Why does Stowaway seem so familiar to me?

Another of the movies that showed up in the FXM rotation recently is Stowaway. A search of the blog claims I haven't blogged about it before, so I decided to DVR it and watch to do a post on it the next time it shows up on FXM. That time is coming up, with an airing tomorrow (October 17) at 6:00 AM. However, having watched it, the movie seemed awfully familiar to me.

Temple plays Ching-Ching, real name Barbara Stewart, a girl whose parents died in China and who has been looked after by a missionary organization in a provincial town. This being the era when there was a civil war going on in China, the town is under threat from bandits of one stripe or another, so the missionaries decides this American girl should be sent to Shanghai, which is relatively safe.

So Ching-Ching and her dog are put on a boat headed for Shanghai, where her handler runs off with the money left for her. She wakes up all alone (well, except for the dog, and doesn't know anybody, so she gets up, gets off the boat, and goes wandering in town looking for a bone for her dog. It's there that she meets Tommy Randall (Robert Young), a playboy tourist trying to haggle with a store clerk who doesn't speak English. Ah, but little Ching-Ching speaks both English and Mandarin, so she's able to translate!

Tommy offers to get her a meal, and when he's at his club telling some of his expat friends about Ching-Ching, she gets out of the car because the dog runs off, only to hide in the trunk to get out of the rain. So Tommy doesn't know where she's gone, when he goes to have his car put aboard a boat bound for various Southeast Asian destinations.

Ching-Ching doesn't know what's going on, either, until she wakes up in the cargo hold of the ship and her dog starts barking, which makes the crew think there's a stowaway on board. (To be fair, little Ching-Ching is a stowaway, but not intentionally.) When she realizes the crew is chasing her, she runs off and hides in the cabin of one of the wealthier travelers.

You'd think that traveler is Tommy Randall, but no. Actually it's a pair of people, young Susan Parker (Alice Faye) and her future mother-in-law, Mrs. Hope (Helen Westley). They're travelling to meet Susan's fiancé Richard (Allan Lane). Mom is pissed, but Susan has sympathy. And when she runs into Tommy and tells her about the girl, Tommy finds that it's little Ching-Ching.

Now, if you've seen a Shirley Temple movie, you can probably guess where this one is going, which is part of the reason why I felt as though I might have seen this one. But there's more, such as a lullaby scene which seemed awfully familiar, along with much of the interaction between Young and Temple.

That having been said, there's really not a whole lot wrong with Stowaway. Alice Faye does well with her songs; Shirley Temple is as charming as always and gets a particularly fun song that has her imitating, among others, Al Jolson -- that particular impression is a hoot. The movie ends with a courtroom scene reminiscent of the one in Bright Eyes, except that this one is far more unrealistic, which is probably the movie's one big flaw. Eugene Pallette is underused as one of Randall's friends, while Arthur Treacher is hilarious as Randall's butler.

Anybody who wants a good family movie, however, will certainly enjoy Stowaway, which showcases Shirley Temple in the sort of role that made her immensely popular during the Depression. If I wanted to introduce people who didn't know what Temple was all about, there are some other of her movies that I'd recommend, like the aforementioned Bright Eyes, but you won't go wrong with Stowaway. It's available on DVD on one or another box set of Shirley Temple films.