Stowaway (1936 film)
Encyclopedia
Stowaway is a 1936
1936 in film
The year 1936 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*May 29 - Fritz Lang's first Hollywood film Fury, starring Spencer Tracy and Bruce Cabot, is released.*November 6 - first Porky Pig animated cartoon...

 American musical film
Musical film
The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...

 directed by William A. Seiter. The screenplay by William M. Conselman, Nat Perrin, and Arthur Sheekman is based on a story by Samuel Engel. The film is about a young orphan called 'Ching Ching' (Temple) who stows away on a ship and is adopted by Tommy Randall (Young) and his wife Susan (Faye). The film was hugely successful , and is available on videocassette and DVD.

Plot

Barbara 'Ching-Ching' Stewart is an orphan living in Sanchow, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. When bandits threaten, she is taken to Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

 for safety and meets Tommy Randall, a rich playboy traveling about the world on a ship. Barbara accidentally becomes a stowaway on his ship. When discovered, she is provided for by Tommy and Susan Parker, a passenger on the ship engaged to the son of her traveling companion, Mrs. Hope. Susan and Tommy become romantically involved. Barbara plays Cupid in furthering their romance. The couple realize they love Barbara and want to do the best for her after learning she will be put off the ship and sent to an orphan's asylum. Susan breaks her engagement with Hope after discovering his selfish nature and marries Tommy. The two adopt Barbara.

Cast

  • Shirley Temple
    Shirley Temple
    Shirley Temple Black , born Shirley Jane Temple, is an American film and television actress, singer, dancer, autobiographer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia...

     as Barbara 'Ching-Ching' Stewart, a Chinese
    China
    Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

     orphan
    Orphan
    An orphan is a child permanently bereaved of or abandoned by his or her parents. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents is called an orphan...

  • Robert Young
    Robert Young (actor)
    Robert George Young was an American television, film, and radio actor, best known for his leading roles as Jim Anderson, the father of Father Knows Best and as physician Marcus Welby in Marcus Welby, M.D. .-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Young was the son of an Irish immigrant father...

     as Tommy Randall, a playboy and world traveler, Barbara's adoptive father
  • Alice Faye
    Alice Faye
    Alice Faye was an American actress and singer, called by The New York Times "one of the few movie stars to walk away from stardom at the peak of her career." She is remembered first for her stardom at 20th Century Fox and, later, as the radio comedy partner of her husband, bandleader and comedian...

     as Susan Parker, Mrs. Hope's shipboard companion and the wife of Tommy Randall, Barbara's adoptive mother
  • Helen Westley
    Helen Westley
    Helen Westley was an American character actress.-Career:Born as Henrietta Remsen Meserole Manney, Helen Westley was a member of the original board of the Theatre Guild, and appeared in many of their productions, among them Peer Gynt, and some of their productions of plays by George Bernard...

     as Mrs. Hope, Susan's companion
  • Allan Lane
    Allan Lane
    Allan "Rocky" Lane was a studio leading man and the star of many cowboy B-movies in the 1940s and 1950s. He appeared in more than 125 films and TV shows in a career lasting from 1929 to 1966...

     as Richard Hope, the son of Mrs. Hope and Susan's ex-fiance
  • Eugene Pallette
    Eugene Pallette
    Eugene William Pallette was an American actor. He appeared in over 240 silent era and sound era motion pictures between 1913 and 1946....

     as the Colonel, Tommy's friend
  • Astrid Allwyn
    Astrid Allwyn
    Astrid Allwyn was an American stage and film actress.She studied dancing and dramatics in New York and later joined a stock company. Allwyn made her Broadway debut in 1929 in Elmer Rice's Street Scene. On the strength of her performance in Once in a Lifetime, she was given film work...

     as Kay Swift, Tommy's friend
  • Jayne Regan as Dora Day, Tommy's friend
  • Arthur Treacher
    Arthur Treacher
    Arthur Veary Treacher was an English actor born in Brighton, East Sussex, England.Treacher was a veteran of World War I. After the war, he established a stage career and in 1928, he went to America as part of a musical-comedy revue called Great Temptations...

