Let's see. The name of the small town is Jordan. The elderly Hagen family return to Fremont Street from Chicago carrying a baby they claim to have had. The problem is that the little girl doesn't look anything like either of the "parents" because she's black. Just kidding. She has the wrong color hair or something. So the gossips go to work. The director shows a certain sense of irony by cutting from a handful of whispering elderly ladies to a pen full of clucking chickens. The rumor is that the father is young Ronald Reagan and the mother was his girl friend, who passed on to her reward in Purgatory. A fed-up Reagan leaves town and spends the war years building the atomic bomb.
When he returns to Jordan, the baby has grown into Shirley Temple, a student at the local community college. When Reagan is told that she's suspected of being his daughter, he takes an interest in her, offering to pay her way through the university and commenting on her social life. Meanwhile, Reagan has met the elegant Lois Maxwell. She loves Ron but advises him to see more of Temple because he's so obviously in love with her. There is the frisson of incest, which is kind of nice.
It gets practically labyrinthine, as soap operas tend to do. Rory Calhoun, all black eyebrows, black hair, black pupils, and snow white principles is in love with Mary Hagen and proposes to her, but she thinks he's really interested in the hoity-toity blond Christine Delaney but he's actually not. It's just that Delaney is from the upper class, like Calhoun's family and -- well, if it were set in 1812 it would be a Russian novel.
Shirley Temple is surprisingly cute but can't handle a dramatic role. She sounds as cute as she looks. She was better in light-hearted roles, like the ones in "The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer." Reagan is professional. The dialog has a couple of fancy turns of phrase but the story itself is buried in sentiment and frustration. Twice, someone is going to spill the beans about what really happened seventeen years ago. The first time, it's Temple's dying mother. "There's something I want to tell you --", and she dies. The second time, Reagan says, "Look, there's something you ought to know --", and he's interrupted by Lois Maxwell with a tray of tea.
Some viewers found it more interesting than I did.
When he returns to Jordan, the baby has grown into Shirley Temple, a student at the local community college. When Reagan is told that she's suspected of being his daughter, he takes an interest in her, offering to pay her way through the university and commenting on her social life. Meanwhile, Reagan has met the elegant Lois Maxwell. She loves Ron but advises him to see more of Temple because he's so obviously in love with her. There is the frisson of incest, which is kind of nice.
It gets practically labyrinthine, as soap operas tend to do. Rory Calhoun, all black eyebrows, black hair, black pupils, and snow white principles is in love with Mary Hagen and proposes to her, but she thinks he's really interested in the hoity-toity blond Christine Delaney but he's actually not. It's just that Delaney is from the upper class, like Calhoun's family and -- well, if it were set in 1812 it would be a Russian novel.
Shirley Temple is surprisingly cute but can't handle a dramatic role. She sounds as cute as she looks. She was better in light-hearted roles, like the ones in "The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer." Reagan is professional. The dialog has a couple of fancy turns of phrase but the story itself is buried in sentiment and frustration. Twice, someone is going to spill the beans about what really happened seventeen years ago. The first time, it's Temple's dying mother. "There's something I want to tell you --", and she dies. The second time, Reagan says, "Look, there's something you ought to know --", and he's interrupted by Lois Maxwell with a tray of tea.
Some viewers found it more interesting than I did.