Classic Film Friday: Bright Eyes

This is a Shirley Temple movie, and so you know it is going to have a little girl, singing, and dancing. Shirley Blake (Shirley Temple) is a little girl who's father has died(not in the movie), he was a pilot, and she is known all over the airplane hangers. Her mother also dies (in the movie), she is hit by a car.

Her mother was working as a maid for a well-to-do family. Joy Smythe (Jane Withers) plays the adversarial rich, bratty, spoiled little girl. Who also lives with Shirley as her mother was a live in maid for the Smythes. But the rich Uncle Ned (Charles Sellon) likes Shirley, more than he likes his own flesh and blood. So everyone has to be nice to Shirley, while Uncle Ned is around anyway, not so much when he isn't, which makes Shirley run away to the airfield and Godfather James "Loop" Merritt (James Dunn).

So a custody battle ensues, but neither party really wants to do the other harm. It's just one of those things, of not knowing the "who, what, when, how, and why" behind the other person's actions. We watched this movie because my daughter is dancing to "On the Good Ship Lollipop" song in her dance recital. I don't think I'll have the next Shirley Temple by any means, but the movie is pretty good.