Little Miss Marker (also known as The Girl in Pawn) is an American Pre-Code 1934 comedy-drama film directed by Alexander Hall. It was written by William R. Lipman, Sam Hellman, and Gladys Lehman after a 1932 short story of the same name by Damon Runyon. It stars Shirley Temple, Adolphe Menjou and Dorothy Dell in a story about a young girl held as collateral by gangsters. It was Temple's first starring role in a major motion picture and was crucial to establishing her as a major film star. It was inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1998 and has been remade several times. Plot The film tells the story of "Marky" (Shirley Temple), whose father gives her to a gangster-run gambling operation as a "marker" (collateral) for a bet. When he loses his bet and commits suicide, the gangsters are left with her on their hands. They decide to keep her temporarily and use her to help pull off one of their fixed races, naming her the owner of the horse to be used in the race. Marky is sent to live with bookie Sorrowful Jones (Adolphe Menjou). Initially upset about being forced to look after her, he eventually begins to develop a father–daughter relationship with her. His fellow gangsters become fond of her and begin to fill the roles of her extended family. Bangles (Dorothy Dell) – girlfriend of gang kingpin Big Steve (Charles Bickford), who has gone to Chicago to place bets on the horse – also begins to care for Marky, and to fall in love with Sorrowful, whose own concern for Marky shows he has a warm heart beneath his hard-man persona. Encouraged by Bangles and Marky, Sorrowful gets a bigger apartment, buys Marky new clothes and himself a better cut of suit, reads her bedtime stories, and shows her how to pray. However, being around the gang has a somewhat bad influence on Marky, and she begins to develop a cynical nature and a wide vocabulary of gambling terminology and slang. Worried that her acquired bad-girl attitude means she will not get adopted by a "good family", Bangles and Sorrowful put on a party with gangsters dressed up as knights-of-the-round-table, to rekindle her former sweetness. She is unimpressed until they bring in the horse and parade her around on its back. Returning to New York, Big Steve frightens the