The Colors of Contagion in JEZEBEL (1938)

Bette Davis won her second Academy Award for Best Actress for the Civil War melodrama, Jezebel (1938), which took advantage of the cultural mania over Gone with the Wind by using many of the same plot elements and beating the 1939 blockbuster to theaters. Like Gone with the Wind, Jezebel tells the story of a spoiled, headstrong Southern belle who pines for the love of a married man, and the two pictures also share problematic visions of the antebellum South and slavery that perpetuate fantasies about happy plantations with graceful ladies in hoop skirts. The films even share the same composer, the great Max Steiner. Gone with the Wind, however, boasts one very important advantage over Jezebel because it had the time and budget to be a lavish Technicolor spectacle, while Jezebel unfolds in cheaper, faster black and white. The lack of color onscreen is particularly ironic for Jezebel as it's very much a story about color, specifically the sexually charged red of the scandalous dress Davis' heroine wears but also the deadly yellow of the fever outbreak that dominates the film's second half. In both cases, Jezebel connects color with contagion, something that spreads and infects the simple black and white world around it and thus should be avoided at all costs.

Davis plays Julie Marsden, a wealthy and temperamental young woman living in New Orleans before the start of the Civil War. Julie loves her prim suitor, Preston (Henry Fonda), but she also loves getting her own way, and she retaliates when Pres chooses business over pleasure by making a spectacle of herself at the Olympus Ball, which causes Pres to break off their engagement. One year later, Pres returns with his Northern bride, Amy (Margaret Lindsay), and Julie is once again torn between her love for Pres and her desire to stir up trouble for the sake of revenge. Julie is finally forced to reckon with her transgressions when Pres becomes one of the thousands suffering from yellow fever and in danger of being quarantined to a desolate leper colony.

The first, and most memorable, contagious color is red, the shade of the inappropriate dress Julie wears to the Olympus Ball, where all unmarried young ladies are expected to wear white. In the movie we can't actually see a red dress, only a dark one, but the characters discuss its vulgarity and shocking color at length. The dressmaker tells Julie and her Aunt Belle (Fay Bainter) that the gown was made for a local woman of ill repute, but this information only strengthens Julie's perverse desire to wear it to a ball intended to celebrate the virginal purity of young ladies of her station. Julie's plan to punish Pres backfires when he grimly insists on parading her around the ball, where everyone recoils from her in horror. The camera looks down from above to show us Pres and Julie dancing while girls in white dresses fly away from them, fearful of being associated with such disregard for convention and the sexual knowledge that the red dress strongly suggests. In this scene, it is Julie herself who is contagious, contaminating the reputation of everyone close to her. She has very literally made herself a scarlet woman, although she is thoughtless and perhaps naive enough not to realize the implications of her appearance. Pres, who understands the extent of her transgression, dares anyone to insult her because he still feels obligated by their social code to duel to the death in her defense, but after the ball he breaks with her and leaves town. Julie is so struck by his rejection and her own humiliation that she becomes something of a hermit for the next year, waiting at home with her white dress ready for the day Pres returns, but Julie doesn't realize how permanently she has contaminated their relationship. 

In the second half of the story, yellow replaces red as the contagious color, this time a color of fever and death. New Orleans and its surrounding areas succumb to a yellow fever outbreak, which people in the 19th century believed to be spread from person to person (as opposed to being spread by infected mosquitos). The film shows the audience that Pres is, indeed, bitten by an infected mosquito in a small but crucial moment at Julie's plantation outside the city, but the other characters only know that yellow fever is highly contagious and terrifying. Their fear is compounded by the city's decree that every known sufferer be exiled to an island normally used as a leper colony, where the chance of survival is almost nonexistent. Julie rushes to New Orleans to tend Pres, even though she might be shot for sneaking across the quarantine lines, but her desire to shake off her moral contamination is stronger than her fear of viral contagion. Julie argues with Amy for the right to accompany Pres to the fatal island; although Amy is Pres' wife, Julie needs the redemption her sacrifice can offer. She begs Amy, "Help me make myself clean again as you are clean. Let me prove myself worthy of the love I bear him." Ironically, one form of contagion counteracts the other; her willingness to embrace death by yellow fever serves to atone for Julie's moral contamination as embodied by the red dress. Julie wins the argument and is last seen in a wagon rolling away toward exile, suffering, and almost certain doom, very like Sidney Carton at the end of A Tale of Two Cities. In many ways it's a conventional ending for a woman who crosses the moral and sexual boundaries of her culture, whether she exists in the 19th century or under the tight control of the Hays Code. Julie, however, makes a triumph of her martyrdom because she believes that dying with Pres is better than living without him, and her sacrifice means that she will be remembered for her heroic final act rather than her many sins. 

