Creepy pedo-themed Shirley Temple scenes analyzed

Did you read the comments on that DataLounge thread? Most of them call this bunk at best, and nutwing conspiracy theorist stuff at worst.

Even the second one only says in hindsight the author "thinks" Shirley "probably" had a pedophile following, and that's probably true. There were pedophiles back then, same as there are now. But that wasn't the majority of her audience. She was wildly popular for other reasons.

I do find some of the scenes in the Baby Burlesks shorts I've seen uncomfortable, and question the intent of both the writer and the producer of them. Pedophiles hiding behind what the majority would have thought about the shorts -- comedy, that showing very small kids behaving like adults is funny? Also parodying contemporary adult films? No way to know for certain now, but that's how it appears to me.

She did say she took an instinctive dislike to Charles Lamont, the director of the Baby Burlesks, when he came to Meglin's Dance School to scout child actors, and hid under the piano to avoid him. He "discovered" her anyway and put her into his short films. I suspect she had good reason to avoid him, knowing what I know now.

But all the noise about her other films is, IMO, just that -- noise. It was a very different time. Taking photos of babies on bear skin rugs, for instance, was so common it was cliche.

The reality is Shirley Temple was so wildly popular because she was unique, extremely talented, and adorable! She and her movies were so popular for the same reasons all those screwball comedies of the same period were -- it was a bleak, grim time, and people wanted to, needed to, escape for a while.

Continued in next post, since I'll probably run out of characters soon.

Novelist and critic Graham Greene wrote this about her when writing a review for Wee Willie Winkie:

"Miss Shirley Temple's case, though, has a peculiar interest: infancy is her disguise, her appeal is more secret and more adult. Already two years ago she was a fancy little piece (real childhood, I think, went out after The Littlest Rebel). In Captain January she wore trousers with the mature suggestiveness of a Dietrich: her neat and well-developed rump twisted in the tap-dance: her eyes had a sidelong searching coquetry. Now in Wee Willie Winkie, wearing short kilts, she is completely totsy. Watch her swaggering stride across the Indian barrack-square: hear the gasp of excited expectation from her antique audience when the sergeant's palm is raised: watch the way she measures a man with agile studio eyes, with dimpled depravity. Adult emotions of love and grief glissade across the mask of childhood, a childhood that is only skin-deep. It is clever, but it cannot last. Her admirers—middle-aged men and clergymen—respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire."

A fancy little piece? measuring a man with agile studio eyes and dimpled depravity?? Mask of childhood only skin-deep?? She was 8 years old, for god's sake!!

Graham Greene isn't around to defend himself, and I know nothing about him other than from his novels, but this sounds like a classic case of projection to me. ("The sight of her well-shaped and *desirable* little body"?! Good god.)

innocence is lost

Is that why Allaby is a big fan of her and her films?

Only in 2023 heading into 2024 do we analyze Shirley Temple movies for creepy pedo themes no one would've thought of til modern day.. Unreal