During the 1930s, there was no bigger star in Hollywood than Shirley Temple. So beloved was little Shirley by both moviegoers and other actors that allegedly she was given an honorary Academy Award for fear that she would defeat older, more experienced performers if she was nominated for a competitive Oscar. However, growing up can be awkward for child stars, and Temple, popular though she was, was no exception. By the early 1940s, she had been largely relegated to supporting “kid-sister” roles in films like 1944’s Since You Went Away.

In 1947, she decided to make a last-ditch effort to parlay her youthful popularity into an adult career, and what better way to do so than to share the screen with some of the era’s biggest stars? So producer David O. Selznick, to whom she was under contract, gave Temple permission to make a film at RKO Pictures opposite Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. The result was 1947’s The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, and it became one of the most popular films of the year. As usual, Grant and Loy were big audience draws, but it was Temple’s presence that put it over the top, as moviegoers were eager to see if the former dimpled moppet could still outshine the grown-up stars around her.

As it turns out, she couldn’t, in large part because she hadn’t really learned any new acting tricks since her childhood days. While as a child she could sing and dance, what really endeared her to audiences was her charm and charisma, and flashing a dimpled smile at the camera could smooth over any juvenile overacting she might have done. As Temple’s mother memorably told her curly-topped little moneymaker before every take, “sparkle, Shirley- sparkle!” But as an adult, she would have to work harder to win over audiences, and her talent just wasn’t up to the task. All too often, she falls back on her stock child-acting tricks- smiling, pouting, posing for the camera- and opposite ace comedians like Grant and Loy she was way out of her depth.

Not helping matters was the screenplay, written by none other than future best-selling author Sidney Sheldon. The most obvious flaw in the screenplay is Sheldon’s unfortunate tendency to have all of his characters speak in arch, convoluted dialogue. It’s hard enough to believe anyone would say, “these are merely the vestments I don as a concession to our outworn education anachronism,” let alone a seventeen-year-old girl, school newspaper editor or not. But an even bigger issue is that it’s hard to buy the events of the story. The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer is no more convoluted than your average screwball comedy, but the best of those films always kept their stories emotionally grounded with their characters. But here, practically every major character is plotting something or other, and once the movie’s happy ending becomes obvious, there’s little else to do but wait for the schemes to play themselves so that Grant and Loy can (SPOILER!) end up together in the end.

But if there’s a bright spot in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, it’s that great movie stars like Grant and Loy could give perfectly fine performances even with second-rate material. Grant is, of course, a treasure, and he takes the kind of role that he could play in his sleep- the ladies’ man- and finds new wrinkles for the character, even while the film does him few favors (who thought those ridiculous “white knight” bits were a good idea?). But for my money, Loy is even better. Loy is essentially the straight man in the story, and she pulls it off by giving her character (Temple’s older sister and guardian) a stern warmth that would have been tricky in the hands of a lesser actress. There’s a reason why both Grant and Loy enjoyed successful movie careers for years to come while Temple had more or less retired by 1950- for grown-up actors, it takes more than cuteness to survive in Hollywood.