While neither color actually appears on the screen, red and yellow dominate the imagination of the viewer as Jezebel unfolds, and both signal danger and contagion to the inhabitants of the film's world. Director William Wyler and cinematographer Ernest Haller skillfully evoke the effects of the red dress and yellow fever, but it would have been fascinating to see how those two fatal hues could have been used in a color production. One need only think of the iconic use of red in Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948) or the way that color enhances every shot in Gone with the Wind. For more of Bette in black and white, watch Dark Victory (1939), The Letter (1940), and Now, Voyager (1942). If you're interested in seeing period melodramas in lavish color, check out Blanche Fury (1948) or Raintree County (1955). According to an interview with Robert Osborne, Bette Davis herself preferred black and white to Technicolor, but you can see her in color in movies like The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), The Virgin Queen (1955), and The Whales of August (1987).

 

* If you like my posts here, you can read more in my Silver Screen Standards column for Classic Movie Hub!

Classic Films in Focus: THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND (1936)

Like most biographical and historical movies, The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936) takes liberties with its source material, but for the most part it does so in the service of a more compelling narrative. The film's director, John Ford, has always been associated with a certain kind of romanticized historical moment, and Ford's hallmarks turn up in every facet of this period drama, including its themes, its use of music, and its cast. With Ford at the helm and Nunnally Johnson on the screenplay, The Prisoner of Shark Island delivers an exciting story inspired by the experiences of Dr. Samuel Mudd, the physician who set the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth and subsequently found himself imprisoned at Fort Jefferson on the desolate islands of Florida's Dry Tortugas. In the middle of the riveting action, classic film fans will find a number of favorite stars, including Warner Baxter, Gloria Stuart, Harry Carey, and John Carradine, whose performance as a vicious prison officer is especially effective.

Warner Baxter takes the lead as Dr. Samuel Mudd, who unwittingly aids Lincoln assassin Booth one fateful night in 1865. Tried by a biased court to appease an angry public, Mudd avoids execution but is sentenced to life in prison at Fort Jefferson, where horrific conditions make any term likely to end in death. Mudd's devoted wife, Peggy (Gloria Stuart), and father-in-law (Claude Gillingwater) strive to free him without success, even though a former slave, Buck (Ernest Whitman), serves as an inside man to assist Mudd in the prison. When yellow fever breaks out on the island, Mudd has the opportunity to save those who have treated him so cruelly and prove himself a better man.

Although most of the movie was shot on sound stages, Fort Jefferson was and is a real location, a perfect inspiration for this kind of harrowing prison tale. In its finest moments the picture captures the desperation of men trapped in such a place, especially when fever sweeps the island and critical supplies run dangerously low. Warner Baxter plays Mudd with vigor and intensity; he has particularly good scenes during his escape attempt and his bout with yellow fever. Whatever we might make of the real Samuel Mudd, this one clearly descends from the Count of Monte Cristo and the Man in the Iron Mask. Such characters require fierce antagonists, and Mudd gets a very sharp one in John Carradine's Sergeant Rankin, who delights in tormenting the doctor at every opportunity. Several shots offer Carradine's distinctively hawkish features in breathtaking closeup to make the most of every line and nuance in the actor's face, where we read his intelligence, energy, and cruelty as only a performer like Carradine can render them. Gloria Stuart makes a lovely sufferer in her scenes of anguish over Mudd's fate, while Harry Carey has a very solid role as the island's commandant, a good man who ultimately corrects the injustice done to Mudd.

Race ultimately proves a thornier problem for The Prisoner of Shark Island than historical fidelity, and the movie's depiction of black characters may explain why it is less celebrated today than other Ford films. Ford tries to show Mudd as a humane former slave owner and even a faithful friend to Buck, but at the same time he populates the screen with stereotypes who reinforce racist assumptions. In the picture's worst scene, Mudd approaches a mob of terrified black soldiers who have holed up together to avoid the yellow fever outbreak. Even though they are armed, the soldiers obey Mudd because they perceive him as a Southern master due to his voice and bearing. The encounter suggests that Mudd possesses an authority over the black soldiers that his Northern, non-slaver captors lack. It's not a particularly surprising attitude, given that Gone with the Wind (1939) and other movies about the Civil War South engage in the same tactics, but for the modern viewer such material can be very hard to take. In spite of those issues, the movie has enough going for it that it deserves some serious attention, especially from Ford fans, and it might usefully serve in a thoughtful discussion about Ford's engagements with race in his later, better known films.

