Begins with Shirley leaving an exclusive girl's school because her architect father can no longer pay for it. Also, she discovers that her father is no longer living in a penthouse on the top floor of an apartment complex. He's living in a cheaper basement apartment. We have 2 wonderfully charismatic comedic character actors present in Franklin Pangborn, as the harried apartment building manager, and Claude Gillingwater. Pangborn, as Waters, is the classic prissy, snobbish, nervous, befuddled, functionary. He has an intuitive dislike for Shirley, always trying to find an excuse to kick her out of the building. He's subjected to several onerous indignities: being pushed into a pool while forcibly playing blind man's bluff , being pushed down a laundry shoot, and being taken away by police. Gillingwater is a crotchety befuddled old tycoon whose involvement in a building project is a central part of the plot. He served as the judge in the previous "Little Miss Broadway". Here, he is called Uncle Sam by his relatives living in the complex. Shirley's father also talks about another Uncle Sam, and Shirley thinks they are the same, because the cartoon in the paper looks just like Uncle Same upstairs. This misconception leads to some comedic and serious consequences.Shirley does a makeover of the mamma's boy Milton. She shaves off his long curls and buys him some "he-man" clothes to replace his preppy clothes. His society mother faints when she sees him, but eventually gets used to it. The title song is only heard during the opening credits. The two main production numbers are danced to "This is a Happy Little Ditty" and "Ï Love to Walk in the Rain" For the former song, Shirley and Bill Robinson form one dance pair, while Burt Lahr and Joan Davis form another. Shirley and Robinson are the main players in the latter production. Also, Robinson and a team of African American backups dance to "Brass Buttons and Epaulettes".As always, Shirley is cute and vivacious.

Coming home from boarding school, Shirley Temple rushes out of a chauffeured limousine (driven by a cowardly lion), heads up an elevator and into the penthouse where she believes her father (Charles Farrell) still lives. Much to her shock, the pickle-pussed apartment manager (Franklin Pangborn) gleefully tells her that her place is not there anymore. Residential maid Joan Davis rushes into her while walking a bunch of giant dogs (or actually, they are walking her), and takes her down to where she really lives: the garage apartment residence of the live-in engineer who now happens to be her father! It seems that Farrell's design of a residential skyscraper caused him to loose his job when the building of it stalled and now, he is in debt. The building's owner's niece (Amanda Duff) has tried to encourage her uncle (crotchety Claude Gillwater) to go through with the project, and when Temple meets "Uncle Sam" (as he is known), she tries to help him after seeing a look-alike drawing of America's "Uncle Sam" in the newspaper.Just another "Little Miss Fix-It" showcase for Temple, she is as cute as ever, but some serious talent threatens to outshine her. As maid and chauffeur, Joan Davis and Bert Lahr get little to do, but share a musical number with her that is taken over by the tap-dancing talents of Bill Robinson who also dominates the benefit finale. Farrell and Duff provide the romance, while Shirley gets a partner in crime with the precocious Benny Bartlett, a sniveling bratty rich kid who stands up to a bully and gets a silver dollar from Gillingwater for getting a black eye while his snooty dim-witted mother (Cora Witherspoon) faints in shock after Temple cuts off Bartlett's obnoxious looking curls.Then, there's Franklin Pangborn in one of his largest parts, basically playing an unlikable apartment manager whose main goal seems to keep Shirley from having fun. That makes him a villain of sorts, although he's a villain who never gets to win at his schemes. In certain scenes, he even begins to resemble Bela Lugosi with the teeth clenched in so far into his mouth that he seems either toothless or lipless. He laughs in brown-nosed mock humor at Witherspoon's unfunny jokes and at the end involves the police in his vendetta against Shirley which, of course, doesn't go off as he planned. His exit scene is reminiscent of Margaret Hamilton's "I'm melting!" speech in "The Wizard of Oz".By 1938, 20th Century Fox was obviously running out of ideas for new Shirley Temple stories, and while she certainly appears to be younger than her 10 years, the tide was beginning to turn with singers like Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin (ironically older than her) taking over "slowly but surely". The films were still entertaining, featured some great supporting players, and had decreased running times for the most part. In this case, "Just Around the Corner" was an ironic title considering that within two years, Shirley's Fox career would be history.

