Little Miss Marker
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Little Miss Marker (Paramount Pictures, 1934; dir. Alexander Hall).
In the film Little Miss Marker, a little girl, left by her father as a marker for a gambling debt and soon orphaned by his suicide, is taken in by a bookie, his nightclub-singer girlfriend Bangles, and their associates. 'Marky' (Shirley Temple) gives each of her new friends an Arthurian name—Bangles becomes Lady Guinevere, the scowling bookie Sorrowful Jones (Adolphe Menjou) is Sir Sorry and later Sir Galahad—that she bases on the Arthurian stories from Lanier's Boy's King Arthur that her late mother used to read to her. But the association with such proverbial low-lifes begins taking a toll on Marky's manners and speech; and so, to help prevent further corruption of the youngster's innocence and in the hope of restoring her childish wonderment, Bangles and company dress up as members of the court of King Arthur and throw her a party, complete with her own castle cake and charger (the racehorse at the center of both the fix and the intense betting that was responsible for her father's death). When Marky is thrown from the horse and requires a transfusion to survive, even the hardest-hearted hoodlums get soft, offering to be tested and then waiting for news of her recovery by the operating room door. After his prayers seem to have been answered by Marky's optimistic medical prognosis, the bookie decides to go straight, marry the singer, and give Marky the new family she deserves. Little Miss Marker thus reworks the familiar theme in Arthurian films and literature that even the most common people can become knights if their hearts are pure.
Little Miss Marker is based on a Damon Runyon story of the same name. In the story, however, there is no Hollywood ending: Marky contracts pneumonia and, despite the efforts of those who have adopted her, she dies. Moreover, the story lacks the Arthurian element found in the film.