Stowaway (1936 film)

Stowaway is a 1936 American musical film directed by William A. Seiter. The screenplay by William M. Conselman, Nat Perrin, and Arthur Sheekman is based on a story by Samuel G. Engel. The film is about a young orphan called Ching Ching Shirley Temple who meets wealthy playboy Tommy Randall Robert Young in Shanghai and then accidentally stows away on the ocean liner he is travelling on. The film was hugely successful, and is available on videocassette and DVD.

Temple learned forty words in Mandarin Chinese for the film, later stating the learning process required six months of instruction. She was taught by UCLA student Bessie Nyi. She encountered problems in her communication with the extras on the set however, as she found out they were actually speaking a south Chinese dialect. In the film, she impersonates Ginger Rogers with a lifesized male doll fixed to her toes, Eddie Cantor, and Al Jolson singing Mammy. In the first take, the elastic band of the dummy, which she named Tommy Wonder, snapped off her foot. In preparation for the Jolson imitation, she had to listen and watch Jolson, something she did not enjoy doing.Production of the movie was held up for close to four weeks while first Alice Faye then Shirley Temple came down with the flu. ........

Source: Wikipedia