Shirley Temple rated “Wee Willie Winkie” (1937) as her best film, mainly because of the experience she had making it with director John Ford (above). From her autobiography Child Star:
Of all my films I rate “Wee Willie Winkie” the best, but for all the wrong reasons. It was best because of its manual of arms, the noisy marching around in military garb with brass buttons, my kilts bouncing. It was best because of daredevil stunts with snipers and stampeding horses. It was also best because I finally seemed to earn the professional respect of someone so blood-and-thunder macho as Ford. Best of all, the watery-blue color of my portable dressing room had been repainted in regimental red.
Many stars visited the top box office draw of the day during the filming of “Winkie,” including Sir Harry Lauder, who was an internationally famous Scottish performer. He was the first music hall performer to be knighted. As his 1950 obituary stated, “His jokes were sly, but always clean, his sentiment naive, but irresistible. His songs are still classics in their field.” His most famous songs included “Roamin’ in the Gloamin’”and “I Love a Lassie.” By the time he visited Shirley’s home on May 26, 1937, wearing Scottish Traditional Dressing, he had already been retired for two years. Accompanying him (but not in this photo) was his niece, Greta Lauder.
During the visit, he signed Shirley’s autograph book (shown below), which later sold for $8,000 in 2015. Lauder did perform again briefly during World War II to entertain the troops.
Bill Robinson also visited his good friend Shirley. At the time, he was in costume for the movie “Cafe Metropole,” filming a dance sequence that would ultimately be deleted (which you can view in my previous post).
Hollywood gossip columnist Jimmie Fidler (below) also dropped by to see Shirley. It would appear he signed her autograph book as well. Edited from the Old Time Radio Catalog website:
Fidler had several radio “columns” that featured his trademarks. His reports were punctuated with a Morse-code like beeping; he often featured “open letters” to the stars and studios, berating them for some behavior or practice; Jimmy Fidler pulled no punches when reviewing a movie, giving four bells for those he liked and calling a one bell performance “a real stinkeroo”; he made reports from “notes in his little black book,” supposedly gathered by a network of spies around Hollywood; and he closed his broadcasts with an often parodied “Good night to you, and I do mean you!” Jimmy Fidler was thought to be in the shadows of gossip columnists like Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, but he was generally more feared by the studios because he was more brazen in his reporting. There is a story that he once scooped Louella Parsons, the undisputed Queen of the Gossip columnists, on a scandalous incident concerning Clark Gable in November, 1935. Parsons was so embarrassed over being scooped that she lied about it in her autobiography. Jimmie Fidler is honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to Radio at 6128 Hollywood Blvd.
Fidler was also sued (unsuccessfully) for libel by actress Constance Bennett. Victor McLaglen yucks it up between takes with his diminutive costar.
Hollywood tough McLaglen was born in Great Britain, and first achieved fame as a wrestler and heavyweight boxer in Canada. He was spotted in a sporting club by a British film producer and picked to play a boxer in “The Call of the Road” (1920). He moved to Hollywood in 1925, where he became typecast playing Irish drunks. Signed by Fox, he also became a frequent star in the films of John Ford, including “Mother Machree” (1928), “Strong Boy” (1929), “The Black Watch” (1929), and “The Informer” (1935), for which he won the Best Actor Oscar. It was supposedly because of McLaglen (and its large budget) that enticed John Ford to take on “Wee Willie Winkie.” While initially dismissive of Shirley, she worked hard to please him and the two became close friends. He later became godfather to her daughter, Susan.
And those are just a few of the celebrities that visited Shirley during the filming of “Wee Willie Winkie”!
See more Shirley Temple photos at my main website.
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