25 Most Memorable Shirley Temple Movies Ranked Worst To Best

Shirley Temple perfectly embodied the American spirit, projecting endless optimism in the face of adversity. In the midst of the Great Depression, she was Hollywood's top box office star, offering audiences an undeniable sense of hope. As little Shirley proves in film after film, there's no problem you can't solve without grit, determination, and a little musical theater training.

Born in 1928, Temple began her movie career when she was just three years old, quickly becoming a superstar thanks to a small part in the musical review "Stand Up and Cheer!" Her rise was meteoric, and by 1935 she was so popular that the Academy Awards honored her with a special Juvenile Award.

By the time she was six years old, she was already starring in multiple films a year, the majority of which were thinly-plotted comedies or melodramas built around her singing and dancing skills, as she famously performed alongside the likes of Jack Haley, Buddy Ebsen, Jimmy Durante, and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. 

Temple retired from film acting in 1950 when she was just 22 years old. Between 1974-1989, she served as a diplomat for the United States under her married name, Shirley Temple Black. She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1998, and earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild in 2006. She died in 2014 at the age of 85.

Let's take a look back at Temple's 25 most memorable movies, ranked worst to best.

Temple churned out a ton of films throughout the 1930s, most of which were little more than an excuse for the little tyke to show off her song and dance skills. In "Just Around the Corner," she plays Penny Hale, whose father, Jeff (Charles Farrell), has been hit hard by the Great Depression. A once-promising architect, Jeff now scrapes by as a hotel janitor. Informed that the country is in such dire straits because of too many people trying to siphon money from "Uncle Sam," Penny befriends wealthy businessman Samuel G. Henshaw (Claude Gillingwater Sr.), the uncle of Jeff's girlfriend, Lola (Amanda Duff), in the hopes that he'll start a new building project and put her dad in charge.

In order to raise funds for the project, little Penny puts on — what else? — a musical revue charging attendees a nickel apiece. She performs with the hotel's doorman, Corporal Jones (Bill Robinson). This would mark the last time Temple appeared alongside her most famous dance partner, with whom she'd made three previous films. Needless to say, their routine manages not just to get Penny's dad back to work, but singlehandedly ends the Depression as well.

All good things must come to an end, and as the 1930s came to a close, little Shirley Temple and her fans had to reckon with the realities of growing up. "Young People" was the last film Temple made as a child star, and it marks the beginning of her decline as a top box office draw.

Directed by Allan Dwan, it stars Temple as Wendy Ballantine, whose vaudevillian parents Joe (Jack Oakie) and Kit (Charlotte Greenwood) decide to retire from show business and move to a sleepy New England town. Despite their best efforts, the locals don't take too kindly to "show folk," until a massive hurricane hits and the Ballantines prove their worth to the community.

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote, "Now that Mistress Shirley Temple, the little ray of sunshine in a lot of people's lives, is about to withdraw from the screen at the ripe young age of eleven," it is "appropriate and sweetly touching that Twentieth Century Fox should mark the parting with a sentimental little picture about retired vaudevillians." His review makes it sound as though "Young People" marked its star's real-life retirement, and in a sense, it did: the film's poor box office performance, coupled with the failure of "The Blue Bird" that same year, effectively ended Temple's contract with the studio that made her a star. Although she didn't officially exit movie screens for another decade, Temple never regained the status she enjoyed as a child actress.

Throughout the 1930s, Shirley Temple made a name for herself playing pretty much the same character: A plucky little go-getter who overcomes adversity with gumption and charm. In "Little Miss Broadway," she plays Betsy Brown, an orphan who moves into a boarding house for theater performers run by the kindly Pop Shea (Edward Ellis). The landlady, Sarah Wendling (Edna May Oliver), despises "show people" and wants to throw them all out of the building. But leave it to Betsy to come up with a solution: The building's residents will put on a show to raise money for the back rent Pop owes. At the same time, Sarah's nephew, Roger (George Murphy), wants to marry Pop's daughter, Barbara (Phyllis Brooks), and adopt Betsy, thus giving her a loving home.

As is the case with many Shirley Temple movies, you watch this one more for the musical numbers than the plot. Yet even though she has a few good numbers here with both Murphy and Jimmy Durante, by the time "Little Miss Broadway" came out, the act was beginning to wear thin. As Frank S. Nugent penned in The New York Times, "It can't be old age, but it does look like weariness." He adds, "Although she performs with her customary [gaiety] and dimpled charm, there is no mistaking the effort every dimple cost her." You'd half expect that review to be written by the miserly Miss Wendling, yet it reflects how critics were starting to view Temple's schtick at that point.

If there was one constant throughout Shirley Temple's filmography, it was the problematic representation of people of color. That certainly wasn't mutually exclusive to her: Many films made during Hollywood's so-called Golden Age feature harmful stereotypes. Among the most demonized groups at that time were Native Americans, who were often portrayed as savages in Westerns. While "Susannah of the Mounties" has its fair share of this, it at least attempts to humanize Indigenous characters instead of casting them all as villains.

