A bizarre pre-Code comedy bitfer, War Babies (1932) features toddlers in diapers and in adult costumes performing a wartime cabaret romance, three-year-old Shirley Temple as a flirtatious French dancer whom soldier boys are fighting over. It is now a free classic film, public domain movie, which provides an unusual insight into the children entertainment industry of the early 1930s that is generally uncomfortable to modern audiences, and is part of the Baby Burlesks series of controversial war babies films.
War Babies (1932)
War Babies (1932) is a 11 minutes American comedy short film directed by Charles Lamont and produced by Jack Hays of Educational Film Exchanges. It is the second in the notorious Baby Burlesks series that parodied the adult films by using preschoolers in their diapers to portray adult situations. The movie makes use of Shirley Temple, who at the age of three was a first-time talking actor, in a World War I environment, an allusion to the 1926 film What Price Glory? It was put in the public domain due to non-renewal of copyright.
Movie Background
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Director | Charles Lamont |
| Producer | Jack Hays |
| Studio | Educational Pictures / Educational Film Exchanges |
| Release Date | September 18, 1932 |
| Running Time | 11 minutes |
| Series | Baby Burlesks (#2 of 8 shorts) |
| Genre | Pre-Code comedy short |
| Star | Shirley Temple (age 3, first speaking role) |
| Cast Payment | Temple earned $10/day |
| Based on | Parody of What Price Glory? (1926) |
| Status | Public domain (copyright not renewed) |
Temple later described the series as “a cynical exploitation of our childish innocence” in her 1988 autobiography.
Movie Cast Table
| Actor/Actress | Role |
|---|---|
| Shirley Temple | Charmaine (dancer, “Gloria”) |
| Georgie Smith | Captain Flagg |
| Eugene Butler | Sergeant Quirt |
| Georgie Billings | Soldier |
| Philip Hurlic | Soldier |
| Ted Frye | Soldier |
| Ashley Shepherd | Soldier |
All cast members were preschool-aged toddlers dressed in diapers pinned with large safety pins and miniature adult costumes on top.
Full Plot Summary
The opening of War Babies (1932 film) is a cafe named Buttermilk Pete (named after the Pete in the military uniform) that is full of relaxing and entertaining young soldiers (all of whom are toddlers in diapers and military costume tops). It is also a rather animated scene, the music is playing and soldiers are drinking milk out of bottles rather than alcohol.
The main character is Charmaine, a French dancer as played by three year old Shirley Temple dressed in a very short skirt and doing cabaret like dances to the soldiers. The young soldiers are instantly infatuated and they court her and fight over her.
Captain Flagg (Georgie Smith) makes his assertion as he disagrees with the rest of the soldiers claiming that Charmaine is his girlfriend. In order to demonstrate his love and win her affection, he purchases her a lollipop. This gesture is taken by the other soldiers as the confirmation of their relationship.
As the cafe scene proceeds with dancing, music, and the soldiers taking their milk drinks, a Sergeant Quirt (Eugene Butler) comes into the scene. He instantly starts to flirt with Charmaine, this provokes Captain Flagg with jealously.
The two competitors, Captain Flagg and Sergeant Quirt attempt to court the dancer, competing by giving her more candy and gifts. This competition is heightened as every soldier tries to outdo each other in matters of romantic advances. Meanwhile, Charmaine likes the game and pits the two suitors against each other.
The cafe sequences contain numerous comedic gags in them, lots of them relying on milk (the child-safe alternative to alcohol in adult war-movies). There are other visual gags such as a dog stealing undergarments and a child imitating a cow.
The next moment a messenger rushes into the cafe with some extremely important news: the soldiers are called into action. The calm cafe is instantly turned into a mess of noise where the toddler-soldiers are scrambling to the toy weapons and getting ready to go to war.
Captain Flagg bids Charmaine a good farewell and they embrace. However, as they come to embrace, Sergeant Quirt slips out of an adjacent room and kisses Charmaine behind the back of the Captain- the first kiss that Butler has on screen with Temple.
Both soldiers depart to war as the Charmaine stands at the door waving to the two men. In a last act to demonstrate her duplicity she wipes her mouth after kissing them as the short film comes to an end.
Genre and Key Themes
The pre-Code War Babies (1932) is a comedy short with a subgenre of peculiar Baby Burlesks, that satirized adult films and topics utilizing toddlers as actors. The series is disturbing and not funny to the modern viewers.
Key themes include:
Adult war movies: The little parody film What Price Glory? and other films of the same sort, where children as soldiers in their toddler age mimic soldier battles and cabarets.
Child sexualization: The sexualized dancing of Temple, skimpy costumes and love triangles leave the modern viewers queasy.
Innocence/cynicism: The difference between adorable babies and irresponsible situations by adults makes the tonal mismatch disturbing.
Issues to do with exploitation: even Temple herself later critiqued the series as exploitative, reporting severe mistreatment on set such as the use of ice block punishment boxes.
Pre-Code freedom: The short was created during the time of freedom in Hollywood where children were not censored yet on controversial content.
These themes render War Babies full movie a historical curiosity than entertainment on a contemporary basis.
War Babies (1932) Full Movie Watch and Download
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🏛️ See Also
Woody Woodpecker in Pantry Panic (1941) – Classic Winter Survival Cartoon Full Movie
Popeye for President (1956) – Classic Election-Day Cartoon Full Movie
Betty Boop: Minnie the Moocher (1932) – Jazz-Fueled Ghostly Cartoon Full Movie
Inner Sanctum (1948) – A Suspenseful Noir Thriller
Movie Review
The movie War Babies (1932) is a very uncomfortable artifact of early 1930s cinema that is hard to evaluate by the contemporary standards.
Acting: Three-year-old Shirley Temple exhibits the innate charm and the movie presence, which would be turned into a super star in a short period of time. She walks and talks with authority, manages her early speaking lines and demonstrates incredible composure at her age. Nevertheless, the atmosphere of her acting, suggestive dancing and love situations, overrides her talent.
Direction and production: Charles Lamont is an efficient director working within the 11-minute format which ensures the action progresses with cafe scenes and gags. Values of production are low but sufficient in an instructional short with low budget of Educational Pictures. The kid friendly alternatives (millet instead of alcohol, toy guns) produce some truly comical moments.
Tone and content: The overall idea behind it dressing toddlers in diapers and making them perform adult romantic and sexual scenes is that this touches upon the boundaries which are absolutely unacceptable nowadays. The costume of Temple, the love triangle, the scene of kissing, and the sexualization of preschoolers in general makes it strange and quite awkward to watch, which one of the reviewsers pointed out.
Historical context: To interpret the series Baby Burlesks, it is necessary to admit the various attitudes of the 1930s as well as the exploitative character of the production. In her autobiography, Temple unveiled that children who had misbehaved were put in windowless boxes known as punishment boxes and made to sit on ice blocks, and this information is not only very disturbing but it also re-contextualises these shorts as implicative documents of child exploitation instead of a gull a comedy.
Cultural heritage: The Baby Burlesks shorts have largely been remembered as footnotes to the career of Shirley Temple- bizarre early work that she would look down upon herself. They are read as much about how social attitudes towards children in entertainment are changing as well as to be entertained.
Being a free classic movie and a public domain movie, the film War Babies 1932 is rather widespread but has serious limitations. It should be treated more like as a historical artifact that highlights problematic elements about early Hollywood as opposed to entertainment that is family-friendly.
Movie Tags
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