This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week the theme is child stars who venture out of typecasting, presumably as they become grown-up actors and actresses. A lot of child stars are unable to make the transition, and wind up retiring. But others have varying degrees of success once they turn 18 and beyond. With that in mind, here are three formr child stars trying something different:
Conspirator (1949). Child star in question: Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor turned 18 during the filming of Little Women, and Conspirator is the first film she made afterwards. She plays a woman in England who marries a British military officer (Robert Taylor), only to find that he's a Communist spy, which makes her grow up quickly and face the issue of whether to turn him in for his treason. Liz does an adequate job here, but would go on in future years to show just how well she could do with adult roles.
Hud (1963). Child star in question: Brandon de Wilde. You may remember de Wilde at the end of Shane calling for Shane to come back. By 1963, de Wilde was 21 years old and taking a supporting role as the cousin of Hud (Paul Newman), who idolizes his cousin despite Hud's bad behavior, ultimately leading to grandpa's (Melvyn Douglas) death. A sign of how much of an adult de Wilde was by now is right at the beginning, when family maid Patricia Neal barges in to his room to wake him up and asks him is he's sleeping "raw" (ie. naked). De Wilde probably could have gone on to quite good things as an adult actor, but he was killed in a car accident at the age of 30.
The Hagen Girl (1947). Child star in question: Shirley Temple. Of the three I picked, Temple had the least successful transition to being an adult actress, making her last movie at the age of 21. Her problem is that audiences wouldn't let her escape her typecasting, as this movie shows. Temple plays Hagen, a young woman who is the subject of vicious gossip about who her real parents are, and when lawyer Ronald Reagan returns after several years away, whispers come out that he's the father. You can see why audiences so used to the singing and dancing child star would be uncomfortable watching stuff like this. That's a shame, because whatever mess the movie is really isn't Temple's fault.
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