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A bit of reflexive captivation kicks things off, "Happy Ending" right out of the gate in an empty auditorium that pans 180° to reveal Phyllis Brooks with an all-girl orchestra. The search for "Little Miss America" is held on the airwaves, the host (Jack Haley) endures one mosquito-voiced contestant after another. Enter Shirley Temple as Rebecca, "self-reliant" is her byword, just the tuneful trouper the cereal-tycoon sponsor needs. (Having previously crushed his boxed wares in frustration, the executive munches beatifically on scattered flakes while listening to the moppet's song.) A malentendu sends her to the farm, where there's a loose porch board for William Demarest pratfalls and an aunt (Helen Westley) who hisses at the very notion of "show people." The adman (Randolph Scott) works around the matron's disapproval by having the tiny heroine secretly warble from the studio next door. "I gotta hand it to you. I've been out on a limb before, but I've never had a guy behind me sawing it off." An old tale, old as Griffith (Pippa Passes), blithely updated by Allan Dwan as a backstage broadcast comedy. Trading her trademark curls for puffy twintails, Temple enjoys a couple of tapping duets with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and beams her way through a winking medley ("In rangy britches there's a lot of riches / On which you don't pay any income tax"). Choice doodles include Slim Summerville's pas de deux with an uncooperative ladder, and Franklin Pangborn's aria of gleeful anticipation as an "emergency musician" given his big break by the star's feigned sore throat. "This is certainly a funny radio station." Young People points the way to New Deal adolescence. With Gloria Stuart, Alan Dinehart, Paul Hurst, Mary McCarty, J. Edward Bromberg, Ruth Gillette, Paul Harvey, and Dixie Dunbar. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |