Watch The Little Colonel For Free

Just perfect...

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

America's favorite moppet Shirley Temple may have met her match in scene stealing with Lionel Barrymore playing her grandfather. Just watching Barrymore taking back his scenes from Temple makes The Little Colonel an enjoyable film to watch.Barrymore complete with white suit, Panatella, and goatee with long white hair looks like the spitting image of Colonel Sanders. He's one reconstructed old rebel and what Lee and Grant signed at Appomattox has no bearing on him. All he has to hear is that his daughter Evelyn Venable has taken unto herself a Yankee for a husband and he disowns her. So she and John Davis Lodge go first north and west and have themselves a daughter.When Lodge goes into the west with a couple of shifty partners in a prospecting deal, he sends Venable and the little girl they have now back south to live with grandfather. Well kind of, as they take a gate cottage to live in. But as these Shirley Temple movies go, you know it's Shirley who brings all the warring parties together. Who could resist.The Little Colonel is known for that famous dance that Bill Robinson does with Shirley Temple on the staircase. It's still as entertaining as it ever was. The last couple of minutes are in color in which all the principal players appeared in that for the first time.The scenes with Barrymore and Temple are absolutely precious. Just who was the best capturer of the audience's attention. Judge for yourself.

THE LITTLE COLONEL (Fox, 1935), directed by David Butler, stars Shirley Temple in one of her more famous movie roles during her early years as a young performer. Aside from her initial teaming with legendary dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (4th billed during opening credits, bottom billed in the closing), with whom she does a memorable "stair" dance, it places her against odds with the crusty Lionel Barrymore, on loan out assignment from MGM, sporting white hair, bushy eyebrows and droopy mustache in the old Southerner/ or Claude Gillingwater Sr. tradition, and what a pair they make.Based on a story by Annie Fellows Johnston, the plot opens with a prologue set in 1870s Kentucky on a Southern plantation where Colonel Lloyd (Lionel Barrymore) disowns his beloved daughter, Elizabeth (Evelyn Venable) for eloping with a "Yankee", Jack Sherman (John Lodge). During their six years in Philadelphia, Jack and Elizabeth have been blessed with a child, Lloyd (Shirley Temple), whom they witness being commissioned as a "little colonel" by soldiers on a western outpost. With John remaining at the post, Elizabeth returns to Kentucky where she and Lloyd settle in an old cottage left to her by her late mother that happens to be next door to her father. After meeting his granddaughter with an introduction of getting mud thrown on him, he finds her to be just as stubborn and quick tempered as he. In spite of their rugged start and similar personality traits, Grandpa eventually warms up to Lloyd, though his stubbornness keeps him from having anything to do with his daughter, even when learning of swindlers Swazey (Sidney Blackmer) and Hull (Aden Chase) in their home threatening the ailing Jack and Elizabeth to turn over the deed to worthless property they sold him that has been proved valuable.THE LITTLE COLONEL, a leisurely paced story with familiar theme, relies mostly on the strength of its leading players, Temple and Barrymore. It's also one of the better films in which Temple does not typically play an orphan. Evelyn Venable, whose career failed to take off after a promising start opposite Fredric March in DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY (Paramount, 1934), provides the opening playing the harp and singing "Love's Young Dream" to her guests. The song is later reprized by Temple serenading to her grandfather as he envisions his daughter at the harp. John Lodge, virtually forgotten but better known for his performance as Count Alexi in THE SCARLET EMPRESS (Paramount, 1934) starring Marlene Dietrich, has little to do until the final half of the story. Hattie McDaniel, four years away her Academy Award winning performance in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939), supports as the Sherman maid, Mom Beck. Dressed in "Aunt Jemima" attire, she shares amusing moments with Colonel Lloyd's butler (Robinson), sharing time together with the "little colonel" at a spiritual gathering witnessing a woman getting dunked in the river where she's having her sins washed away as Negroes sing "The Sun Shines Brighter." Aside from the aforementioned "stair dance," Temple and Robinson do an encore tap dancing to Stephen Foster's "Oh, Susannah" in the stable to harmonica playing by May Lily (Avonne Johnson). Johnson, along with Nyamza Potts as her little brother, Henry Clay, support as Temple's playmates. As in many Temple films, there's a pet dog, this time a pooch named Fritzi. Others in the cast include William Burress (Doctor Scott); Geneva Williams (Maria); and Robert Warwick (Colonel Gray).Priot to 1985, THE LITTLE COLONEL played frequently on commercial television with the closing segment, filmed in Technicolor, usually absent, with story coming to an abrupt conclusion either after Barrymore's closing line or next scene of McDaniel successfully breaking down the door after being locked in by one of Sherman's "guests." When distributed on video in 1988, the closing Technicolor segment was restored, and shown intact at 82 minutes on cable TV broadcasts on the Disney Channel (early 1990s), American Movie Classics (1996-2001) and finally the Fox Movie Channel. THE LITTLE COLONEL is currently available on DVD in black and white or colorized versions.The success of THE LITTLE COLONEL brought forth a similar theme and title of THE LITTLEST REBEL (1935), reuniting Temple with Bill Robinson once again, with plot set during the Civll War instead of after-wards. Both classic films with Temple (and Robinson) at the peak of their careers. (***1/2)

I always get THE LITTLEST REBEL and THE LITTLE COLONEL mixed up when I think of SHIRLEY TEMPLE films, but while they both have the same sort of background (the Civil War and post-Civil War), the quality of entertainment is vastly different.This one gets off to a painfully dull start, with Shirley's mother (EVELYN VENABLE) running off with a Yankee (JOHN BOLES), and later returning home with her little girl only to find that the grandfather has never forgiven her for marrying a Yank. Naturally, it's up to little Shirley to melt the heart of the crusty grandfather (LIONEL BARRYMORE) and we all know how that's going to turn out.What makes the film interesting are the dance segments with BILL ROBINSON, as the tap dancing servant, most memorably in the staircase dance that is always shown whenever there are film clips from any of Shirley's Fox films. And for an added surprise, there's the finale which is photographed in three strip Technicolor and gave the world its first glimpse of the child star in color.Summing up: Racial elements are plentiful but, hey, this was 1935--a different world then--but the story is so wishy-washy that it's only suitable for die hard Temple fans.

Crusty old Colonel Lloyd (Lionel Barrymore) is used to having his ornery way so when he finds out his daughter Elizabeth (Evelyn Venable) is determined to run off with Yankee Jack Shermon (John Lodge) to be married, he confronts her in a heated exchange and vows never to see her again if she does, and then she leaves.Several years later Elizabeth, with her husband and their young daughter Miss Lloyd (Shirley Temple), decides to return to a small house that belonged to her mother and which happens to be next door to her stubborn father's home. Obviously there are soon accidental meetings between all concerned, and a few clashes of granddaughter and the elderly Colonel just to see who is the most stubborn! Troubles descend on the Sherman family through some persuasive dishonest men who are out to rob them of their legal rights, and things start to get serious but grandpa comes to the rescue.Becky (Hattie McDaniel) and Walker (Bill Robinson) certainly add some amusing dialog during their stroll, as in spelling out "pohos"; and Robinson's tap dancing is superb. Not surprisingly, little Shirley is right in there keeping pace with him as they both tap dance up the stairs. A great moment in film.Nice family entertainment.