Be sure to note the brief appearance of Frank McGlynn Sr. as Abraham Lincoln; the actor portrayed the president at least a dozen times, and you can also see him in the role in The Littlest Rebel (1935) and The Plainsman (1936). For contrast, try Ford films like Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) or the much more progressive Sergeant Rutledge (1960). Silent movie veteran Warner Baxter is not as familiar today as many other leading men of his era, but he won the Oscar for Best Actor for In Old Arizona (1928), and you'll find him in 42nd Street (1933) and the series of Crime Doctor pictures. See Gloria Stuart in The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and Titanic (1997). If you want to learn more about the real history of Samuel Mudd and Fort Jefferson, visit the National Park Service site for Dry Tortugas, or better yet make a special trip to see the island for yourself.


PS - I was inspired to watch The Prisoner of Shark Island by my own trip to Dry Tortugas National Park. Here are some photos of the real site that you can compare with the film's recreation of it. No, there were no sharks in the moat!

History, Hollywood, and a Famous Train: THE GENERAL and THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE

In The General (1926), Buster Keaton plays a Confederate train engineer who doggedly pursues his beloved locomotive when Yankees make off with it. Thirty years later, The Great Locomotive Chase (1956) tells basically the same story, this time with Jeffrey Hunter as the Southern engineer and Fess Parker as the Yankee spy who steals the train. Both the silent comedy and the Disney live action picture take their inspiration from a real event during the Civil War, when a group of Union spies stole a locomotive named The General in Kennesaw, Georgia, and drove it north, sabotaging rail lines and telegraph wires behind them. While both of the movies naturally take liberties with the historical record, classic movie fans can get the true story that inspired the films by visiting The Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History in Kennesaw, where the famous train from the 1862 incident is the star attraction.

The museum, which is an affiliate of the Smithsonian, sits just off the railroad tracks in a quiet section of Kennesaw, not far from Interstate 75 but seemingly worlds away from the bustle of the metro Atlanta area. Trains roaring down the line are the most exciting spectacle outside the museum, where the enticing aroma of freshly cooked burgers wafts across the tracks from the nearby Burgerfi location. Around the grounds, visitors will find a handful of historical markers noting the starting point of The Great Locomotive Chase and Kennesaw's former identity as the town of Big Shanty. The General has its own marker, but inside the museum guests can see the real deal, a huge and meticulously restored locomotive that toured the country under its own power during Civil War anniversary years until it came to stay in Kennesaw.

While the engine is undoubtedly the crown jewel of the museum, other exhibits give visitors an in-depth look at the role played by railroads during the Civil War and the aftermath of Reconstruction. The Glover Machine Works section shows how industrial locomotives were assembled, while other displays reveal the Union's strategy for crippling the South by destroying the critical rail infrastructure. It's a must-see facility for train nuts of any age, but for cinephiles the engine itself and the display cases around it are the big draw.

The museum is well aware of the movie history associated with The General. Near the locomotive, cases hold posters and other items from the 1926 and 1956 movies, including the coat worn by Fess Parker in The Great Locomotive Chase. Segments of the Disney film dominate the museum's movie about the events, with local footage spliced in to tell a shorter and more historically accurate version of the adventure. Both classic movies are for sale on DVD in the small gift shop, where a television runs one or the other throughout the day. Sadly, you won't find much other merchandise related to the films, but you will find generic train items and Civil War themed gifts of all sorts.

Getting a sense of the real story gives film fans a chance to assess the two movies and their different takes on the events. Keaton's picture makes the Confederate character a true hero, battling some rather shady Yankee saboteurs who not only steal his train but also kidnap his girl. The Disney production casts the Union in a more positive light, with Fess Parker as a doomed war hero (the real James J. Andrews was captured and ultimately hanged by the South). Jeffrey Hunter, best remembered today for his role in The Searchers (1956), plays William A. Fuller, the Southern engineer determined to recover his stolen train. It's interesting to note that Hunter appeared in both the Western and the Civil War adventure in the same year. Other actors of note in the Disney film include Harry Carey, Jr., Slim Pickens, and Kenneth Tobey. As entertaining as both movies are - The General in particular is a cinematic masterpiece of the first order - the truth turns out to be just as fascinating, with a story full of courage, action, and daring risks on both sides. Fuller and Andrews both strike us as heroic characters, despite the great divide between North and South, and it's easy to see why Hollywood would find their stories so compelling.

