That Hagen Girl (1947)

Film: That Hagen Girl (1947)

Stars: Ronald Reagan, Shirley Temple, Rory Calhoun, Conrad Janis, Lois Maxwell

Director: Peter Godfrey

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Shirley Temple: click here to learn more about Ms. Temple (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Shirley Temple was the biggest star in Hollywood in the 1930's.  But that would not extend to the 1940's, when she would be forced to grow up onscreen.  Temple was still a big name, and there were studios that tried to woo her, including MGM (where Arthur Freed allegedly sexually exposed himself to her, and when Temple laughed, he refused to work with her), but no one could find material that fit Temple.  Compared with figures like Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland, she didn't have the talent or the singing ability to transform into a proper adult movie star, and most of her films of the era were flops.  She did have two memorable films (The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer with Cary Grant and Fort Apache with John Wayne & Henry Fonda), but I've seen both of those movies, and so instead as we talk about the end of Temple's career (and what came next) we're going to talk about one of the most notorious films of the 1940's, generally considered to be one of the worst movies ever made: That Hagen Girl.

(Spoilers Ahead) The plot of this movie is insane so bear with me on this.  The movie is about Mary Hagen (Temple), a young woman whom the entire town assumes is the illegitimate daughter of Tom Bates (Reagan), an attorney who used to live there.  Mary's mother has died, and most of the town's "polite society" won't let their children be party to her because they think she's too scandalous.  Tom befriends Mary, and it's not entirely clear whether the two are meant to be romantically-involved or it's just Tom befriending a girl who might be his daughter, as they form a strange love triangle with Julia Kane (Maxwell, who randomly got a Golden Globe nomination for this that is weird even by HFPA standards), Mary's teacher.  As the film ends, it chooses the weirdest possible ending, with it turning out that Mary is not the byproduct of an affair (Tom is "not the father" to use Maury Povich speak)...and the two end up together romantically after an entire movie where we're led to believe that he might be her father, with Julia Kane stepping aside and letting this grown man marry her student.

You might think "different era," but even in 1947, this reads as creepy, and more so it's weird because it never comes across to the characters played by Mary & Tom that them ending up together is unthinkable given at one point Mary was convinced Tom was her father (Hays Code, were you just napping through this film?).  In some world this might've been seen as a tawdry soap opera, but neither Temple or Reagan are good enough actors to pull that off (or at least give us a little bit of camp like someone like Lana Turner or Elizabeth Taylor would've done with this script).  It reads as a staid, boring melodrama with the world's most insane plot.  The "worst movie ever" title feels earned.

Temple would retire from film in 1949 with A Kiss for Corliss, but like her costar Ronald Reagan, she would have a second act in politics, albeit not as successful.  A devout Republican, Temple ran for Congress in 1967 as the most right-leaning candidate to replace J. Arthur Younger in California's 11th congressional district, coming in second.  After Henry Kissinger took her under his wing, she would end up a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, and would serve as Ambassador to Ghana & Chief of Protocol of the United States during the Ford administration, and later during the first Bush administration, as Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, where she witnessed the fall of Communism in the country and developed diplomatic relations with Vaclav Havel, the country's final president before it became the Czech Republic.  Temple would never go back into acting during her diplomatic career, but would pick up numerous awards including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Kennedy Center Honor, and the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award.  She died in 2014, at the age of 85.

Next month, we're going to talk about another devout Republican (it was more common in Classical Hollywood than you'd think), and another America's Sweetheart.  But this America's Sweetheart managed to pull off the feat in the 1940's, when the trope of America's Sweetheart was decidedly out of fashion...and still cobbled together a hugely successful career that would end (sadly) with her becoming something of a sitcom punchline.  We'll get to her on Friday.