Carolina is a 1934 American romantic comedy film

Romantic comedy film

Romantic comedy films are films with light-hearted, humorous plotlines, centered on romantic ideals such as that true love is able to surmount most obstacles. One dictionary definition is "a funny movie, play, or television program about a love story that ends happily"...

 directed by Henry King. The screenplay by Reginald Berkley is based on the play, The House of Connelly by Paul Green. The film stars Janet Gaynor, Lionel Barrymore, and Robert Young with a supporting cast featuring Stepin Fetchit and Shirley Temple in a romanticized story about a post-Civil War family in the fading South regaining its former prestige.

Cast

• Janet Gaynor
  Janet Gaynor
  Janet Gaynor was an American actress and painter.One of the most popular actresses of the silent film era, in 1928 Gaynor became the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in three films: Seventh Heaven , Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Street Angel...
  
   as Joanna Tate
• Lionel Barrymore
  Lionel Barrymore
  Lionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul...
  
   as Bob Connelly
• Robert Young
  Robert Young (actor)
  Robert George Young was an American television, film, and radio actor, best known for his leading roles as Jim Anderson, the father of Father Knows Best and as physician Marcus Welby in Marcus Welby, M.D. .-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Young was the son of an Irish immigrant father...
  
   as Will Connelly
• Henrietta Crosman
  Henrietta Crosman
  Henrietta Crosman was an American stage and film actress. She was born in Wheeling West Virginia to George Crosman, a Civil War Major and Mary B. Wick, who was a niece of Stephen Foster.-Theatrical career:...
  
   as Mrs. Ellen Connelly
• Richard Cromwell
  Richard Cromwell (actor)
  Richard Cromwell, born LeRoy Melvin Radabaugh , was an American actor. His family and friends called him Roy, though he was also professionally known and signed autographs as Dick Cromwell. Cromwell's career was at its pinnacle with his work in Jezebel with Bette Davis and Henry Fonda and again...
  
   as Alan
• Mona Barrie
  Mona Barrie
  Mona Barrie was an English born actress in American theatre and motion pictures.-Career:Born Mona Barlee Smith in London, she was educated in Australia and made her professional debut as a ballet dancer in Sydney at the age of sixteen. This led to a solo act in musical comedies...
  
   as Virginia Buchanan
• Stepin Fetchit
  Stepin Fetchit
  Stepin Fetchit was the stage name of American comedian and film actor Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry....
  
   as Scipio
• Ronnie Cosby as Harry Tate
• Jackie Cosbey as Jackie Tate
• Almeda Fowler as Geraldine Connelly
• Alden "Stephen" Chase as Jack Hampton
• Shirley Temple
  Shirley Temple
  Shirley Temple Black , born Shirley Jane Temple, is an American film and television actress, singer, dancer, autobiographer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia...
  
  as Joan Connelly (uncredited)

Production

Shirley Temple was too young to read so her mother taught her the lines by reading them to her. In this way, the child actress learned every line in the script. In one scene when Lionel Barrymore forgot his lines Shirley infuriated him by prompting him. Mrs. Temple hoped the film would be her daughter's big break but it was not to be. Most of Shirley's scenes and all her dialogue were cut except for a few brief moments with Gaynor and Young at film's end. Her name did not appear in the credits (Edwards 45-6).