Here's a so-so Shirley Temple entry with a catchy song that plays throughout the film. The movie features a bunch of nice characters. The "bad guys" in here - a snotty woman, her butler and a crabby "Uncle Sam" - aren't overly mean and don't have huge roles in here so the atmosphere, for the most part, is very genial.In addition to the main song ("This Is A Happy Little Ditty," a very catchy song), there is a good production number near the end of the film. Both of those numbers feature Shirley and Bill Robinson. Those two were always fun to watch dance and sing together.There are two negatives in here: some of the spoken lines are a little stupid and poorly delivered, mostly by the male rich kid "Milton Ramsby" (Bennie Bartlett) who looked like he was reading his lines and the female adult lead, "Lola Ramsby," played by Amanda Duff, was weak. I can see why Duff never had much of a screen career.I would like to have heard a few more songs, too, but it's still a charming film: not her best, but not the worst, either.

JUST AROUND THE CORNER (20th Century-Fox, 1938), directed by Irving Cummings, stars Shirley Temple in what might be her only venture into "screwball comedy," and reportedly her first box-office flop. Temple plays Penny Hale, a child who returns home from boarding school to her prominent architect father (Charles Farrell), unemployed and now living in a basement of the same skyscraper in which they used to live in style up in the penthouse. Amanda Duff, a new Fox starlet at the time, is featured as Farrell's love interest.Songs by Walter Bullock and Harold Spina include: "Just Around the Corner" (sung during opening credits); "This is a Happy Little Ditty" (sung by Shirley Temple, with Joan Davis, Bert Lahr/danced by Bill Robinson and Temple); "Brass Buttons and Apple-Lass" (sung and danced by Bill Robinson and doormen); and the lively tune, "I Like to Walk in the Rain" (sung by Temple/danced by Temple and Robinson).Aside from familiar character actors in the supporting cast, featuring the likes of Franklin Pangborn and Cora Witherspoon (who later appeared opposite WC Fields in 1940s THE BANK DICK), along with Joan Davis and Bert Lahr as maid and chauffeur, some of the comedy strains for laughs. Shirley was about 10 years old when this movie was made, and recites lines and lands herself in comedic situations that would have performed better if she were a few years younger. Instead of being cute, she appears more silly than charming, sorry to say. The dance numbers in which she participates with Bill Robinson, as the building doorman, are still good but not given enough screen time to make amends for trite storyline. As with Temple's previous LITTLE MISS Broadway (1938), JUST AROUND THE CORNER plays at "B" movie length of 70 minutes, both giving some indication of it being longer, and having gone through some tight film editing process. Joan Davis whose name is billed second after Temple, disappears before the movie is half way over. What became of her? Maybe she and Lahr, who are very amusing together, had more to do, even in a supposed production number in a charity benefit near the film's end that possibly got the ax. Maybe deleted scenes such as the this might turn up as part of a documentary on 20th Century-Fox movies or Shirley Temple's career in the similar fashion to American Movie Classic's well constructed HIDDEN Hollywood (From the vaults of 20th Century-Fox) specials that premiered in the mid 1990s. Charles Farrell, billed third, as Temple's (supposedly) widowed father, had seen better days in his career at the old Fox Film Studios when he achieved popularity as the romantic leading man opposite Janet Gaynor in 12 feature films from 1927 to 1934. He was by then a name of the past whose movie career came to an end by 1941. And Shirley gets to share screen time opposite a boy actor, Bennie Bartlett, playing a rich "momma's boy" named Milton with curls and glasses, but with the encouragement by little Penny, Milton earns respect from his "Uncle Sam" (Claude Gillingwater Sr.) by losing those "girly" curls (Penny had given him a much needed haircut), and getting a black eye in a fight with a bully. Aside from that, Temple continues to play her usual "little miss fix it." JUST AROUND THE CORNER, available on video cassette in both black and white and colorized versions since the late 1980s, appeared as part of Shirley Temple festivals on the Disney Channel in the early 1990s, followed by American Movie Classics cable channel from 1996 to 2001, and the Fox Movie Channel, where it is currently shown. (**)