In the 1936 Shirley Temple film, “Captain January,” Shirley ALMOST got a tattoo! Melissa (aka “The Colonel”) summarized the deleted scene for me, which she came across when reading the original script. The scene that ended up on the cutting room floor would have followed the one where Captain January (Guy Kibbee) asks the Widow Croft (Jane Darwell) for a loan (shown above).
At that point, Jan asks Mrs. Croft for the money, and the next scene has Star walking along a side street, where she spies a tattoo shop.
She goes in and the “East Indian” man asks her if she has money. He shows her some tattoo samples, including a sea serpent. She asks “Can I make it wiggle?” and he responds that it would wiggle fine on her back. She decides to get it on her arm, and the man begins heating a needle in a flame.
He is just about to begin when Jan and Nazro pass by and burst into the shop. Jan swats Star and sends her home, then slams the basket of lobsters over the tattoo artist’s head. Nazro holds him down while Jan takes the tattoo needle and jabs it into the seat of the “East Indian” man’s pants!
These two publicity stills show that the scene was filmed, but obviously deleted before release. John Carradine was cast as the “East Indian Man” mentioned in the script. I can only surmise that the scene was deleted due to it being slightly unsavory for a Shirley Temple movie!
In an earlier sequence that survived the editor’s shears, Shirley watches with delight while January and Nazro (Slim Summerville) show off their tattoos and are able to make them dance and wiggle! This would have been the setup for Shirley’s character wanting to get a tattoo. Poor John Carradine was the loser, as he was completely removed from the film. Instead, he made it into the Temple film “Dimples” playing Richards. His character is one of the con men who get The Professor (Frank Morgan) to buy a cheap pocket watch by convincing him it once belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Con men in a Temple film? No problem. A tattoo artist? No way!
See more Shirley Temple photos at my main website.
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