The Little Colonel

Elizabeth Lloyd runs away from home to marry Jack Sherman, a Yankee. Her father, a hard man who was a Confederate colonel in the Civil War, swears never to speak to her again. Years later Elizabeth returns to the town with her husband and her small daughter. The granddaughter sets about softening the old man; being as stubborn as he is, the two of them collide first and come to terms afterwards. What the film is most remembered for now is the dance Shirley Temple and Bill Robinson do on the staircase. It was the first time a Black and a white performer danced together in American cinema. The studio had told Robinson not to hold the child's hand; Temple reached for it anyway. The scene was cut when the film played in the Southern states. Alongside that, the film itself builds the antebellum South with longing and keeps its Black characters in servant roles; both of those things sit in the same picture.