Adapted from the novel by Muriel Denison, it stars Temple as pint-sized Susannah Sheldon, whose family is killed in an Indian attack while making their way through the Canadian frontier in the early 1880s. She's adopted by kindly mounted policeman Angus "Monty" Montague (Randolph Scott), but attacks from the Natives intensify as resentment grows over white settlers encroaching on their land. Chief Big Eagle (Maurice Moscovitch) tries to broker peace, and Susannah strikes up a friendship with his son, Little Chief (Martin Good Rider).

One area in which "Susannah of the Mounties" was ahead of its time was in the casting of actual Native American actors as extras, when most Hollywood productions employed either Hispanic or Caucasian performers (including this one, with Ukrainian Moscovitch playing Chief Big Eagle). 12 Blackfoot Indians were featured in the film, including Martin Good Rider in the role of Little Chief.

As Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times put it, "'Dimples' is not the best Temple, nor the worst." That's a pretty accurate way to describe this mid-tier Shirley Temple offering, which has a ridiculous plot, some cringe-inducing racism, and a handful of charming musical numbers.

Set in New York in the 1850s, it stars Temple as Sylvia Appleby, aka "Dimples," a precocious street performer who lives with her pickpocket grandfather, Professor Eustace Appleby (Frank Morgan), on the Bowery. She performs at a soiree for wealthy widow Caroline Drew (Helen Westley), who takes Dimples into her lavish home on Washington Square Park. There she meets Caroline's nephew, Allen (Robert Kent), a Broadway producer who wants Dimples to play Little Eva in his production of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

But little Dimples longs for her grandfather and is determined to lift him out of poverty. Ultimately everything works out for the best, and Dimples stars in Broadway's very first minstrel show. As you can imagine, many scenes in the film are difficult to view through a modern lens (particularly the "Dixie-anna" number featuring performers in blackface). But the dance sequences, which were choreographed by Temple's frequent collaborator, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson," remain stunning to watch in spite of how problematic some of them are.

Like most Shirley Temple movies, "Poor Little Rich Girl" isn't exactly a model of plot construction. As Frank S. Nugent wrote in The New York Times, the script is "formless and generally ridiculous." Yet even though as a movie, it's "virtually nonexistent," Nugent conceded that "as a display window for the ever-expanding Temple talents, it is entirely satisfying." And that's about what you can expect from one of the actress's best films.

Temple plays Barbara Barry, the emotionally neglected daughter of widower Richard Barry (Michael Whalen), a wealthy soap manufacturer. Mr. Barry decides to send Barbara off to boarding school, but she gets lost at the train station when her nanny, Collins (Sara Haden), is struck by a taxi. Posing as an orphan, Barbara finds her way into the tenement apartment of an Italian organ-grinder, Tony (Henry Armetta), who feeds her spaghetti and tucks her into bed with his own children.

She soon meets married vaudevillians Jimmy and Jerry Dolan (Jack Haley and Alice Faye), who live upstairs. Impressed by her vocal talents, the Dolans decide to turn their act into a trio, and they become overnight successes thanks to advertising executive Margaret Allen (Gloria Stuart). But little Barbara misses her dad, and they're soon reunited, thanks to the power of radio.

You might not remember the plot of "Curly Top," but you'll certainly remember the musical numbers. It's hard to forget Shirley singing "Animal Crackers in My Soup," which remains, alongside "On the Good Ship Lollipop," one of the most iconic songs she ever performed.

Temple plays Elizabeth Blair, a precocious tyke who resides at the Lakeside Orphanage with her sister, Mary (Rochelle Hudson), who works in the kitchen. Little Elizabeth keeps her fellow orphans entertained by singing songs written by her sister, including, of course, "Animal Crackers in My Soup." Her talents catch the eye of Edward Morgan (John Boles), a wealthy trustee who offers to adopt her when her hijinks anger the orphanage administrators. But Elizabeth won't leave without her sister, and soon the two are living in Edward's lavish estate, where romance sparks between him and Mary. 

Critical reception was on par for most Shirley Temple movies. As Andre Sennwald of The New York Times put it, "So shameless is [the movie] in its optimism, so grimly determined to be cheerful, that it ought to cause an epidemic of axe murders and grandmother beatings in this sober vicinity." He did praise Temple, saying, "Her remarkable sense of timing has never been revealed more plainly than in the song and dance scenes in her new film, and she plays her straightforward dramatic scenes with the assurance and precision of a veteran actress."

"Captain January" is another in a long line of movies casting Shirley Temple as a precocious orphan who brightens the lives of her adoptive family. Adapted from the 1890 novel by Laura E. Richards, it centers on Helen "Star" Mason (Temple), who was taken in as a baby by kindly lighthouse keeper Captain January (Guy Kibbee) after her parents were killed at sea. Although she enjoys living with Captain January and his friends, Captain Nazro (Slim Summerville) and Paul Roberts (Buddy Ebsen), nosey truant officer Agatha Morgan (Sara Haden) believes Star belongs in a proper home. She locates Star's long-lost aunt and uncle (Nella Walker and George Irving), threatening to separate her from her surrogate family forever.

