Lots could be done with the role, a lip-smacking case history of an adopted, illegitimate girl in a small town. Gossip and taunts bloom into total social ostracism and culminate in her attempted suicide. Then there is a gallant rescue and eventually happy marriage to a man long suspected of being her father. For convoluted plots this one bulged and groaned. But therein lay opportunity…Shirley Temple from “Child” Star.
Mostly Melo: Favorite Bastard- Orphan-Scarlet Mothers and Happy Family Films
- A Summer Place (1959, Delmer Daves)
- All Fall Down (1962, John Frankenheimer)
- Auntie Mame (1958, Morton DaCosta)
- Blue Denim (1959, Philip Dunne)
- Broken Blossoms (1919, DW Griffith)
- East of Eden (1955, Elia Kazan)
- I Want to Keep My Baby (1976, Jerry Thorpe)
- Indochine (1992, Regis Wargnier)
- Intolerance (1916, DW Griffith)
- It (1927, Clarence G Badjia/Joseph von Sternberg)
- Johnny Belinda (1948, Jean Negulesco)
- Kim (1950, Victor Saville)
- Kitty Foyle (1940, Sam Wood)
- Kommisar (1988, Aleksandr Askoldov)
- Madame X (1937, Sam Wood)
- Mommie Dearest (1981, Frank Perry)
- Natural Enemy (1997, Douglas Jackson)
- Not Wanted (1949, Elmer Clifton/Ida Lupino)
- Penny Serenade (1941, George Stevens)
- Peyton Place (1957, Mark Robson)
- Reno Finds Her Mom
- Return to Peyton Place (1961, Jose Ferrer)
- Sarah and Son (1930, Dorothy Artzner)
- Secrets and Lies (1996, Mike Leigh)
- Stella Dallas (1937, King Vidor)
- Teenage Tupelo (1995, John Michael McCarthy)
- That Hagen Girl (1947, Peter Godfrey)
- The Bad Seed (1956, Mervyn Leroy)
- The Bigamist (1953, Ida Lupino)
- The Cleaner (Leon) (1994 Luc Bresson)
- The Great Lie (1941, Edmund Goulding)
- The Old Maid (1939, Edmund Goulding)
- The Restless Years (1958, Helmut Kautner)
- The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931, Edwin Selwyn)
- The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers (1946, Lewis Milestone)
- Way Down East (1920, DW Griffith)
- Wild Boys on the Road (1933, William Wellman)
- Wuthering Heights (1939, William Wyler)
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