Little Miss Marker

LITTLE MISS MARKER (Paramount, 1934), directed by Alexander Hall, from the story by Damon Runyon, became the studio's answer to Columbia's successful Runyon tale, LADY FOR A DAY (1933). In true Runyon tradition, it consists of many character types with odd-ball names, including wrestlers Sore Toe (Warren Hymer) and Canvas Back (John Kelly); dishonest Bennie the Gouge (Sam Hardy), drunken Regret (Lynne Overman), good-natured Doc Chesley (Frank McGlynn Sr.), and the title character of "Little Miss Marker" going to 6-year-old Shirley Temple, on a loan-out assignment from Fox Studios, ranking one of the finer films she made during her busiest year (1934)in the movies.

Plot summary: Big Steve Halloway (Charles Bickford), gambler, gang leader and proprietor of New York's Horseshoe Cabaret, where his girl, Bangles Carson (Dorothy Dell) sings, is in desperate need of money. He arranges for his fellow bookies, especially Sorrowful Jones (Adolphe Menjou), to each pay him $1,000 each for his racehorse, Dream Prince, to lose. With all bets being placed at the window, Sorrowful encounters a gambler (Edward Earle), having lost $500, wanting to place his bet but is unable to come up with $20. Instead, he places his daughter, Marthy Jane (Shirley Temple), as security, or in bookie's terms, a "marker." While Sorrowful refuses to accept 'markers," he does so with this one, having the child to wait outside his office until Daddy returns. Having lost his bet, he commits suicide, leaving "little Miss Marker" under the care of Sorrowful Jones. As Steve hides out in Chicago to avoid investigation for his crooked bets, he entrusts Sorrowful to watch over Bangles during his absence, at which time the "gold digger" helps "tight-wod" with his "40 pounds of trouble." When Big Steve learns Bangles is involved with Sorrowful, he takes his "rod," returns to New York to do something about it.

The supporting players: Adolphe Menjou is perfectly cast as Sorrowful Jones, resembling that of a cartoon character down to his sad-eyed face and droopy mustache. He and Temple work remarkably well together, sharing great scenes, especially the highlight where Sorrowful teaches "Markey" how to pray. It is Menjou, not Temple, who closes this with a comedy line. Unlike her future film assignments, LITTLE MISS MARKER offers Temple a rare opportunity to play a fresh kid later on in the story, thanks to the bad influence of Sorrowful's friends. Dorothy Dell's Bangles is the one who makes every effort to restore Markey's child-like innocence by having the gang gather together in Steve's night club to re-enact her favorite bedtime story of "King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table" with Sorrowful playing Sir Galahad, and Bangles as Lady Guinevere, along with the opportunity to ride her horse known as "The Charger." Charles Bickford, a fine actor with a rough exterior, plays a tough mug whose very presence and gruff sounding voice causes the Charger to jump about in fear, an idea duplicated in the Marx Brothers comedy, A DAY AT THE RACES (MGM, 1937), with Douglass Dumbrille as the villain whose harsh voice causes the star racehorse to run amok.

While many will comment on Shirley Temple's performance, one cannot help but notice the unfamiliar name of Dorothy Dell in the cast. Who is Dorothy Dell? It's surprising to learn that during the making of LITTLE MISS MARKER, she was a 19-year-old newcomer (who looked older than 25) with only two other 1934 releases to her credit: THE WHARF ANGEL and SHOOT THE WORKS. By the time LITTLE MISS MARKER was released, Dorothy Dell was dead, a victim of an serious automobile crash. Looking over her style, she had the mannerisms of a young 20th-Fox's own Alice Faye, blonde, deep-throat singer, tough exterior but soft in heart. Due to the availability of LITTLE MISS MARKER will Dorothy Dell's name be virtually a curiosity today. Dell takes part in much of the song numbers composed by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin including: "I'm a Black Sheep Who is Blue" where she vocalizes in the night club, and "Low-Down Lullaby" singing Markie to sleep. She and Temple team up with on the piano with "Laugh, You Son-of-a-Gun," the latter obviously a hit tune since it's instrumentally used for opening or closing to other Paramount films, namely Temple's upcoming Paramount project NOW AND FOREVER.

