Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Prof. Popinjay

All throughout this film I’d felt like I’d seen it before but then I could have sworn it was Bob Hope playing the male lead and Shirley Temple was not in it. Some research solved my riddle. For whatever reason, this story has been made multiple times. It was made in 1980 with Walter Matthau and Julie Andrews. Earlier however (and here’s why I was confused), Bob Hope and Lucille Ball starred in a version of the story but it was named after Hope’s character, Sorrowful Jones. I never actually saw that version now that I think of it. Someone just frequently told me how hilarious it was and the situations that ensued.

“Little Miss Marker” was a standard vehicle for Shirley Temple. A sweet little girl left as collateral on a bet and when things go awry the gangsters in whose charge she was left must now contend with her silly and charming antics. Thankfully this was a respectable mob of gangsters who wouldn’t think of harming anyone and they are up in arms trying to keep Shirley happy in her father’s eternal absence.

It’s a decent story with some funny moments but a bit “jerk you around” plot-wise. I can see why they (gnomes) felt compelled to remake it a few times.

It’s normal to change some aspects of a story here and there when translating it from book to screenplay. Sometimes things that work in a book just gum up the pacing of a film. I get it. Some say it would be grand if a movie was just like the book in every way but making a 16 part-miniseries of every story out there is just not economically viable.

Then again there’s times when a movie is too much like the book. The 1934 version of “Little Miss Marker” feels like one of these. I can’t say for sure because I haven’t read the book. It just seems like there’s extra characters and extra situations that just complicate the plot. For one thing (spoiler alert), while the character Sorrowful Jones seems to be one of the protagonists, it’s the dreaded crime boss who comes in and saves that day. We may have heard a lot about him and how big and scary he is but we don’t really care about him for ill or good by the time he shows up. Although I’ve never actually seen the Bob Hope version, I’ll bet one of my kids they fixed the convoluted plot to feature Hope more prominently as the hero.

Note from the author: I would never ACTUALLY use my children as bargaining chips especially when gambling at an establishment run by 1930’s gangsters… unless one of said gangsters happened to be Bob Hope.