome Guy Madison. Speaking of Guy, his role of the frustrated prospective groom doesn't really require much of him but earnest attractiveness and he fills that well.

All in all silly and light as a feather this confection breaks absolutely no new ground but does showcase its stars to pleasing advantage. What more can you ask from a slight entertainment like this.

Pretty teenager Shirley Temple (as Barbara Olmstead) arrives in Mexico City, where she is to marry handsome young Guy Madison (as Phil Vaughn). At the station, Ms. Temple reads a "Mexican Guide" which explains, "In Mexico almost everyone speaks Spanish," and advises her tipping is "not in vogue." After absorbing this helpful information, Temple learns Mr. Madison's flight has been delayed, from suave American consul Franchot Tone (as David Flanner). Madison arrives, and begins looking for Temple.

Meanwhile, Temple has forgotten to eat. She faints from hunger, and is rescued by Mr. Tone. After he feeds her, Temple finds herself oddly attracted to the "old-fashioned" older Tone, calling him the "Walter Pidgeon type." Then, they jitterbug.

The film continues to tease you about a sexual attraction between Temple and Tone. All along, you're fairly certain she will marry Madison. Confusion and misunderstanding between the threesome tries to make you laugh out loud. At best, the film filled theaters with a few tepid chuckles. The plot supposes Temple falls in love by landing on her man in a swimming pool. This is how she relates meeting Madison; the film's climax occurs when Temple, in a very modest two-piece, has a similar encounter with Tone.

*** Honeymoon (5/17/47) William Keighley ~ Shirley Temple, Franchot Tone, Guy Madison, Lina Romay

Franchot Tone is an American diplomatic officer in Mexico City. He's engaged to Linay Romay and has a bright future ahead of him. Then Shirley Temple shows up. She's supposed to marry Guy Madison, a corporal on leave from the Canal Zone. Only he's nowhere to be found.

Various things happen, including contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and Miss Temple will inevitably fall in love with Tone. This movie flopped hard, and there are several obvious reasons, beginning with Tone. He was stuck in this sort of role at the time, cast as the young man on the rise in his forties, exuding a slightly bewildered air proclaiming he should be doing Chekhov, not this tripe. Edward Cronjager seems at a loss as to how to photograph Miss Temple. Sometimes she looks 12, not yet grown out of her baby fat, and sometimes she looks a pretty young woman in her 20s. Also, she's playing a woolly-minded flibbbertigibbet, always changing her mind, and it's not really attractive.

One player who's spot on is Miss Romay as Tone's fiancee. She knew how diplomats and the people around them acted because she was the daughter of a diplomat, a Mexican consular attache in Los Angeles. With the right connections and talents, she became a singer in Xavier Cugat's band and married into the wealthy Gould family. She died in 2010 at the age of 91.

I never was much of a Shirley Temple fan; personally, I always thought she came across as sugary sweet and precocious as a child. In Honeymoon, she's twenty, and playing Barbara, meeting her fiance in Mexico City. Guy Madison is Corporal Vaughn, but they miss each other at the station. and along comes american consul Flanner (Franchot Tone) to help out. Although each time he "helps out", it seems to cause more trouble. and of course, everyone else is determined to mis-understand every move they make! studio regulars Gene Lockhart and Grant Mitchell are here in supporting roles. not to mention the uncredited cast of thousands. For a consul, no-one seems to respect Flanner, and he never seems to mention it, when people question his motives. I guess you have to buy into all the silliness. and clearly this was all done on the hollywood production lot. oddly, Tone made another film called "Lost Honeymoon" the very same year. he made so many films dealing with marriage and goofed up relationships. This one gets pretty silly, with slapstick humor and so many misunderstandings, it could be an episode of Three's Company, for those old enough to remember. More interesting as a historical highlight for Temple and Tone than for the story itself.