If you happen to be traveling along I-75 at some point in the future, stop in at The Southern Museum in Kennesaw and see The General for yourself. It is definitely worth a visit for history buffs, train lovers, and classic movie fans.

Classic Movie Tourist: The Margaret Mitchell House

The Atlanta area includes several places where devotees can get their Gone with the Wind fix: the Road to Tara Museum is in Jonesboro, and Marietta is home to the Gone with the Wind Museum. In the heart of the city, however, you'll find the Margaret Mitchell House, where the author lived for a number of years and where she wrote much of the novel after an auto accident left her housebound. The restored house is part of the Atlanta History Center, and for $13 ($10 for seniors and students), visitors can enjoy a guided tour of the apartment where Mitchell lived as well as several exhibits about her life, the novel, and the blockbuster film that premiered in Atlanta in 1939.

For most people, the book and the movie are inextricably entwined. It's fair to say that more people have seen the 1939 picture than have actually read Mitchell's lengthy saga. When Scarlett O'Hara appears in the cultural consciousness, she is inevitably played by Vivien Leigh, and Clark Gable fully occupies the role of the roguish Rhett Butler. The other major actors in the film have also become part of the GWTW legacy, including Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel, Leslie Howard, and even Butterfly McQueen. The exhibits at the Margaret Mitchell House reflect this aspect of the story's history; many of the displays focus on the film adaptation, which makes the museum a great destination for fans of the stars involved.

"The Making of a Film Legend" section features video about the picture's production history and a large portrait of Scarlett O'Hara that was seen in the movie. Another highlight of the exhibit is the actual door to Tara used in the film; visitors can stand in front of it and imagine themselves waving from the plantation mansion's steps. In the "Stars Fall on Atlanta" exhibit, there are photographs and keepsakes from the movie premiere, which Atlanta society turned into a huge series of parties with celebrity guests.

Of course, classic movie fans will want to browse the gift shop, where GWTW items of all sorts can be found. The shop also offers prints of production stills and promo photos depicting Gable and Leigh as well as posters for the film release. Hattie McDaniel magnets, Tara Christmas ornaments, and books about a variety of GWTW related subjects are also available. I was pleased to find Kendra Bean's new book, Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait, prominently displayed on the front table.

If you're headed to Atlanta any time in the near future, the Margaret Mitchell House is definitely worth a visit. It's located at 979 Crescent Avenue NE in Atlanta, not far from many of the city's other major tourist attractions. The museum is open 10 AM to 5:30 PM Monday through Saturday and noon to 5:30 PM on Sunday. House tours are included in admission and are offered regularly throughout the day.

Classic Films in Focus: THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915)

D.W. Griffith's silent Civil War epic is one of those films that every serious student of film probably feels obligated to sit through at some point, but for the modern viewer The Birth of a Nation (1915) is a very hard pill to swallow. Lauded by film critics who praise its technique while deploring its politics, Birth is regarded as a landmark in cinema history, and it's true that the movie was a huge success in its own day and offers a number of visually striking sequences that have become part of film's larger vocabulary. It also more or less single handedly revived the KKK, and it's hard to watch the movie with this knowledge and not wonder how much blood was spilled thanks to the pernicious ideals paraded before viewers' eyes.

Based on Thomas Dixon's 1905 novel, The Clansman, The Birth of a Nation follows the fortunes of two families during and after the Civil War. The Stonemans are the Northern family; their patriarch (Ralph Lewis) becomes a powerful advocate for abolition, partly because of his dangerous relationships with biracial opportunists. The Camerons hail from the South, and the two families are entwined by the love affairs and shared sufferings of their children, including the troubled courtship of Ben Cameron (Henry B. Walthall) and Elsie Stoneman (Lillian Gish). After the war ends, racial conflict leads to violence and upheaval, leading to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan to help whites reassert their power over the former slave population.

I'm not particularly interested in acting as an apologist for Griffith or Dixon for this maddeningly racist fairy tale of white paradise lost and regained. Many other film critics with much greater credentials, including Roger Ebert, can list the virtues of Griffith's story-telling and his use of cross-cutting, set pieces, and other important machinery of the medium. Yes, the action sequences are well-made and exciting, although at a good three hours the movie is long by anybody's standards, and some of the re-used shots in particular might have been edited to pick up the pace. Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh are lovely and effective, and the other younger characters are also interesting, but the elder Stoneman and the antagonists often devolve into mere caricatures.

