I’m going to pass over Dimples as quickly as duty will allow because, like Now and Forever, it’s a bit of a dud, and for similar reasons. The setting is New York in 1850; Shirley plays Chalvia Dolores Appleby, known by all as “Dimples”. As in Now and Forever, she’s the child of an unregenerate grifter, only this time it’s not her father but her grandfather, “Professor” Eustace Appleby (Frank Morgan). The Professor calls himself a music teacher of “the Pianoforte, the Bugle, the Melodion, the Drum, also Bird Calls”, but mainly he just stands in the crowd shilling while Dimples and his other “students” sing, dance and play their instruments in the streets. Then he starts the contributions when Dimples passes the hat and, while other bystanders are dropping coins in, he works the crowd picking pockets. In another similarity to Now and Forever, Dimples catches the eye of wealthy old Mrs. Drew (Helen Westley), who wants to lift her out of the Bowery poverty in which she lives with the Professor. At the same time, Mrs. Drew becomes estranged from her nephew Allen (Robert Kent) when he becomes romantically involved with (gasp!) an actress whom he decides to star in a production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin — in which he later hires Dimples to play Little Eva.

 

Unlike Shirley’s character in Now and Forever, Dimples is wise to her reprobate forebear and goes out of her way to shield him. When he steals a clock from Mrs. Drew’s house, she returns it, telling the kind lady that she stole it and the Professor made her bring it back. When Allen Drew wants to hire Dimples for Uncle Tom’s Cabin but has no part for the Professor, she turns the role down until he agrees to give the Professor a job. In this way and others, the Professor becomes the child and Dimples the guardian. 

 

In Child Star Shirley remembered Frank Morgan’s tireless efforts to upstage her and steal focus during their scenes — fiddling with his cuffs, flourishing his handkerchief, placing his stovepipe hat on a table between her and the camera so that she couldn’t be in the shot without stepping off her mark and out of the light. (“Both of us knew perfectly well what he was doing. There was no way I could cope, short of biting at his fingers.”) Director William A. Seiter was on to Morgan’s tricks too; in this scene, where Dimples sings “Picture Me Without You” (one of four pleasantly forgettable songs provided by Jimmy McHugh and Ted Koehler), Seiter made Morgan sit in a chair with his back to the camera. (“When this picture is over,” cracked producer Nunnally Johnson, “either Shirley will have acquired a taste for Scotch whiskey or Frank will come out with curls.”)

 

Shirley’s consternation is understandable, but the problem with the Professor isn’t Morgan’s performance — he’s as delightful as ever — it’s the character. The man is simply no damn good. There isn’t an honest bone in his body; every word that passes his lips is a lie, and he’ll steal anything that isn’t bolted to the floor. He never makes the slightest effort to reform the way Gary Cooper’s Jerry Day tries to do in Now and Forever — at least not until the waning seconds of the picture, when it comes much too late to be convincing. Variety’s reviewer “Odec” described the Professor as “Micawberish”, but that’s a slander on the great character from David Copperfield. Wilkins Micawber is merely feckless and improvident; Eustace Appleby is what later generations would call a sociopath and pathological narcissist — Robert Kent’s Allen Drew is much closer to the mark when he denounces the Professor as a “senile old scoundrel.” On top of that, he’s stupid, and Dimples’s frequent efforts to cover for him (which convince no one) only make her look like a fool. The Professor’s bumbling perfidy casts a sour pall over every scene he’s in, and Frank Morgan, despite his skill at stealing scenes (maybe even because of it), is powerless to make this good-for-nothing tinhorn Fagin likeable.

 

Dimples does have its pluses. Bill Robinson, doing off-camera duty this time as dance director, gave Shirley some sprightly syncopated routines, like this one here to McHugh and Koehler’s “He Was a Dandy”, flanked by Thurman Black and Jesse Scott. The picture sports a few anachronisms. It’s explicitly set in 1850, but it opens on a shot of a campaign poster for Franklin Pierce and involves a stage production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin; both Pierce’s election and the novel’s publication didn’t happen until 1852. Still, there’s a nice period feel to it, and the glimpse of the 1850s American theater is pretty authentic. Maybe too authentic — the play’s Uncle Tom and Topsy (and, for plot reasons, Frank Morgan) appear in blackface, as do such genuine African Americans as Stepin Fetchit and the Hall Johnson Choir (in those days even people of color, on the rare occasions they were allowed to perform with whites, were required to “black up”).

 

Neither “Odec” in Variety nor Frank S. Nugent in the New York Times was overly impressed with Dimples. Odec assured exhibitors that they’d make money as usual on Shirley’s latest, “but it won’t be due to the fact that ‘Dimples’ is solid, expertly fashioned entertainment. It’s anything but that.” Nugent, for his part, was downright exasperated: “Why they bother with titles, or with plots either for that matter, is beyond us…Now leave us alone a while; we want to brood.”

Just one more point about Dimples before we move on. In Child Star Shirley recalled filming Little Eva’s death scene (which she plays much the way a child actress in the 1850s would probably have done it), and actor Paul Stanton, as Eva’s grieving father, sobbing so broadly that he shook the bed she was lying on. However, Shirley transplanted the recollection from Dimples to The Little Colonel the year before, and she identified her over-emoting stage father as John Lodge, who played her “real” father in that picture. Such are the occasional vagaries of even the most reliable memory.

Stowaway

(released December 18, 1936)

 

But upon arrival, the boatman robs the sleeping Ching-Ching and disappears, leaving her to wander the city alone. That’s how she meets Tommy Randall (Robert Young, on loan from MGM), a wandering American playboy. After their encounter, the girl falls asleep in the rumble seat of Tommy’s automobile while he goes roaring off on a drunk with another wealthy globetrotter (Eugene Pallette). Tommy’s valet Atkins (Arthur Treacher) tracks his employer from bar to bar and manages to get him aboard their departing ship safe and (reasonably) sound, along with Tommy’s auto — and, unbeknownst to all, the sleeping Ching-Ching.

When the befuddled Ching-Ching awakens the next morning, she’s immediately spotted for a stowaway and chased from deck to deck. She takes refuge in the stateroom of Susan Parker (Alice Faye) and Susan’s future mother-in-law Mrs. Hope (Helen Westley), on their way to Bangkok to join Susan’s intended. Before long, Ching-Ching is reunited with her “Uncle” Tommy; for his part, Tommy agrees to stand good for the child’s passage until her guardians can be contacted. Also, even through his pounding hangover, he can see that Susan is the most beautiful woman aboard ship. Susan’s eyes are clearer than his, but it’s plain to see that the attraction is mutual.

Well, we can all guess where this is headed, and sure enough it gets there — with a wise judge in Reno (J. Edward Bromberg) consulting with Ching-Ching before denying a divorce petition for probably the first time in the history of the State of Nevada.

Stowaway reunited Shirley with director William A. Seiter (and also with writer William Conselman, who had done so well by Shirley on Bright Eyes and The Little Colonel, writing this time with Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin, from a story by Samuel G. Engel). Without the odious Professor who blighted Dimples (and without Frank Morgan’s upstaging stunts), Seiter was able to do much better by Shirley, mainly by not forcing her to be the whole show.

 

To be continued…