Little Miss Sunshine - DVD

To be near the fella she loves, an English bareback rider dons dungarees and cap to pass as a boy, stows away to America, gets caught, marries someone else and finally ends up in the warm embrace of her beloved. Such fluffy foolishness is the plot of Sunny, the Broadway smash brought to screen life by the irresistible Marilyn Miller, recreating her stage success in the title role. The sparkling Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II-Otto Harb

Clementine is a store assistant at a local pharmacy and is thrilled when her uneventful life is interrupted by a flirtation with Adam, her new co-worker. However, all hopes of a romance are thwarted when she's forced to stay at home and become a full-time caregiver for her ungrateful mother. She does her best but struggles with her burden and, just as she teeters on the brink of a nervous breakdown, Adam steps back into her life. He uses his pharmaceutical resources to alleviate Clementine's servitude but, no sooner has the fun started, than the demands on Clementine escalate and she is more trapped than ever. But now she's only too aware of what she's missing and the repressed rage that has simmered for so long implodes. Her plans to win her freedom are so extreme that even Adam balks. However, he's soon seduced by his girlfriend's promises of how their life could be and the two hatch a Get-Rich-Quick scheme that involves fraud and a possible prison sentence.

The first film version of Damon Runyon's 1932 short story gave Shirley Temple her first feature starring assignment as little Marthy InchMarkyInch Jane, an adorable tyke left to bookie Sorrowful Jones (Adolphe Menjou) as a gambling marker. Marky's influence leads Sorrowful to try to mend his ways and marry his nightclub singer sweetheart Bangles Carson (Dorothy Dell). Charles Bickford, Lynne Overman, Warren Hymer also star. 80 min. Standard; Soundtrack English; Subtitles English; audio commentary.