Sorrowful Jones is a 1949 Bob Hope movie that's an adaptation of the Damon Runyon story Little Miss Marker. The story was adapted for a 1934 movie with Shirley Temple. Sorrowful Jones had a big gang of writers to beat the story into a screenplay but only one director, Sidney Lanfield. Sidney directed quite a few movies over his career, the 1939 The Hound Of The Baskervilles, the 1951 Bob Hope movie The Lemon Drop Kid, and near the end of his career he directed 48 episodes of The Addam's Family.
Bob plays Sorrowful Jones, a horse racing bookie who has a shop hidden behind a barbershop. William Demarest is Sorrowful's partner in the bookie shop. Mary Jane Saunders is the little girl, Martha Jane Smith, who gets left behind at the shop while her gambling addicted father goes off to borrow 20 bucks to bet on the sure thing. The trouble is Mr Smith went to borrow 20 bucks from crooked nightclub owner Big Steve. Mr Smith overhears of a big fix and winds up in the river with three slugs in his torso. Now Sorrowful is stuck with Martha Jane but he gets a hand from his ex-gal Lucille Ball. Big Steve has dirty plans to make some money fixing races by doping his own horse with a speedball and of course Sorrowful is drawn right into the middle of it. It gets a bit more complicated until the pretty much happy ending. It's good hearted and lightweight fun. The movie shares a disc with The Paleface but I watched that recently so I don't need to watch it right now.
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