     as Atkins, Tommy's valet
  • Philip Ahn as Sun Lo, Barbara's friend in Sanchow
  • Willie Fung as Chang, Sun-lo's friend and a boatman
  • Robert Greig as Captain of SS Victoria
  • J. Edward Bromberg
    J. Edward Bromberg
    Joseph Edward Bromberg was a Hungarian-born American character actor in motion picture and stage productions dating mostly from the 1930s and 1940s....

     as Judge J.D. Booth
  • Layne Tom Jr.
    Layne Tom Jr.
    Layne Tom Jr. is an American actor. He holds the sole distinction of playing three different Charlie Chan sons: as Charlie Chan Jr...

     as Chinese Boy in the Musical Band (uncredited)

Production

Temple learned forty words in Mandarin Chinese for the film, later stating the learning process required six months of instruction (Edwards 101,306). In the film, she impersonates Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century....

 (with a life-sized male doll fixed to her toes), Eddie Cantor
Eddie Cantor
Eddie Cantor was an American "illustrated song" performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor and songwriter...

, and Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....

 singing “Mammy” . Temple’s IQ was tested during the Stowaway period and found to be 155, the genius classification .

Music

The film features three songs by Harry Revel
Harry Revel
Harry Revel was an English composer of musical theatre.Revel was born in London. Before emigrating to the United States in 1929, he wrote musicals for productions in Paris, Copenhagen, Vienna and London....

 and Mack Gordon
Mack Gordon
Mack Gordon was an American composer and lyricist of songs for the stage and film. He was nominated for the best original song Oscar nine times, including six consecutive years between 1940 and 1945, and won the award once, for "You'll Never Know"...

: "Goodnight, My Love" (sung by Temple, reprised by Faye), "One Never Knows, Does One?" (Faye), and "You Gotta S-M-I-L-E To Be H-A-Double-P-Y" (Temple). Other songs are "Please" by Ralph Rainger
Ralph Rainger
Ralph Rainger was an American composer of popular music principally for films.-Biography:Born Ralph Reichenthal in New York City, Rainger embarked on a legal career before escaping to Broadway where he became Clifton Webb's accompanist...

 and Leo Robin
Leo Robin
Leo Robin was an American composer, lyricist and songwriter. He is probably best known for collaborating with Ralph Rainger on the 1938 Oscar-winning song "Thanks for the Memory," sung by Bob Hope in the film The Big Broadcast of 1938.-Biography:Robin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and...

 (sung by a Chinese performer in a theater), and the film's finale, "That's What I Want for Christmas" by Gerald Marks
Gerald Marks
Gerald Marks , was an American composer best known for the song "All of Me" which he co-wrote with Seymour Simons and has been recorded about 2,000 times...

 and Irving Caesar
Irving Caesar
Irving Caesar was an American lyricist and theater composer who wrote lyrics for "Swanee," "Sometimes I'm Happy," "Crazy Rhythm," and "Tea for Two," one of the most frequently recorded tunes ever written. He was born and died in New York.Caesar, the son of Morris Keiser, a Romanian Jew, was...

 (sung by Temple).

Critical reception

Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

remarked, “It’s a nifty Shirley Temple comedy with musical trimmings” . Variety commented, “Whether or not due to Seiter’s efforts, [Shirley] does not appear to have outgrown […] the Little Miss Marker
Little Miss Marker
Little Miss Marker is a 1934 American drama film directed by Alexander Hall. The screenplay was written by William R. Lipman, Sam Hellman, and Gladys Hellman after a short story by Damon Runyon. The film stars Shirley Temple, Adolphe Menjou, and Dorothy Dell in a story about a little girl held...

stage in this one as she had in her last pictures” .

The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

applauded the film, noting that Temple had “an amusing script behind her, an agreeable adult troupe with her, and a clever director before her.” The reviewer thought the film the best from Temple since Little Miss Marker
Little Miss Marker
Little Miss Marker is a 1934 American drama film directed by Alexander Hall. The screenplay was written by William R. Lipman, Sam Hellman, and Gladys Hellman after a short story by Damon Runyon. The film stars Shirley Temple, Adolphe Menjou, and Dorothy Dell in a story about a little girl held...


Home media

In 2009, Stowaway was available on videocassette and DVD in the black and white original and in computer-colorized versions of the original. Some versions featured theatrical trailers and other special features.
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