1930s & Earlier / Censored Shirley Temple Film

Curly Top (1935) was one of Shirley Temple's first feature films for 20th Century Fox. In it Shirley played a lovable, spunky orphan. The film is best known for Shirley's famous 'Animal Crackers' song. Movie scholars also remember Curly Top as the film that featured a controversial Temple hula dance that ended up on the cutting room floor. What did seven-year-old Shirley do to ire the censors? She wore a grass hula skirt but no top! The public didn't see little Shirley's bare torso until the late 1970s when the clip was included in the syndicated TV program 'That's Hollywood!' The hula scene is not included in DVDs or videotapes.