Beyond these considerations, however, lies the real problem. Griffith presents a story in which the KKK are the heroes, riding to the rescue of terrified whites as savage, subhuman blacks run riot. If you aren't a member of a white supremacy group, it's horrifically uncomfortable to be asked to cheer, "Here comes the Klan!" when the riders turn up, their white sheets billowing out behind them. One might laugh nervously at the ridiculous situation, or turn the film off in disgust, or watch on with a sick sinking feeling in the pit of one's stomach. At that point, the technical merits of the movie disappear from the equation. The message overrides them.

Griffith might not have meant for it to happen, but it remains important that The Birth of a Nation brought the KKK back into the South with a vengeance. It had died out towards the end of the 19th century, and perhaps it would have stayed dead if not for this one picture. That's a terrible example of the impact a film can have on history, given that the rebirth of the KKK certainly led to the deaths of many African-Americans in the South in the first half of the 20th century. According to this PBS article, "In Mississippi alone, 500 blacks were lynched from the 1800s to 1955." Across the South, two to three African-Americans were lynched every week, not in fiction or on movie screens, but in real life, by real men who saw themselves as the saviors of their race. Beyond its offensive stereotypes and blackface antics, Birth has blood on its reels, and no amount of technical innovation can make up for that.

I can't really recommend that you watch The Birth of a Nation unless you are just very committed to checking that box in your film education. You can see a shorter, less repulsive example of Griffith's style in Broken Blossoms (1919), which also stars the luminous Lillian Gish. If you really want to explore the evil side of cinema, you might also subject yourself to Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of the Will (1935). For a silent Civil War film that avoids these thorny issues while still romanticizing the South, try Buster Keaton's The General (1927).

Classic Films in Focus: THE OLD MAID (1939)

In 1938 Bette Davis had starred in Jezebel as a Southern belle whose unconventional behavior brought her misery and loneliness. In 1939, Davis and a number of her Jezebel cohorts returned for another Civil War love story in The Old Maid, in which Davis plays a Northern debutante whose unconventional behavior brings her misery and loneliness. Oddly enough, Charlotte Lovell in The Old Maid actually trespasses more seriously against convention than Jezebel Julie Marsden, even though Charlotte is presented as the more sympathetic and tragic of the pair. Directed by Edmund Goulding, The Old Maid is an emotional, star-studded melodrama, one that showcases Davis' talents for transformation and for making brittle, damaged heroines wring the hearts of their audiences.

The picture begins with Davis' Charlotte playing second fiddle to her cousin, Delia (Miriam Hopkins), who is about to be married to a wealthy young man who has everything Delia could want, except her heart. Delia's jilted lover, Clem Spender (George Brent), turns up just in time for the wedding, but Delia marries the other fellow anyway, leaving Charlotte to comfort Clem. Apparently, she comforts him all too effectively, since she later "goes out West" for a while and comes back with a baby whom she claims is a foundling. Clem never finds out because he dies on the battlefield, but Delia discovers the truth and prevents Charlotte from marrying into her husband's socially prominent family. Eventually, Delia incorporates Charlotte's daughter, Tina, into her own family, and the child does not know that bitter, strict "Aunt" Charlotte, the unloved old maid, is really her own mother.

Several of the Jezebel crew reunite for this outing. In addition to Davis, we have George Brent as the rakish lover, dying again, but this time in a Union uniform. Donald Crisp, who had played the kindly paternal doctor in the first film, appears as the kindly paternal doctor in this one, as well. Max Steiner, who was a very busy man throughout the classic era, returns as the composer. The parallels make The Old Maid almost a mirror image of Jezebel, with Rebels turned Yankee and the accents changed. Both films give Davis plenty of dramatic fuel, although she has more fun with her appearance in the later production, as Charlotte ages over the years and becomes somewhat like Davis' heroine in Now, Voyager (1942), only in reverse. 

Like Jezebel, The Old Maid is very much a movie about clothing, with the wedding dresses of the two cousins and their daughters forming important focal pieces at different critical moments. We also see the changing fashions of the times as the years pass, encouraging us to contrast the freedoms of the younger generation, Tina (Jane Bryan) and Dee (Janet Shaw), with their mothers' more repressed youth. Charlotte, however, seems even more confined and restricted in her later wardrobe, sartorial evidence of her trapped life and the secret she keeps locked away.

