Merry Christmas, Shirley Temple | Features

I switched around some more. When you get to free channel around number 43 or so, things start getting strange. Ag-biz hog and pig reports, championship cricket, even, I remember, an educational show about lip-reading. I continued to click. The battery then ran out on my remote. So, I had to get up off the couch each time to change the channel.

But wait! What…is…this?! Damn, it’s Shirley Temple! On channel 62. Dancing around. Being cheery. Hopeful. Indomitable. Perky!

I stay tuned…and tuned…and tuned. One Shirley Temple movie transitioned into two, into three, into four. It was a Shirley marathon! Before I knew it, the clock showed noon. Wee Willie Winkle…Bright Eyes…Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I popped a bottle of wine, switched on my fake space heater fireplace and ate the whole large can of caramel popcorn my sister had sent to me.

I don’t know if people watch Shirley Temple movies anymore. I’m kind of guessing that the average millennial does not. But, back in the day, everyone did. She was the country’s top box office star. Heck, sunny little Shirley was credited by none other than President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for playing a major role in bringing America through The Great Depression of the 1930s. Roosevelt proclaimed: “As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right.”

Over the course of her film career, Shirley Temple faced down every damn desperate hardship placed in her way during very desperate times. No mother or father…check. Evil head mistress…check. Bleak poverty…check. The grim orphanage…check. But indomitable Shirley always kept it positive—even through the occasional tears. No matter what the odds, she always had animal crackers in her soup, with monkeys and rabbits doing loop the loop. Shirley’s bright smiling dimples were reportedly even insured by Lloyd’s of London. So…I watched. And watched. And I started to feel a little better. I opened up another bottle of wine and then went for the fruitcake that had been re-gifted to me by a work colleague.

As the Christmas day sun started to set, I was inspired to get off the couch and take a shower. Heck, I thought, maybe I’ll even go for a walk. I was feeling that much better. But…wait…what is this? Heidi?  Starring Shirley as a Swiss orphan girl who is sent off to live with her crabby white-bearded grandfather somewhere in the Alps. And, boy, is Grandfather mean to Shirley, making her wake up at the crack of dawn to milk the goats and scrub the cooking pots. A crabbier guy you’ve never met. But, see, Shirley secretly had touched the bitter and lonely old man’s heart. A heart just like mine had over time become. And, at the end of the movie, after Shirley is stolen away by Gypsies on Christmas Day, Grandfather, looking just like Kris Kringle, runs wildly through downtown Switzerland shouting “Heidi!  Heidi!”, finally revealing his great love for her.

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