The Little Princess (1939) on Netflix
Approved19391h 33mComedyDramaFamily
Captain Crewe leaves his daughter Sara at Miss Minchin's school for girls and goes to fight in the Second Boer War. When word comes that he is missing, Sara's comfortable life ends.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.2/107,371 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
Sara Crewe arrives at Miss Minchin's School for Girls with her pony, while her father, Captain Crewe, prepares to leave for the Second Boer War in 1899. He pays for a private room and lessons, and Sara rides regularly under Mr. Geoffrey, the instructor, whose grandfather is the ill-tempered Lord Wickham next door. She also arranges for her teacher Miss Rose and Mr. Geoffrey to spend time together. Geoffrey enlists and proposes to Rose before he ships out. Miss Minchin gives Sara a birthday party at Captain Crewe's expense. Then news arrives that Captain Crewe is missing in action and his property is gone, and Miss Minchin keeps Sara at the school as a servant.
Cast
- Deidre Galeas Jessie
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Little Princess (1939)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Shirley Temple was angry about the attention Sybil Jason had received in a previous scene, so after the first take of Sara dumping ashes on Marcia Mae Jones's Lavinia she asked director Walter Lang for a second ash-dump take. He said it was not necessary.
- After filming was completed, Darryl Zanuck of Fox ordered additional scenes costing $300,000, pushing the cost over $1 million and making The Little Princess the most expensive Shirley Temple film to date.
- Shirley Temple rented her pony Spunky to the studio to lie down in a stall for the ballet scene, but the straw's artificial green coloring, used so it would show better in Technicolor, made the pony restless; he was removed and Temple lost his appearance fee.
- To fit in with the crew, Shirley Temple asked for her own punch card and was refused at first; Walter Lang relented, and IBM made her a custom punch-card recorder embossed with her name, plus cards with her photo. The machine sat unused.
- The production aimed to be true to 1899 England, right down to period props and clothing, and was held up when one of Shirley Temple's costumes turned out to use snap fasteners that were not invented until 1908.
- The Little Princess was the first Shirley Temple movie to be filmed completely in Technicolor, and it was also her last major success as a child star.
- In 1968 The Little Princess entered the public domain in the United States because the claimants did not renew its copyright registration in the 28th year after publication.
