1934 Classic Shirley Temple Film Gave Her the Breakthrough Role That Launched Her Career

Shirley Temple was a legendary child star who acted, sang, and danced in major motion pictures. Throughout the course of her career, she received many different awards and honors, including the Kennedy Center Honors and a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. She also received the first-ever Academy Juvenile Award at the 7thAcademy Awards when she was 6 years old.

Temple began her career when she was only 3. In 1934, she appeared in Stand Up and Cheer!, which was considered her breakthrough film. In it, she sang and tap danced alongside James Dunn.

Fans were thrilled with her performance. As one reviewer said, “Not only was Shirley a brilliant dancer she must have been very intelligent to remember all the song lyrics. Amazing.”

Stand Up and Cheer! was released on April 19, 1934. Written by Lew Brown and Ralph Spence, the film was about boosting morale during the Great Depression, so it was filled with many different vaudeville acts and musical numbers. However, many claim that it does not hold up today.

As one reviewer said, “This film was apparently made when films were fun-to-watch ‘moving pictures’ with some music and basically no plot (or a silly plot), which means this has its charming moments, but it’s nothing spectacular – there were better musicals. I wanted to watch it just to see Shirley Temple’s first real performance – and she was adorable, of course.” Another simply said, “There’s not much here to stand up and cheer for.”

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Stand Up and Cheer! helped make Temple a household name. By the end of that year, she appeared in 10 different movies, playing the starring roles in 4 different feature-length films. Some of her most popular roles throughout her career were in Bright Eyes, Heidi, The Little Princess, and Stowaway. She also appeared on radio and television shows.

Her last film, A Kiss for Corliss, was released in 1949. Temple then shifted into a career in politics in the 1960s. In 2014, Temple died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease when she was 85.