Little Miss Marker
Directed by Alexander Hall
1934/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing?

[box] Marthy Jane, Little Miss Marker: My mommy used to read to me about King Arthur.

Bangles Carson: Where is your mother, Marky?

Marthy Jane, Little Miss Marker: My mommy got awfully tired, and went away. She’s never coming back anymore.[/box]

Wow, this was kind of a let down after Bright Eyes.   The plot of the movie is based on a Damon Runyon story and all of the characters are gamblers or their associates.  Marthy Ann’s (Shirley Temple) father doesn’t have the money to bet on a race but leaves his daughter as a marker.  After he loses his bet, he commits suicide (!), leaving Marthy Ann an orphan.  Sorrowful Sam, the bookmaker (Adolphe Menjou), is stuck with the adorable child and spends most of the movie trying not to fall in love with her.  Bangles Carson (Dorothy Dell), nightclub singer and moll of a crooked racehorse owner, helps Sam take care of her.  Will Sam and Bangles turn Marthy Ann over to the authorities?

The gamblers try to get Little Miss Marker to believe in fairy tales again.

I’ve liked Damon Runyan adaptations including 1933’s Lady for a Day but Alexander Hall is no Frank Capra and he can’t make the sodden screenplay sparkle.  I am beginning to wonder about how cavalierly the movies treat tragedy in the ’30’s.  I can’t imagine slapping the suicide of a small child’s father in the middle of a comedy in a modern movie or that the child would scarcely react to such an event.  Puzzling.

Pedophilia didn’t seem to be a big concern then either.  We are treated with a scene in which Sam and Markie share a room.  Markie complains that she can’t go to sleep in her underwear and proceeds to strip down in front of him wearing Sam’s pajama top but revealing a lot.  It was clearly a much more innocent age.

Clip – “Laugh, You Son of a Gun”