LITTLE MISS MARKER: Blu-ray (Universal, 1980) Universal Home Video

Despite its headliners, Julie Andrews and Walter Matthau, writer/director, Walter Bernstein’s Little Miss Marker (1980) has an insurmountable hurdle to overcome. The 1934 classic, based on Damon Runyon’s 1932 Collier’s short story, had the ever-adorable Shirley Temple as the center of its universe; the movie, proving yet another sizable hit in the pint-size Temple’s child star canon. Point is, Temple was already a major box office draw by the time she made this picture. Regrettably, Bernstein’s remake casts a virtual unknown, Sara Stimson in the title role, but then, completely shifts the story-telling focus to her two more artistically affluent co-stars, utterly defeating the purpose of the original story – the burgeoning and unlikely friendship between Stimson’s ‘kid’ and curmudgeonly bookie, Sorrowful Jones (Matthau) who begrudgingly accepts her – first – as collateral from her no-good dad, Carter (Andrew Rubin): his ‘marker’ to pay a debt. Worse, Stimson – bizarrely to be nominated for the Young Artist Award in the category of Best Major Motion Picture, Family Entertainment – lacks the presence of a Shirley Temple to carry it off. It’s worth noting, Stimson never made another movie.

Yet, even in the publicity stills to promote this movie, Stimson looks utterly bored with her coveted assignment. Even more tragically, she carries this bemused ennui into her performance, which has her eating corn flakes with her hands or merely tagging alongside Matthau’s slightly harried bookie, trailing him up and down the cramped byways of the Universal backlot. The sets here are vintage Depression-era, ripped straight out of George Roy Hill’s The Sting (1973), but looking more ragged around the edges. The period stuff works…sort of, Bernstein re-using Henry Mancini’s main title underscore once too often (a substitute for Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer in Hill’s classic). It’s a bouncy tune, but interminably inserted every time Stimson puts patent leather to pavement, and, it gets old really fast. The picture’s one salvation – or rather, two – are Julie Andrews and Walter Matthau. It takes almost 20-minutes to get them in the same room, Bernstein’s script doddles on a desperate attempt to create a bond between Matthau and Stimson. But when Matthau’s Jones and Andrews’ pseudo-socialite, Amanda Worthington do strike up a conversation, the picture finally begins to crackle with the sort of potential bounce and zingers one was hoping for from a movie in which loveable reprobates, including Bob Newhart’s ‘Regret’ and Lee Grant’s ‘judge’ are brought together against Runyon’s classic horse-racing milieu. Alas, at 103-mins. there’s just not enough of this happy-go-lucky-ness to go around. So, Little Miss Marker increasingly becomes a series of vignettes dividing its time between the Andrews/Matthau chemistry and awkwardly perishable ways to insert Stimson’s doe-eyed junior Miss into this equation.

When all else fails, Bernstein – cribbing from the one-time seemingly Teflon-coated Hollywood mantra – something about ‘kids’ and ‘pets’ being sure-fire box office – goes for the Jackie Cooper-esque fraud of having his kid cry on cue…a lot. Does it work at occasioning our sympathies? Not really. I’ll stop comparing Bernstein’s bungle to Temple’s classic now. But it’s worth mentioning that the weakest link in that original – remade two times thereafter (once as 1949’s Sorrowful Jones, to winningly costar, Bob Hope and Lucille Ball, then again as 1962’s Forty-Pounds of Trouble, less so, with Tony Curtis), and long before Bernstein elected to reboot it yet again with too much saccharine to keep it afloat – was its ‘supporting cast. The devastating miscalculation here is weighed on Stimson’s slender shoulders, expected to carry the load. Our story is set in 1934. Sorrowful Jones, a cynical and crabby con is confronted by Carter – an incompetent gambler, down on his luck. Carter cannot pay his $10 debt. So, he surrenders his 6-yr.-old daughter to Jones as his ‘marker’, promising to return within the hour with the money he owes. Tragically, Carter loses his bet. Broke and humiliated, he commits suicide, leaving ‘the kid’ in the care of Jones and his fellow class of gangster-land goons.  Jones’ perpetually frazzled assistant, Regret is gravely concerned about the legalities of ‘owning’ a child, particularly, under the kidnapping statutes.

