With its Cinderella-in-the-film-studios motif [The Painted Garden, British title of Movie Shoes] should be wildly popular, and cause considerable juvenile discontent…. The story is competently told, and the children, with all their dudgeons and vanities, are real enough. But a Presbyterian parent may hesitate before fostering, with this glossy tale, the universal California dream.

Naomi Lewis, "The Swineherd and the Turtle," in The New Statesman & Nation (© 1949 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), Vol. XXXVIII, No. 978, December 3, 1949, p. 660.