SORROWFUL JONES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 536, 30 September 1949, Page 21

SORROWFUL JONES

(Paramount) \ HEN six re-write men are allowed to have a go at a Damon Runyon short story, no one should be surprised that the result bears little resemblance to the original. In this case it doesn’t matter much, since the addition of Bob Hope ensures there will be a laugh in almost every line. His performance as Sorrowful Jones, the miserly bookmaker, is one of his quieter efforts in drollery, and includes one of the slowest double-takes he has ever put across -while he gleefully counts up the takings of bets placed on a _ sure-to-lose outsider named Dreamy Joe, his assistant tells him it has won, and it is quite some time before he realises he has to pay back all that money and a lot more. Nevertheless, the comedy of this film (as distinct from the sentiment, which is Runyon’s) is in the authentic Hope manner, That is a measure of the picture’s uncertainty; it can’t decide whether it is featuring Runyon or Hope. The opening sequence is a short photographic survey of Broadway with an unseen narrator declaiming, "This is the street Damon Runyon loved, peopling it with his dolls and guys," etc., but the sight of Bob ambling along the pavement, taking a ‘bet here and making a wisecrack there immediately raises a doubt whether it is to be a burlesque or the real thing. Later the bookie’s customers watch the races on a television set, yet a more or less authentic period note is evoked by the costumes, songs, and general atmosphere of the piece. However, as might be expected, Hope wins by a long nose in the end, and few are likely to remember that this is a remake of the film in which Shirley Temple became a juvenile star overnight, ‘way back in 1934.