cricket30 Review of A Kiss for Corliss

A Kiss for Corliss (1949)

The film that drove Shirley Temple OUT . . .

[5/10 · 10 March 2014]

. . . of American movie houses, as producers forced her to portray a 17-year-old school girl PRETENDING to be regressing to a 9-year-old ("Carry me up the steps, Daddy;" and even when in her "right mind," acting far LESS mature than the characters played by the now 21-year-old Miss Temple 15 YEARS earlier--when she was just six!). Hollywood, then and now, tries to pigeon-hole actors as one-trick ponies. They previously had allowed Miss Temple's characters to reach the advanced age of 18 (THAT HAGEN GIRL, for one), but with A KISS FOR CORLISS, they became permanently hell-bent on making her spoof herself as forever 17. Smart enough to realize it would be hard to "sell" this "17 act" when she turned 30 or 40 (let alone in her sixties and seventies), Miss Temple abandoned the Good Ship Lollipop for the U.N. ambassador slot (with a few side trips here and there). The plot of A KISS FOR CORLISS is too ridiculous for a serious critique. The romantic pairing of Shirley Temple with David Niven does NOT produce a credible chemistry such as the reaction that had allowed Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart to successfully bridge a similar age chasm a few years earlier, in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT. Therefore, A KISS FOR CORLISS definitely comes down on the HAVE NOT side of the equation.