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.

This is a precode film, so the bad guys don't have to be punished for their crimes, and its a good thing because most of the lovable characters would have ended up with long jail sentences if the film had been made a year or two later.This movie may be disappointing for Shirley Temple fans as she does relative little. Most of the movie concerns the rough gangsters whose life is disrupted by her. They are wonderful characters, while Temple does little more than act like "the doll" that the characters often call her.Adolph Menjou and Dorothy Dell really carries the movie. Menjou gives an hilariously understated performance as cheap gambler "Sorrowful Jones" Menjou was a fashionable dresser, so it is particularly funny to see him unkempt in wrinkled clothes for most of the movie. Whereas Walter Matthau played the role with a wink, Menjou plays it quite straight. Sorrowful Jones is a sorrowful human being in this movie. Dorothy Dell gives a terrific Mae West style performance as gangster moll/nightclub singer Bangles Carson. It is assured and polished, and it is impossible to believe that she was only 19 when she did it.Incidentally Dorothy Dell and Dorothy Lamour were best friends as teenagers. When she won the Miss USA beauty pageant, Dorothy Dell invited Dorothy Lamour to come with her to Hollywood. In her autobiography, "My Side of the Road," Lamour notes that they went to the premiere of the Marx's Brother's "Animal Crackers" together in 1930. Dell helped and influenced Lamour to start her career.Also watch some of the great comic actors in small parts here. Lynn Overman as Regret and Warren Hymer as Sore Toe are flawless.This film is more than an excellent Shirley Temple star vehicle, it a comic masterpiece with Shirley Temple as the icing on the cake.

A tiny child, left as an IOU at a race track by her insolvent father, charms her way into the hearts of a group of hard-boiled gamblers.Shirley Temple - not quite six years old - became a full-fledged movie star with LITTLE MISS MARKER. Loaned out to Paramount for the one picture, she emerged as a top of the bill powerhouse prepared to return to Fox Studios and become the most popular performer in Hollywood for the next five years. With genuine talent & an infectious sparkle, she would carve out her unassailable niche in film history.To its credit, the fast moving script allows her to be a little less than saintly, with a normal dose of cranks & crotchets. Even so, her costars, as well as the audience, become her willing slaves in short order. Adolphe Menjou, as the cynical gambler who takes her in, and Charles Bickford as his tough boss, find themselves completely overwhelmed by the mighty moppet. Both of these gentlemen were abundantly experienced actors, used to controlling viewers' attentions in their screen scenes; it must have been somewhat odd for them to be reduced to so much stage dressing - but Shirley's ascendant flood swamped all other boats.The Damon Runyon story is well served by the rest of the colorful cast, but it is easy to regret every minute the Small One does not appear on screen. Shirley became quite close to pretty Dorothy Dell, playing a nightclub chanteuse involved with both Bickford & Menjou. The news of Miss Dell's tragic death in a car wreck soon after filming completed was kept from Shirley for some time.Movie mavens will recognize Willie Best as a friendly janitor & Tammany Young as a bettor, both uncredited.

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...