Another Old Movie Blog: "That's What I Want for Christmas"

Stowaway (1936), which is not a Christmas movie, ends the movie with a Christmas scene in which Shirley Temple sings about what she wants for Christmas.

It’s used to tie up the movie, to show the happily ever after of her new family. In this adventure, Shirley is the orphaned daughter of missionaries in China. Cute as a bug, she’s raised speaking Chinese and learning Confucius-type pearls of wisdom from Philip Ahn. She’s on her own after the person who is assigned to take her to safety away from country bandits does not do his job. She wanders into Robert Young, a rich American playboy, and accidently stows away on the very ship he is taking around the South Seas. Also on board is Alice Faye, who chides Mr. Young on both his wealth and his irresponsibility (she is traveling with her dour future mother-in-law played by Helen Westley to reunite with her drip of a fiancé on a colonial plantation), but Alice eventually warms to Robert as they both find themselves shipboard babysitters to Shirley. Young’s valet, the ever-proper Arthur Treacher, helps.

Young wants to adopt Shirley, and he and Alice Faye create a fake marriage so that he can do so, which then after a few twists and turns in the plot, and a few songs, the judge in Reno at their divorce decides they should stay together.

In the final scene, everybody’s sitting around the Christmas tree in their jammies and bathrobes and Shirley, the little girl everybody wants for a daughter in the 1930s, sings “That’s What I Want for Christmas.” The lyrics include shoes for poor children everywhere, and soldiers who never fight, and making her new mommy and daddy happy, safe, and strong. What a swell kid!

Christmas is a convenient sort of ready-made finale for this movie. It’s the shorthand for happily ever after.

But I keep worrying about Philip Ahn not knowing where she is.

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