Meanwhile, mob boss, Blackie (Tony Curtis) coerces Sorrowful into financing a new gambling joint. It’s blackmail, of course. But Curtis, at this particular juncture in his career, was a specialist at playing against his earlier matinee idol status, herein, reconstituted as the oily and semi-menacing thug in a three-piece suit. So, Sorrowful lends Blackie the money to launch his enterprise from his own private stash hidden under the floorboards of his squalid little apartment. The location for the venue is a rather stately abode owned by Blackie's gal/pal – the widowed English lass, Amanda Worthington who desperately needs money to buy back her ancestral home. Amanda is also counting on her racehorse, Sir Galahad to pay off in handsome dividends. Problem: the nag cannot even run a lap, much less a race, and proves it by chronically coming in dead last, despite Amanda’s optimism. The responsibilities of rearing a little girl, at first, inconvenience Sorrowful. However, gradually, an unlikely father-daughter relationship begins to stir, softening Jones’ otherwise gruff exterior. As he warms to this dainty doll, Sorrowful also becomes more attractive to Amanda, who finds their friendship heartwarming. Rather predictably, Amanda and Sorrowful begin to fall in love, much to Blackie’s chagrin.

I get very nervous when ‘pseudo-religious orientated’ movie review sites begin labeling certain pictures as “fun for the whole family” because the resultant recommendations usually skew to thoroughly antiseptic movies that treat children as simpletons, and, their adult counterparts as complete imbeciles. God forbid, any movie should attempt to feed its impressionable audience with golden nuggets of indigestible life truths! And let us not ‘offend’ the ear with any profanity either, however well-placed to get a point across or punctuate one already made with a little tenderized shock value.  Little Miss Marker doesn’t go far down that proverbial rabbit hole. But it does tend to wear out its welcome pretty fast nevertheless. There is more to this story. Though at a scant 103 minutes, not much. I will leave it to the first-time viewer to hunt down the particulars and be, if not entertained, then at least slightly amused at seeing two old pros wasted in such pedestrian fluff and nonsense that goes from zero to nowhere with effortless ease. Going in, I had semi-high hopes for Little Miss Marker, having seen the Temple classic, and naively believing any movie with Matthau and Andrews couldn’t be all bad. I was misled. Actually, Little Miss Marker isn’t ‘all bad’. It’s just not very good in that same homogenized way pabulum without a little fruit in it just tastes like wallpaper paste. Little Miss Marker without a magnetic child star to embody that titular sweetheart is simply that. This alone serves as its proverbial ‘kiss of death’, quite enough, in fact, to quash any residual joy we might otherwise glean from it. Joyless and disposable, Bernstein’s picture proved one too many for this otherwise seemingly indestructible Runyon tale.

It’s nice – I think – to see Universal Home Video back into releasing product under its own banner. Frankly, I am more than a little tired of the studio using third-party distributor, Kino Lorber as their dumping ground for a slew of vintage product suffering from insufficient film restoration/preservation efforts or egregious Technicolor mis-registration issues. But Uni’s work here, to resurrect Little Miss Marker on Blu-ray is a tad underwhelming. The image is frequently soft – even blurry – especially at the beginning. Things marginally improve thereafter, and close-ups always look impressive. Colors are appropriately dated. Age-related artifacts are present, but kept to a bare minimum. Film grain appears to have been handled with a noted degree of competence, minus the studio’s usual affinity for homogenizing it with a ton of liberally applied DNR to create those unattractive waxy images. None of that here. The 1.0 DTS is adequate but unremarkable. Uni’s bare-bones approach to authoring Blu-rays remains intact. No menus and no extras. The movie boots up immediately, with the only option, either to remove or reinstate subtitles. Bottom line: Little Miss Marker is a trifle at best. The Blu-ray rates a pass – barely – but the movie isn’t much to go on. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

0