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7/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 7/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Little Miss Marker remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you want to see where the whole Shirley Temple mega-fame thing actually solidified, this is absolutely worth a watch today. Classic film fans and people who like soft-hearted cynical comedies will love it, but if kid actors make you roll your eyes, steer far away. 😭
Adolphe Menjou plays Sorrowful Jones, this cheapskate bookie who looks like he grooms his mustache with a tiny ruler. He gets stuck with "Marky" (Shirley) because her dad literally leaves her as a bet marker.
Talk about parenting! The dad just takes off, and suddenly this kid is living in a dusty backroom with a bunch of guys who smell like cigars and cheap gin.
Honestly, the kid is incredibly charming, even when she is doing that overly rehearsed 1930s head tilt. It is way more watchable and less annoying than some of those earlier silent kid films like Angel Child.
There is this bizarre sequence where all these hardened, scary mobster guys start playing Knights of the Round Table to please her. They are literally wearing cardboard armor and riding broomsticks around a fancy apartment.
It goes on for like five minutes and it is so weirdly sweet but also kind of embarrassing. I love how nobody in the movie acknowledges how ridiculous they look.
Charles Bickford is in this too, looking like he wants to punch the camera. He plays the villain, Big Steve, but he feels like he walked in from a completely different, much darker gangster movie. 😠
I noticed this one extra in the background of the diner scene who just keeps chewing the same piece of bread for three entire cuts. He never swallows. It's mesmerizing.
Some of the slang is so dated it feels like another language. But it has that typical Damon Runyon vibe where everyone talks like a poet who lives in a sewer.
The ending gets incredibly melodramatic with a blood transfusion scene that feels super rushed. Like, suddenly we are in a high-stakes hospital drama? It doesn't quite fit.
If you liked other old-school melodramas about grumpy adults getting tamed by innocence, like Your Obedient Servant, this has a similar vibe. But really, you are just here to see Shirley Temple eat mush with a wooden spoon and call tough guys "Doc."
IMDb 6.3
1933
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