 "Animal Crackers in My Soup" and "When I Grow Up" became hits in their own right, selling thousands of sheet music copies and placing Shirley on the charts in the company of musical superstars Bing Crosby, Nelson Eddy, and Alice Faye.Andre Sennwald of "The New York Times" said of the film, "So shameless is it in its optimism, so grimly determined to be cheerful, that it ought to cause an epidemic of axe murders and grandmother beatings […] Shirley herself, far from showing signs of deterioration or overwork in "Curly Top", actually hints in her work at an increased maturity of technique.Her remarkable sense of timing has never been revealed more plainly than in the song and dance scenes in her new film, and she plays her straightforward dramatic scenes with the assurance and precision of a veteran actress.