Why watch Shirley Temple movies? You can see people, including Shirley, in natural posture

Our family was late to get a television and my mother resisted cable, then $5 a month, on the prescient grounds that once you’d signed up, the price was only going to rise.

So Alan records Ms. Temple’s oeuvre for me whenever the movies show up. But it’s not just Shirley that I’m looking at.

Yes, the flappers had already pushed their fashionable pelvises forward in the 1920s. But most of the people who were old enough to be making movies in the thirties had already grown up in balanced posture, and they kept it.

A few nights ago, we watched Little Miss Broadway. It isn’t one of Shirley Temple’s best, but it does have a brilliant dance number with song-and-dance man, and future U.S. Senator, George Murphy. They are both in complete balance and a joy to watch.

Luckily, you don’t have to endure the whole movie, because the dance is on YouTube.

Here’s the eerie part.

At 1 minute and 20 seconds in, Murphy jumps up on a table, a regular, three-feet-off-the-ground table, with no apparent effort. I’ve watched it several times, including at the slowest possible playback speed, and I still can’t see how he does it.

If you’re interested in learning more, check out a Spineful Yoga class on Sundays or Mondays. I will still be teaching private and semi-private classes in the studio until the end of November.