Adventure in Baltimore (1949)

Absolutely Fantastic

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Plot-- A reverend's 1905 family must find a way to adjust to the eldest daughter's instincts for equality at a time when women were denied many opportunities. Meanwhile, Dad may lose his chance to become a bishop because of town gossip over his daughter.Looks like the misleading title and Shirley's rebellious upstart were meant to provide some edge to her squeaky-clean image. However, the results are what could be expected of the Temple brand—a wholesome little family drama, on the order of Father Knows Best. As daughter Dinah, Shirley manages to keep her feminist instincts within appealing bounds; at the same time, she defies confining norms placed on 1905 women. The rebellious context is carefully calibrated so as to be acceptable to 1949 audiences without offending the values of that later time. Note how in the movie Dinah's desire for women's suffrage is endorsed, but not her inclination for a career as a painter. That accords with norms of the late-40's when women still weren't expected to have careers. Careers would come later in the 1960's.As Pastor Sheldon, Young is likably bland in the type role soon to define him. More importantly, as the voice of reason and church authority, he gives official approval to his daughter's actions. So the audience knows she's more than just rebellious— she's on the right track. On the other hand, too bad the studio didn't hire a more appealing swain than the dull- as-cement John Agar. But then he's certainly no competition for his then real life wife. On the whole, the movie tells us more about Temple's career and the social norms of two historical periods than anything else. However, I'm still wondering how this revealing slice of fluff escaped from RKO's dream factory that was then turning out noirs by the dozen.

When I first began watching this film I was nonplussed. But the further I got into it, the better it got. Unfortunately, Shirley Temple -- the little girl who saved the studio when she was a child -- wass becoming an adult, and fairly or not the public wasn't buying it...literally...this film alone lost nearly a million dollars at the box office. In other words, Shirley's prominence was fading and fast. It's too bad, because I thought she should have had a place in movies for years to come. I enjoyed her, for example, in "The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer" with Cary Grant, filmed just 2 years earlier. But, apparently the public was tired of Shirley Temple.The plot, particularly as it advances, is actually quite good -- a young lady has an eye on equality and clumsily pursues it, sometimes to the detriment of others...included her father, who may or may not become the Episcopal Bishop of Maryland. Earlier in the film her escapades are a little more frivolous, but as time goes by the topics get more serious. Temple does fine here.Her co-star, as dad and minister, is Robert Young, and I would have to say this is one of his better roles. And you begin to see in young a transition to the type of character he undertook in his greatest success which began just 5 years later -- "Father Knows Best".John Agar is fine as the boyfriend, but I really enjoyed Josephine Hutchinson as the mother. I have never been disappointed by her film performances, though she is a woefully underrated actress.Some will say this film is dated. I would assume so -- it takes place at the turn of the 20th century! Recommended, just give it a little time as the plot matures.

Mild sitcom, from a story by Christopher Isherwood of all people, about a pastor's rebellious daughter in the stuffy upper-middle-class Baltimore of 1905. Though it's handsomely photographed, there's no Baltimore atmosphere here; it could as easily be Milwaukee or St. Louis, and in fact, the strong-family-ties theme, aggressive nostalgia, boy-next-door puppy love, and sleeve-tugging sentimentality play like a less well-written "Meet Me in St. Louis." Robert Young, top-billed and with a mustache and silly hair, does a tolerable warmup for "Father Knows Best"; he furrows his brow a lot and makes pronouncements. (But the height of the plot arc, in which he delivers a give-'em-hell sermon to his hypocritical congregation, is unaccountably omitted from the script.) The only real surprise of the movie is how amazingly uninteresting a 21-year-old Shirley Temple is. She simpers, she searches for her key light to be never anything but as attractive as possible, she tries to convey adolescent feistiness, but her line readings are monotonously alike, and she has no inner life. Nor is it wise to pair her with then-husband John Agar, in what's essentially the Tom Drake role; he's as dull as Tom Drake. The script puts the two through some very contrived roadblocks on the road to love, including a hard-to-believe episode of her unintentionally instigating a riot, a harder-to-believe one of him reading a speech of hers out loud and forgetting to change the pronouns, and an unpalatable one of her lying to him about painting his portrait. I wouldn't even root for such a selfish young miss. RKO must have figured, well, she's Shirley Temple, the audience will be on her side no matter what. I wasn't, and while the denouement is rushed to the point of incoherence, I wasn't sorry to see this one end.

It is beautifully filmed by Robert de Grasse. And Robert Young's character is appealing and even admirable. This seems like a dry run for his most famous role, the title character in "Father Knows Best." Here he is a father in two ways: He has children, including Shirley Temple. And he is an Episcopal priest (under consideration for Bishop of his Diocese.) Shirley Temple is the main character. She is meant to be saucy and ahead of her time. But she's very hard to like. The escapade in which her boyfriend, John Agar, borrows a speech from her for a debating contest isn't admirable. And right here, it's hard to imagine that a priest would laugh off his daughter's involvement in such dishonesty.Then she paints Agar. She promises she will just use his body as a starting point -- no face. But the painting is exhibited in a show and everyone sees that she has painted him in a bathing suit. That would have been extremely risqué for 1905. What would be the equivalent 101 years later? Something on the Internet or in an X-rated video.All this while her father is being considered for Bishop. I wonder what Christopher Isherwood's original story was like. Maybe she was a forerunner to Sally Bowles. Here, however, she is sullen, pampered, and selfish.