War Babies

War Babies (1932)

** (out of 4)

Many people consider this 9 minute short to be one of the worst ever made but I'm certainly not going to go that far. The "idea" to this short is quite simple as the setting is a bar where many sailors are at watching a girl (Shirley Temple) dance. What offends most people is the fact that these young kids are made to do adult things and there's no question that it comes across rather creepy today but then again this was 1932 and stuff like this was done. I mean, there were several very suggestive shorts from Our Gang. The reason most people are going to watch this today is for the casting of Temple who has a couple dances she has to do and is of course the center of attention of two guys fighting over her. The more object-able stuff happens whenever certain kids have milk thrown on them in order to get them to "cry" and this is a lot worse than some of the other stuff going on.