A Menina dos Meus Olhos

All the versions of the Runyon story are very good. It's just a great story, but this one is clearly the best. A seemingly heartless, stingy bookie accepts a little girl as a marker for a bet, but when the girl's father is killed by notorious gangsters, the bookie, Sorrowful Jones, is stuck with her. The events that follow range from hysterically funny to emotionally provoking. And those qualities are enhanced by great talents. Bob Hope is perfect as the stingy bookie, playing to his usual role. Bruce Cabot does well as the evil gangster, and Lucille Balllands another great role (she had to have the best agent in the business) as the mother figure. But the little girl, Martha Jane Smith, is absolutely divine as the sad faced girl that even makes Bob Hope melt. She is just zillions of times cuter and more emotion provoking than the bland Shirley Temple. If you don't believe me, see for yourself. A classic that need to come to AMC instead of those stupid boring movies they keep showing (Arnie movies, Stallone movies, Friday 13 movies, etc). How about showing real classics like this instead, something people will watch and enjoy!

Humphrey 'Sorrowful' Jones (Bob Hope) is working the angles in New York City. He is a bookie operating behind a barbershop. Gangster Big Steve wants $1k from every bookie to fix a race. His ex Gladys (Lucille Ball) is dating Big Steve. A gambler leaves his daughter with Jones as a marker for a bet.

The girl is a cutie, but she's no Shirley Temple. This is very much Bob Hope's movie and he's good at doing this character. Lucille Ball is sassy, but she is not doing much more than hitting the ball back to Bob Hope. She is certainly capable. Their back and forth is pretty good. Mostly, this is pretty good.

Damon Runyon was another one of those writers whose work never transferred very successfully to the screen. Even the great Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald had troublesome films made from their novels. Runyon failed before with THE BIG STREET (Lucille Ball as a hard-boiled dame using Henry Fonda as a doormat) but had better luck when GUYS AND DOLLS transformed one of his works into a musical.

Here it fails once again to provide BOB HOPE and LUCILLE BALL with anything more than routine roles in this racetrack comedy about an unlikely man to chaperone a kid (MARY JANE SAUNDERS in the role originated by Shirley Temple in "Little Miss Marker"). Saunders is cute, but that's about it. She's no Temple and never went on to child star stardom as Temple did.

Sidney Lanfield directed a lot of lightweight films for Paramount, not all of them successful, and this has to be counted among his least likable comedies--unless, of course, you happen to be a fan of the stars and can watch them in anything.

Hope has some amusing one-liners as the man who takes a marker on a kid who becomes a big part of his life and Lucille Ball has a few quips of her own. Adolphe Menjou played the unsuitable man in the Temple film, with better and more believable results. Hope and Ball are simply killing time here and it shows.

The story, which depends so much on the charisma and appeal of a child star, simply hasn't got the strength to support Hope and Ball. This one's a real loser without the charm of the original.

What you will think about this probably depends a lot on if you are looking more for comedy or more for a cute family film...with a strong emphasis on cute. As far as a comedy goes, it's not terribly funny. As a cute film goes, it works reasonably well--mostly because the little tyke is awfully sweet--and not always in a saccharine way. It is clearly designed as a sweet family film and Bob Hope's comedy definitely takes a back seat to this.

The story is about a period in the life of the Damon Runyon character, Sorrowful Jones. All of Runyon's characters had colorful names like this, by the way. Jones is a professional gambler--a sharpie with an aluminum heart. First and foremost, he is interested in money and hasn't an ounce of sentiment about him. However, when a poor schnook leaves his four year-old child with Jones, temporarily, Jones is forced to care for the tyke. Sadly, however, her father runs afoul of a mobster and is killed--leaving the kid to either stay with Hope or go to an orphanage. Naturally, the struggle throughout the film is for Hope to show SOME nurturing skills and force down his natural impulse to be a money-grubbing jerk. To help him in this process is his on-again/off-again girlfriend played ably by Lucille Ball.

In a goofy twist (and one I didn't care for that much), the child becomes the owner of a racehorse...of sorts. Crooks decide to put the horse in the child's name in an effort to dodge the police--but the child becomes enamored with it. This leads to a schmaltzy portion of the film when the child is hurt and ends up in the hospital. They almost give up hope (not the actor) until Bob gets the idea of sneaking the horse into the hospital (this happens all the time). But, to do this, he has to fight thugs who are intent on killing the horse instead.

All in all, this was not a bad Bob Hope vehicle despite the emphasis on schmaltz instead of humor--though I would have preferred more humor and less sentiment. It's agreeable and cute, though as I said above, some may balk at the fact that the humor, such as it is, is pretty restrained. But, Hope did show that he could handle a role with a bit more to it than his usual characters...just a bit.

By the way, there have been four versions of this film. I haven't seen any of the others, so I cannot compare them. But based on the plot, I'm not in a huge hurry to see the rest. Meh.

FYI---Little Mary Jane Saunders grew up to marry Jay Johnstone, the major league baseball player.

In this remake of the Shirley Temple vehicle "Little Miss Marker," a little girl is left as collateral for a racetrack bet. The good news is that it's a huge improvement over the terrible Temple film. The bad news is that it's still based on the same uninteresting Runyan story. As the little girl, Saunders is much easier to take than Temple. Unlike the earlier version, the focus here shifts from the little girl to the title character, which is a good thing as Hope is always fun to watch. Hope and Ball work well together although they don't get much help from the script here. The ending is far better than the corny finale to the earlier film.