"Little Shirley Shrine"- A filmography

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Upload 30 April 2006

Little Shirley Shrine
a Filmography
- As edited from the collection of Simon Barber -

Helen does a film review of Miss Shrine's recent 1934 film.

Little Shirley Shrine – a Filmography

(Condensed from “Annoying Moppets of the Silver Screen, Vol. I” by G. Zorski, 2 shillings paperback, 5/6 in vomit-resistant covers from less discerning book shops everywhere.)

“A song, a dance and a merry twinkle”, is how the film publicity described the typical Little Miss Shrine film – to which this reviewer could add “a gasp, a retching and a rapid retreat” on behalf of the audience. The puppy prodigy tap-danced her way across the stages of the world from a tender age, having been born into a show business family who were understandably pleased to send her off to exotic filming destinations, well paid and (presumably) heavily insured.

    Her first outing was in 1933, in “Dance for your life!” a low-budget film comedy about the infamous Paraguayan dictator Lopez, in which she played the daughter of the exiled opposition leader. Her big singing number, a cheerful cover of “I ain’t got nobody” as she tap-dances through a depopulated and skeleton-littered countryside, caused a sensation wherever it was played. The sensation this reviewer experienced was centred in the pit of the stomach, rather reminiscent of crossing the stormy English Channel on a small boat after a large fried breakfast.

    Possibly fearful of facing the crowds back home, the producers scheduled more overseas filming in the following years, starting with the slapdash romantic farce “The Little Commissar” set on location in what the film claims is an open-air holiday camp in the hills behind Vladivostok. Little Shirley’s soft-shoe shuffle sequence across the roof of the lead refinery is said to be one of the Russian leader Ioseph Starling’s all-time film favourites.

    “Stand up and Yip!” of Spring 1934 has the curly-topped menace playing an orphan whose orphanage is relocated from the Dust Bowl to the backwoods of the Appalachians, which presumably counted as suitably abroad to the Hollywood producers. Her tender ballad “Animal Snackers” where she struts heel-and-toe through an all-dancing village of cannibal hillbillies has never been equalled, or even attempted since. (It may be a coincidence that the state the film was set in, declared cannibalism a misdemeanour rather than a felony a month after the first screening.)

    “The Good Ship Sherbet Dip” of Spring 1935 was set further afield in the Spontoon Islands, which provided a spectacular scenic backdrop to the heart-warming tale of the chieftain’s daughter who has to choose which of her classmates must be sacrificed to the Volcano God. A surprisingly catchy tune, “You have to be fair – don’t think I don’t care” finishes off the film where she must make her agonising decision – she teaches the grown-ups a lesson by choosing to sacrifice ALL her classmates.

    “Baby, Take A Dive” followed not three months later, taking advantage of the famously lax Cuban employment laws to shoot a film set in the brutal underworld of bare-knuckle playground prize-fighting. Little Shirley plays the leader of an all-singing ten-girl boxing team, who use their dancing skills and a surprisingly precocious knowledge of “low blows” to weave and shuffle their way to victory.

    A string of very similar films followed throughout the 1930’s, with exotic filming destinations substituting for any sort of plot. Miss Shrine’s insistence on always having the best available dance instructors and costumes often forced the producers to save money elsewhere – in “Fairy Tails” of 1936 there was no actual script-writer, and the extras of “Shrine on Harvest Moon” were paid in Little Shirley’s own trademarked range of sweets, dolls and suchlike.

    By the 1940’s, Miss Shrine’s trademarked style was out of fashion, and her star faded. The wartime film “Boogie-woogie Bongo Belle” achieved fame, though mainly controversy – it was supposedly filmed to boost troop morale, but the Chief of Staff later admitted it “had been worth three elite divisions to the enemy.”

    That same year saw her name appearing one of the periodical Hollywood scandals, which put an end to the unbroken string of productions that had lasted a decade. To this day no two people have agreed what the scandal involved, but all agree that even in Hollywood circles, it was so extreme that nobody ever told anyone a single detail about it.

    The final film to which Miss Shrine put her name, was 1955’s lacklustre “I was a Teenage Warmonger” which has, to date, been the last of its line the world of film has endured. But like influenza, we can never say it has really gone away…

(Edited by Mr. Simon Leo Barber from his clipping colletion)