In this film, Shirley Temple is cast as Myrna Loy's younger teenage sister, and her responsibility since the death of their parents. Myrna Loy plays a judge and she first encounters Cary Grant, who plays a famous artist, when she has set him free after he was charged with assault and battery. He then ends up at Shirley's high school giving a lecture course, and the teenage girl becomes ( unknown to him ) very infatuated with the very handsome artist. When Loy finds out she sentences Grant to keep company with her sister until her crush for him is over. Grant and Loy eventually fall in love with each other and Shirley realizes the middle-aged Grant is more suited for her sister than for her. This 'fun and simple' comedy sounds easy, but the picture got off to a miserable start. Myrna Loy soon discovered playing Shirley Temple's older sister wasn't easy because she had to treat her rather severely on the screen. According to Loy, " You had to be careful in pictures about being to hard on dogs, children and Shirley Temple; otherwise you could really alienate audiences. Cary Grant did not like working with the younger director Irving Reis, and finally one day Grant stormed out in a huff. He went directly to producer Dore Schary and threatened to quit unless Reis was fired. Buckling to the pressure, Schary replaced Reis with himself. Temple takes her first screen drink in The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer, and the president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union protested that Shirley Temple would be doing a disservice to American youth if she drank on screen, on the the grounds she might lure unthinking teenagers to do the same thing. The studio vigorously denied that Shirley actually drank in the film, only takes a sip, makes a face and spurns the cocktail and the WCTU should be satisfied that Shirley spits out the drink. The behind the scenes adventures sound just as comical as the movie itself. Clearly this film survives because of Cary Grant's charm and meticulous sense of comedic timing along with the renewed box-office magic of a beautiful teenage Shirley Temple. Still a delightful comedy and an interesting look back to the 1940s.
Review of The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
