The Littlest Rebel (Twentieth Century-Fox). Cinema folk have lately been telling one another that Shirley Temple and Abraham Lincoln would make "an unbeatable combination." Definitely un beatable, the combination is well planted in this picture. When the Great Emancipator (Frank McGlynn Sr.) receives in his office Virgie Carey, "The Littlest Rebel of Them All," accompanied by her faithful black servitor, it is to plank the child on his desk, share an apple with her and hear from her the sad old story about the dashing Confederate scout (John Boles) who happens to be her widowed father.
As in The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel presents Shirley Temple in hoop skirts and high-button shoes, pairs her with Tap Dancer Bill Robinson. Still first-rate entertainment are the steps the two per form in a slave cabin, when they wish to distract a Yankee colonel, and again in a street when they seek to raise money to take them to see Abraham Lincoln. Miss Temple sings Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms and Polly Wolly Doodle. She also has a new foil in the person of a plump, solemn youngster named Edward McManus, who dances the minuet with her at a children's party, gravely pipes his apologies at being unable to bow low because his pantaloons are too tight.
Captain Blood (Warner) seems to be Warner's answer to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Mutiny on the Bounty. Whatever the literary merits of Rafael Sabatini's florid novels, they make excellent cinema fare when served with the crispness and gusto of Captain Blood.
The story begins in the reign of James II, one of England's best-hated kings. When a young doctor named Peter Blood (Errol Flynn) is found treating a wounded rebel, he is summarily convicted of treason, sent to Jamaica to be sold into slavery with a group of other James-haters. The island's No. 1 slave-buyer is Colonel Bishop (Lionel At will), a savage sugar plantation owner who runs his cumbrous mill with slave power. Peter Blood is promoted from the mill when he successfully treats the governor's gout, but he does not forget his wretched comrades. Meanwhile his insolence has earned the bitter hatred of Bishop and the affections of Bishop's niece Arabella (Olivia De Havilland).
When Spanish pirates cannonade and capture the town, Blood and his friends escape to the pirate craft, turn pirates themselves. With Britain at war with France and James II ousted at home by William of Orange, Blood gets a navy commission, captures a French man-of-war in a tremendous battle. That is enough for him to be appointed Jamaica's governor, to Arabella's delight and her uncle's extreme discomfiture.
Good shot: a sailor in the battle scene with his neck pinned between the ship's rail and a grappling hook.
A personable, mercurial Irishman, Errol Flynn plays a swashbuckling role without swashbuckling. Last June he married Lily Damita, whom he calls "Sweets." When he finished school in Belfast, where his father is a biology professor, Errol Flynn got bit parts on the London stage, later went to Tahiti, bought a boat, fished for pearls, prospected for gold in New Guinea. Back in London he got stage parts in Othello, Another Language, The Constant Nymph. Tall (6 ft. 2 in.), brawny (180 lb.), he boxed on England's 1928 Olympic team.