Sorrowful Jones (Sidney Lanfield, 1949) DVDRip VO

[bscout]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041902/

Considering that Shirley Temple, at the tender age of 5, walked away with "Little Miss Marker" when it was done fifteen years ago, it may be a bit confusing to learn that Bob Hope is now the thief of the remake of that story, "Sorrowful Jones," which came to the Paramount yesterday. But the explanation is simple: Mr. Hope doesn't play the Temple role. He plays the book-maker named in the new title, and the story is tailored straight for him.

As a matter of fact, a serious student of the late Damon Runyon's works, in which the story of "Little Miss Marker" is somewhere near the top, might even find it difficult to recognize a Runyon character in this film. Certainly the Sorrowful of the story is not apparent in the shape of Mr. Hope.

But once this distinction is realized and the customer is prepared to forget that "Little Miss Marker"—and Mr. Runyon—had a strict brand of sentiment, then Mr. Hope's own personal Sorrowful—and this film—should be hugely enjoyed. For Mr. Hope, given a fair chance, can make sport out of almost anything.

And, brother, he's given a fair chance in this utterly farcical tale of a penurious Broadway bookmaker who becomes the accidental guardian of a little girl. Three energetic gag-writers have provided him with a script that is loaded with farce situations and explosively funny gag lines. And Sidney Lanfield, the director, has kept the camera virtually handcuffed to him.

Whether Mr. Hope is soaping, in his usual blandiloquent way, the villainous bookie king, Big Steve, and his impatient rough-'em-up man or trying to "con" a detective, he is forever the frightened hot-air boy. An episode in a horse-room, wherein he watches a race on a television screen, finds him clowning and gagging in a lather of disheveled fear. And a final endeavor by him to bring a horse to a hospital to please the little girl who is dying is a virtual Keystone-comedy "chase."

Along the way, Mr. Hope has occasion to go through the streets collecting bets (and passing out wise-cracks for gratis), to give the little orphan girl a bath, help her to say her prayers, fight gangsters and eventually to woo a night-club girl. All of them he does in his most airy and hilarious comedy style. It may not be Runyon humor, but it is laughable just the same.

Because of her subordination and a naturally mellifluous way, little Mary Jane Saunders is a cipher of juvenile cuteness in the "marker" role, and Lucille Ball is a girl who knows her small place and keeps it as the night-club singing queen. William Demarest has a few good scenes as a professional horse-room man and comes within a furlong of catching the famous flavor of Mr. Runyon's characters. But Bruce Cabot as the bookie big shot is completely flavorless and Tom Pedi as his muscle-maker is a colorful but standard-model mugg. Thomas Gomez sleuths sternly as the flatfoot who covers this beat. The lot of them act as though they've been briefed to leave everything to Hope.

========================================
Name.........: Sorrowful Jones-Bob Hope-1949.avi
Filesize.....: 699 MB (or 716,610 KB or 733,808,640 bytes)
Runtime......: 01:28:21 (158,866 fr)
Video Codec..: DivX 5.0
Video Bitrate: 982 kb/s
Audio Codec..: 0x0055(MP3) ID'd as MPEG-1 Layer 3
Audio Bitrate: 116 kb/s (58/ch, stereo) VBR LAME3.92
Frame Size...: 576x416 (1.38:1) [=18:13]

ranks among his best,
useless to try to resist, some of you out there, I know you are addicted

Sorrowful Jones-Bob Hope-1949.avi