Wee Willie Winkie

There aren't all that many movies airing in the FXM Retro block that I haven't blogged about before, mostly because I've been blogging for closing in on 19 years. One that hasn't gotten a post yet and is on my DVR is Wee Willie Winkie. Since it's getting another airing tomorrow, October 24, at 6:00 AM, I figure that now is a good time to watch it and put up the obligatory post on it.

In frontier India in 1897, Joyce Williams (June Lang) is an American widow with young daughter Priscilla (Shirley Temple). Apparently her late husband's father is an Englishman, serving with the British Army in India, and Joyce must not have any American relatives. Otherwise there would be no reason for Joyce and Priscilla to go all the way to India. Already on the train, we see that Priscilla can be rather annoying as she asks all sorts of obnoxious questions. As the train gets to the station in Raj Pore, Priscilla witnesses the arrest of Khoda Khan (Cesar Romero), a rebel leader who has been attacking the British.

Mother and daughter get to the army base just as Grandpa, Col. Williams (C. Aubrey Smith) is disciplining Lt. Brandes (Michael Whalen), the sort of young dashing officer who would be just right for Joyce; indeed, that's going to be one of the subplots of the movie as Brandes also likes little Priscilla. Meanwhile, there are other women on base who are trying to set up their adult daughter with Brandes, although that's more comic relief and a minor subplot. Priscilla continues to be naïvely mischievous, in the sense that she should be smart enough to know not to do the things she's doing but is either too young or too stupid. For this, she gets taken under the wing of Sgt. MacDuff (Victor McLaglen), who makes her a mascot of sorts for his platoon as well as a bit of a soldier. Not that a kid of Priscilla's age is actually going to do any real soldiering. Certainly not when that kid is Shirley Temple.

One of the stupid things Priscilla does is to give Khoda a religious pendant he lost when he was getting arrested that she picked up. Later, the colonel's manservant Mohammet Dihn gives Priscilla a "prayer" message to take to Khoda, who is being held in the garrison jail where the army is stationed. This is actually a message from Khoda's fellow rebels beyond the border about how they're going to spring him from the jail. Worse, in the ensuing attack, Sgt. MacDuff gets seriously injured.

Priscilla is too young to understand everything that's going on, and as far as she knows Khoda is a decent enough fellow. She figures that if she could just talk to Khoda she could get everybody to see reason and come to a peaceful settlement. So she gets Mohammet Dihn to take her to Khoda's headquarters through the well-defended pass that's a chokepoint such that if the British try to go through, they'll get slaughtered. Khoda thinks he's got a wonderful bargaining chip in the garrison commander's daughter, but then again, he's also got Shirley Temple and you know how a Shirley Temple movie is going to end....

Shirley Temple is appealing enough in Wee Willie Winkie. Certainly, I can see how audiences in the 1930s would have loved her in a movie like this. However, I find the plot here a bit weak and taking a bit too long to get to the real action. Also, Shirley Temple is being asked to be even more naïve than you'd expect a child to be. So this one wasn't quite as good in my view as some of Shirley's other movies. But it's still worth watching.