The film stars Shirley Temple, Lionel Barrymore, Evelyn Venable, John Lodge, Bill Robinson and Hattie McDaniel.[2] They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later: Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine."[3]During the filming, Temple drew the ire of veteran actor Lionel Barrymore when she prompted him for one of his lines after he forgot it, causing him to storm off in a fit of anger.Andre Sennwald in his New York Times review of March 22, 1935, thought the film "[a]ll adrip with magnolia whimsy and vast, unashamed portions of synthetic Dixie atmosphere".He further wrote that the film was "so ruthless in its exploitation of Miss Temple's great talent for infant charm that it seldom succeeds in being properly lively and gay".
Shirley Temple with U.S. Marines on the set of
The Little Colonel
(1935)