In his review for the New York Times, Frank S. Nugent found Temple to be "as clever and talented as ever." Yet he ultimately concluded that even her "glories" couldn't "atone for 'Captain January's' moss-covered script." He did enjoy individual scenes, such as Temple "tap-dancing the multiplication table... down a flight of steps" and her rendition of "At the Codfish Ball" with Ebsen, who he said, "yet may be her Fred Astaire when she has grown up to become a latter-day Ginger Rogers."

Throughout the 1940s, Temple tried to make the transition from child star into adult leading lady, ultimately finding less success than her contemporaries Elizabeth Taylor and Judy Garland. One of her best films during this period, "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer," hints at what her screen persona could have transformed into had she not ultimately retired from movie screens at the end of the decade.

Temple plays Susan Turner, a high school student living with her older sister, Margaret (Myrna Loy), a judge and Susan's legal guardian. Into their lives comes Dickie Nugent (Cary Grant), a sophisticated artist who's brought before Margaret's court for starting a fight between two women in a nightclub. Dickie is able to charm his way out of sentencing, and later that day he turns up as a guest lecturer at Susan's school. Susan instantly falls in love with him, and she sneaks into his bachelor pad in the hopes of seducing him. When Margaret and Assistant District Attorney Tommy Chamberlain (Rudy Vallee) discover her there, a brawl ensues between Tommy and Dickie, and to avoid assault charges, Dickie agrees to date Susan until her infatuation wears off. 

Writing for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther said Temple was given "a full chance to show her natural charm as a clear-eyed, imaginative, persistent, and overpowering 17-year-old," proving age did nothing to dull her acting talents.

The 1940s were a rough period for Temple, as America's favorite child star struggled to find her footing as an adolescent. She found great success as a supporting actress during this period, particularly in David O. Selznick's "Since You Went Away," one of two World War II domestic dramas she made with the mega-producer (along with "I'll Be Seeing You," released the same year).

Directed by John Cromwell, it's an epic examination of life on the home front, centering on housewife Anne Hilton's (Claudette Colbert) struggle to raise her teenage daughters, Jane (Jennifer Jones) and Bridgette (Temple), while her husband is away fighting. Strapped for cash, Anne is forced to take in a pair of lodgers: cantankerous Col. William G. Smollett (Monty Wolley) and family friend Lt. Tony Willett (Joseph Cotten), with whom she has a chaste romance. Meanwhile, Jane falls in love with Smollett's estranged son, Bill (Robert Walker), who joins the Army to gain his father's respect.

In his review for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther criticized the film for having an "excess of exhausting emotional detail" but praised the performances, saying that Temple, "now grown to teenage freshness, is pert as the young sister." It's a sentiment most critics shared for the nearly three-hour melodrama, which earned nine Oscar nominations, including best picture.

As with "The Littlest Rebel," it's impossible to watch "The Little Colonel" without commenting on its abject racism. Yet despite the objectionable subject matter at the core of both films, you can't help but marvel at the dance routines between Temple and her most famous collaborator, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson.

Set in the Antebellum South, the film stars Lionel Barrymore as Colonel Lloyd, who disowns his southern belle daughter Elizabeth (Evelyn Venable) when she marries a Northerner, Jack Sherman (John Lodge). Six years later, Elizabeth returns to the South with her spirited daughter, Little Lloyd (Temple), who learns of her family's tumultuous past from the Colonel's housekeeper, Mom Beck (Hattie McDaniel). Despite a rocky start, Colonel Lloyd forges a friendship with his granddaughter, and the two come together to save the family when Jack returns from a prospecting venture broke and sickly.

The film is best remembered for the moment when Temple dances on the staircase with Robinson, who costars as Walker the butler. It was the first interracial dance number on-screen, and as Mary C. Curtis noted in The Washington Post, "You can appreciate the exposure her films provided for the virtuoso tap dancer Robinson while noticing he usually played the servant or slave and the little one was always in charge. If Temple were a few years older — in real life or the movies — their hand-holding partnership would have triggered rage rather than fond affection."

Released at the end of the 1930s, "The Little Princess" marked the end of Temple's reign as Hollywood's most successful child star. It's also one of her very best films, a shining example of what could happen when the young actress was given a script that was equal to her talents. Adapted from Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic 1905 children's book, it's the story of Sara Crewe (Temple), an intrepid little girl who goes from army hospital to army hospital in search of her missing father, Captain Reginald Crewe (Ian Hunter), reported dead while fighting in the Second Boer War.

This was Temple's first movie to be shot in Technicolor (others would later be presented in computer-colorized versions), giving audiences a chance to finally see her golden locks in all their glory. It also shows off the lavish production mounted by producer Darryl F. Zanuck and director Walter Lang, which spares no expense in transporting audiences back to Victorian-era London through period sets and costumes.

Yet as always, it's Temple who shines brightest. The New York Times called the part of Sara Crewe "undoubtedly her greatest role to date," adding that, "with any other child on earth," the film "would stand out as one of the most glaring exhibits of pure hokum in screen history."