Certainly the most interesting aspect of the film is the relationship between the two cousins. Do they really mean to hurt and torment one another so relentlessly? They take turns being antagonist and victim, driving sharp daggers into one another's backs and then wishing they could pull them out again. They really take the idea of the "frenemy" to a whole different level. Part of the chemistry between them stems from the fact that Davis and Hopkins hated each other. It explains why the cousins' cruelties seem so much more believable than their kindnesses. Davis was very good at this kind of toxic feminine codependence; it would serve her well in later movies like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), where the relationships bubble over into Gothic horrors.

Sounds cheerful, right? It's worth knowing that the film was adapted from a play based on an Edith Wharton novel, The Mother's Recompense (1925). Given that origin, you can probably view the ending of The Old Maid as the happiest outcome possible. You’ll find more of Bette Davis and George Brent in Dark Victory (1939), The Great Lie (1941), and In This Our Life (1942). Miriam Hopkins earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in Becky Sharp (1935), but she also starred in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Trouble in Paradise (1932), and Virginia City (1940). For more maternal melodrama, try Stella Dallas (1937), Kitty Foyle (1940), and Mildred Pierce (1945).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: THE LITTLEST REBEL (1935)

Before Gone with the Wind (1939), even before Jezebel (1938), there was another 1930s Civil War melodrama, also starring one of Hollywood’s top leading ladies as a Southern belle caught in the crossfire of the conflict. That would be The Littlest Rebel (1935), with a heroine played by that tiny dynamo of tap dancing charm, Shirley Temple. Directed by David Butler, The Littlest Rebel takes a decidedly optimistic view of the war in general, but it isn’t really any more sentimental or more problematic than those better known period films. In fact, Shirley’s character, Virgie, is a lot more sympathetic than either of the spoiled debs played by Vivien Leigh and Bette Davis, and we get some wonderful musical numbers from Bill Robinson to sweeten the deal. 

Temple plays Virgie Cary, a true daughter of the Confederacy who lives with her adoring parents on a big plantation filled with remarkably contented slaves. When the war begins, her father (John Boles) goes away to fight, but her mother (Karen Morley) dies as a result of the ensuing hardships. Virgie’s father returns home to bury his wife, where he is captured by the Union, but Virgie reminds the commanding officer (Jack Holt) of his own child so much that he helps the father and daughter escape. Both men end up sentenced to death by the Union for their actions, and it’s up to Virgie and Uncle Billy (Bill Robinson) to appeal to President Lincoln (Frank McGlynn, Sr.) in order to save them.

Dickensian sentiment rules in The Littlest Rebel, especially during Mrs. Cary’s death scene, but the film’s attitudes would have gone over quite well in the era that the story depicts. Shirley is unapologetically adorable, and her dance routines with Robinson showcase her real talent as a performer. John Boles makes for a very handsome daddy, while Jack Holt provides a rougher exterior for contrast, even though he turns out to be just as susceptible to Shirley’s charms. Most of Shirley’s films involve the formation of a new family to replace one that the child protagonist has lost, but The Littlest Rebel is unusual in its decision to provide Virgie with two daddies to make up for the loss of her mother. 

Children who watch the movie will need to talk over a number of issues with an adult. The war is represented as beyond Virgie’s comprehension, which is natural enough, but the 1935 depiction of racial issues is really almost as thorny as the concept of antebellum slavery. Shirley briefly appears in blackface (although for more or less practical purposes), and the slave children on the plantation treat her as a tiny queen. Bill Robinson’s character is relatively dignified, but Willie Best’s broadly comic slave, James Henry, belongs more to the Stepin Fetchit school. It’s worth noting that the Union soldiers in the movie aren’t any nicer to the slave characters than the Confederates, which makes one wonder what their motives for fighting are supposed to be.

If you like Shirley in The Littlest Rebel, there are plenty of other films to see. I’m particularly fond of her two pictures with director John Ford: Wee Willie Winkie (1937) and Fort Apache (1948), although both of them will appeal to grown-ups more than children. See more of John Boles in Stella Dallas (1937) and the Temple picture, Curly Top (1935). Don’t miss Stormy Weather (1943) for a really great showcase of Bill Robinson’s talents, although you can also find him with Shirley in The Little Colonel (1935), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938), and Just Around the Corner (1938).