in the same year. Hathaway had directed Shirley Temple before, in To the Last Man (1933) starring Randolph Scott and Esther Ralston and released the previous year. Despite having a memorable role in which her doll's head is shot off right in front of her, the then 5-year-old Temple was not cited in the credits. Alternate ending The film was originally made with a different ending, in which Jerry and Toni drive alongside the train tracks as Penny and Mrs. Crane depart on the train. Jerry succumbs to his gunshot wound en route and Toni takes over the wheel, steering the car over an embankment and killing herself as well. The ending was re-scripted and re-filmed by Paramount to match the lighter tone of the rest of the film. Release Now and Forever was released on August 31, 1934. It was popular at the box office. Critical reception The New York Times thought the film "a sentimental melodrama" and "a pleasant enough entertainment". It gives high praise to Temple, citing her "enormous charm", "unspoiled freshness of manner", and "total absence of self-consciousness" for giving the script authenticity and rescuing it from total incredulity. Louella Parsons was amazed "at the ease with which [Temple] reels off her lines, saying big words and expressions. There is nothing parrot-like about Shirley. She knows what she is talking about". Temple-fever spread with the release of the film. Her fan mail (which numbered 400–500 letters a day) was delivered in huge mail sacks to the studio and a secretary was hired to manage it. In her 2015 book Shirley Temple and the Performance of Girlhood, Kristen Hatch casts the entire screenplay as a commentary on the tension between the grown-up, capitalist marketplace and the unburdened fantasy life of childhood. The character of Jerry is locked in childhood and imagination, unable to hold down a real job and constantly reverting to carefree and irresponsible fun and games. His daughter Penny, as a child who is removed from the "cynical and rational world of the capitalist marketplace", is the perfect person to save him, but she is in danger of losing her own innocence by being paired with a criminal father. Penny does ultimately serve as Jerry's savior, for her faith in him to always tell the truth impels him to risk his life to retrieve what he stole and maintain that faith. Hatch also notes the