Cynical New Yorkers must have rolled their eyes to see the glamorous art deco court room featured in the climax of this Shirley Temple vehicle which turns Chambers Street into 42nd Street when tap-dancing George Murphy goes up against his pickle-pussed aunt (Edna May Oliver) to keep a hotel for actors which they own open. Temple starts off this charming comedy with a few musical numbers by singing "Be Optimistic". Of course, she's got a lot to be optimistic about. She's been adopted by the old man who runs the hotel (Edward Ellis) and his pretty daughter (Phyllis Brooks), not realizing that the crabby old pumpkin next door (Oliver) is furious over bandleader Jimmy Durante's constant interruptions of her desire for quiet and decides to demand the back rent building renter Ellis owes.
It's obvious from the start that Oliver's crabby old bat is really a big pile of mush hidden under that fabulous horse face. She threatens to steal the picture just by her name in the title, and her comic genius is evident when she visits the hotel and is visited by a marching penguin and various acrobatic acts. Donald Meek comes close second as her milquetoast brother who secretly performs on the side and stands up to a butler who reports everything to his bossy sister. When he breaks out in a fight dance, it is one of those delicious moments of visual comedy that proved that the character performers were often better than the stars.
For one of the few times in his career, "Swedish" comic El Brendel is unobtrusive, commenting on the action with the aforementioned penguin who basically makes his presence in the film more tolerable than his early talkie appearances in the Fox musicals. The musical finale towards the end is of course outrageously ostentatious, turning a courtroom into the equivalent of a Mickey/Judy barn! The reactions from Claude Gillingwater as the judge is worth the price of admission alone, and of course, he applauds with his gavel. One of the oddest bloopers in film history appears in this sequence which shows George Murphy plain as day sitting in the court room in a suit watching Shirley perform, then magically re-appearing moments later swinging open the courtroom doors in tuxedo and tap-dancing his way back in. This "Little Miss Broadway", of course, never appeared on Broadway, but for post depression and pre-war audiences needing escapism, this didn't matter. Pure entertainment is entertainment, no matter how off the wall it ends up being.
It's obvious from the start that Oliver's crabby old bat is really a big pile of mush hidden under that fabulous horse face. She threatens to steal the picture just by her name in the title, and her comic genius is evident when she visits the hotel and is visited by a marching penguin and various acrobatic acts. Donald Meek comes close second as her milquetoast brother who secretly performs on the side and stands up to a butler who reports everything to his bossy sister. When he breaks out in a fight dance, it is one of those delicious moments of visual comedy that proved that the character performers were often better than the stars.
For one of the few times in his career, "Swedish" comic El Brendel is unobtrusive, commenting on the action with the aforementioned penguin who basically makes his presence in the film more tolerable than his early talkie appearances in the Fox musicals. The musical finale towards the end is of course outrageously ostentatious, turning a courtroom into the equivalent of a Mickey/Judy barn! The reactions from Claude Gillingwater as the judge is worth the price of admission alone, and of course, he applauds with his gavel. One of the oddest bloopers in film history appears in this sequence which shows George Murphy plain as day sitting in the court room in a suit watching Shirley perform, then magically re-appearing moments later swinging open the courtroom doors in tuxedo and tap-dancing his way back in. This "Little Miss Broadway", of course, never appeared on Broadway, but for post depression and pre-war audiences needing escapism, this didn't matter. Pure entertainment is entertainment, no matter how off the wall it ends up being.