Author Archive: Retro

A baby burlesque short. Shirely is Madame Cradlebait, Converter of Cannibals. She arrives in the jungle in time to be captured by savages and popped into a big black cooking pot. Can the resident ape boy save Madame in time? Short, mildly amusing, and thoroughly racist. As ever, Shirley is abundantly talented and cute as a button.

One of her first films with the great male child actor Frank Coghlan, Jr. They did three classic movies together. This is a more mischievous Shirley than we are used to seeing. Jealous of the attention her big brother is getting, Shirley disrupts him at every turn, and even keeps him from meeting his new girl! Directed by Charles Lamont.

This short one-reeler features Shirley as Diaperina, heading a children-only cast of three to five year olds, performing in a broad burlesque as the star of a floor show at the “Lullaby Lobster Palace,” dancing and singing “She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage.” This song represents the servitude she is bound to in the nightclub. Directed by Charles Lamont, who is credited to be her discoverer.

This is one truly bizzare film! The Baby Burlesks were a series of short films intended to answer the hugely popular “Our Gang” series. Four-year-old Shirley is Polly Tix, a high-priced call girl sent by corrupt officials to influence a backwoods politician. There are racial stereotypes, racy dialogue, and a rather bizzare cake fight.

One of the early Shirley Temple “Baby Burlesks.” The cast is full of young stars averaging the age of five. The diapered characters are in a saloon, where they serve milk instead of alcohol. Cash is in the form of lollipops. Shirley plays a femme fatale who sashays up to the bar and talks to soldiers who make suggestive comments about her.

After the gang goes to the horse races, they decide to have a derby of their own.

The gang wages war using old vegetables as munitions. Later, they ruin a movie in progress when they double-expose the film.

An abused chimpanzee escapes from a zoo. On the run, he meets Farina, running away from home and his battling parents. The two become friends and inspire the rest of the gang to put on a show to make money from neighborhood kids. But the chimp has his own idea and runs off creating havoc all over town until chased down by the local cops.

Mickey is taken away from his Uncle Pat to live with his wealthy Aunt Kate. Mickey’s new life as a rich kid proves to be an unhappy one until Uncle Pat and the gang pay a visit one afternoon.