A Little Princess

Shirley Temple stars in this 1939 version of the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel about a little, motherless girl left in the care of a girls boarding school by her soldier father, and then made into a servant there when he's missing in action during World War I. The fine tear-jerking film is a good vehicle for the famous moppet, and director Walter Lang (The King and I) makes a memorably lavish production of the Victorian milieu. The final scene, in which our Shirley is helped by one of the most famous women in history, brings down the house. --Tom Keogh