Aside from frequent commercial television revivals prior to 1989, LITTLE MISS MARKER surfaced on numerous cable stations in later years, including the Disney Channel (1990s); American Movie Classics (1991-92) and Turner Classic Movies (2003-04). Unlike its presentations on either AMC and TCM, LITTLE MISS MARKER's availability on both VHS (1996) and DVD formats are colorized. LITTLE MISS MARKER consists of such notable remakes as SORROWFUL JONES (Paramount, 1949) with Bob Hope, Lucille Ball and Mary Jane Saunders; FORTY POUNDS OF TROUBLE (Universal, 1963) with Tony Curtis; and 1980 under the original title starring Walter Matthau and Julie Andrews, but very few child actresses could compare to the likes of the original Little Miss Marker herself. (****)

I encountered this on TV recently when I had no intent whatsoever of watching any film, but found myself glued to the edge of my seat till the very end. I'm now stumped to think I once saw it as a child and as a child's film. The levels of sensitivity and depth of feeling, the Tempest-like voices from the Brave New World of old New York, are so wonderful, I see it now overwhelmingly as an adult's film. I'll say no more, other than to point to this as another example of the failure of our rating system. Oh, Menjou and Dell... To think that this masterpiece is only rated six and a half by its fifty-five voters at this point, while lowest common denominator junk too often rates substantially higher...

Despite only two songs, it's another entertaining Shirley Temple film. The story is familiar; it's been done several other times, once under the name "Sorrowful Jones," with Bob Hope. This movie is a bit different from that one, so you could own both and have two different slants on the famous Damon Runyon story.

This version has a lot more comedy from the supporting players, since Temple is cute but she' isn't going to be the main source of humor as Hope was in his films. In here, all the bookies and gangsters provide the humor. The leading male, played by Adolph Menjou, is a sourpuss but still likable. The leading adult female, Dorothy Dell, was a bit tough-looking, I thought, for this role.

Temple doesn't play as sweet a role as she did in most of her films, but she still has her tender moments. Nobody can produce a sentimental scene as quickly as Shirley could. In all, a nice film and enjoyable from start to finish.

Note: This was the best colorized version I have seen of Temple's films. Perhaps that was because MGM did this, not Fox, which did the others. It advertises "stereo" but I didn't hear any.

Damon Runyon's story about a girl left as a pawn with a bunch of racetrack characters has a certain flavor about it that many find appealing, but frankly the only reason I showed any particular interest in this film is the remarkable presence of little SHIRLEY TEMPLE in the title role.

With the influence of tough-talking gents and gals around her, she soon adopts street-wise ways and manners of speech, so it's not the usual soft and sweet Shirley that we get here. Nevertheless, she remains adorable throughout, speaking all of her lines with the kind of verve and personality that would soon make her the number one box office attraction during the Depression years.

It's worth noting that ADOLPHE MENJOU (who called her a little Ethel Barrymore) has some of his best scenes opposite Temple. She manages to hold her own against him, but he's well cast as the shady character with the sad eyes and droopy mustache who'd rather be romancing DOROTHY DELL than taking care of a pint-sized doll.

Incidentally, DOROTHY DELL died in an auto accident within days of the film's release. She showed promise of becoming a very good actress in all of her scenes with Shirley and Menjou.

One Edward Earle a compulsive gambler can't cover a bet and leaves a marker with bookie Adolphe Menjou. The marker is quite alive, it's forty pounds of little daughter in the person of Shirley Temple. What to call her especially since her name is Martha but Little Miss Marker.

This Damon Runyon story filmed four times already and is about due for another retelling, is the story of how Shirley Temple managed to melt the hearts of all those Broadway sharpies that populate Runyon stories, people like Charles Bickford, Warren Hymer, Lynne Overman and Bickford's girl Dorothy Dell. In fact Temple causes a split between Bickford and Dell and plays a little girl cupid for Menjou and Dell.

The young lady is full of illusions, her mother used to read tales of King Arthur, but these guys who are in the business of odds making and occasional odds fixing when it comes to the kind that race on the track make pretty poor substitutes for Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere. Still in their own Broadway style they try to live up to little Shirley's image of them.

After Darryl Zanuck became head of the new 20th Century Fox studios his greatest asset in the form of America's favorite moppet would never be lent out like she was here to Paramount. Little Miss Marker represents a milestone in the career of Shirley Temple and the three remakes don't reach this standard. But Damon Runyon is timeless and I'll bet someone out there in Hollywood might be thinking of a fifth version.