Little Big Shot (1935)

I love this movie so much

i must have seen a different film!!

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is one of the most overtly sentimental and schmaltzy films I have seen in ages. It stars a child star (Sybil Jason) that is so adorable and perfect that she is tough to take seriously...and may induce comas in the diabetic. In support are Robert Armstrong (of "King Kong" fame), Edward Everett Horton and Glenda Farrell.The film begins with Armstrong and Horton as a pair of two-bit chiselers. They are penny ante con men and are constantly in financial straits. When they meet an old friend, the friend and the two men mistakenly think the other is rich and they go out to dinner. The old friend brings along his sickeningly adorable moppet (Jason) and he soon runs away--the mob is trying to kill him AND he thinks Armstrong and Horton are so rich they won't mind keeping the kid until he can return. However, seconds later he's gunned down and the two men are stuck with the kid...and a mountains of debts.The rest of the film consists of Armstrong trying to extricate himself from a variety of predicaments AND keep the kid. However, when the child's predicament is eventually discovered by the court, she's placed in an orphanage and the two men do everything they can to get her back.The film has a ridiculously impossible but very exciting ending. I particularly like Horton in the finale, but the whole thing works so well that I could forget that the film was 100% contrived. But, this combined with the nauseating cuteness of Jason will most likely make this very tough going for most who try to watch it. It's entertaining but not one of Hollywood's finer moments.

Is this another Damon Runyon story, like "Little Miss Marker"? It all sounds too familiar. As far as giving way for the black kids in the film, look up Sybil Jason's biography and you might a bit of British Jewishness in there (her uncle Harry Jacobson was a British band leader), which didn't sit well with Hollywood in those days.Maybe that's why she didn't get too far. I was born in Hollywood, BTW, and I know a lot of Hollywood stuff and stories. My schools were full of child actors, my mother went to junior high in Hollywood with Judy Garland, before going to the MGM Schoolhouse. And Ricardo Montalban was a classmate of my mother.Glenda Farrell is gorgeous and glamorous, as always. And Edward Everett Horton as a soda jerk is hysterical.

Two smalltime con artists find themselves in possession of their dead friend's infant daughter. Soon, the LITTLE BIG SHOT has the gents wrapped around her tiny fingers.Here is the sort of cinematic fluff which Warner Bros. did so well in the 1930's: a little crime, some comedy & a dash of romance. Well-produced & entertaining, Depression Era audiences flocked to these pictures to forget about the real worries of the day.South African Sybil Jason, all of 6-years old, steals the viewers' hearts right away. With her dainty accent & huge, luminous eyes, she is a real charmer and worthy of the top star billing she receives here. Today she is perhaps best remembered as Shirley Temple's servant girl sidekick in THE LITTLE PRINCESS (1939).Robert Armstrong is first-rate as the tough, street smart peddler who protects the tiny tot. Outside of playing KONG's captor, the majority of his starring roles are quite obscure now. So, it is great fun here to see him play a fast-talking flimflam artist who melts at a child's broken heart, yet can duke it out with crooks like a house on fire. Blonde, brassy Glenda Farrell is perfect as a no-nonsense dame who sees through Armstrong's cynical facade. Farrell was a lady always worth watching, capable of slinging dialogue with the best of them, yet warmhearted & tender when need be. Gaunt, nervous, Edward Everett Horton is wonderful as Armstrong's partner-in-crime. In a variety of cheap, goofy disguises, he is nothing less than hilarious as he attempts to fleece sidewalk crowds into buying worthless watches. He leads a small parade of character actors - Jack La Rue, J. Carrol Naish, Tammany Young, Ward Bond & slow-burn Edgar Kennedy - who, even in small roles, never fail to provide full entertainment value.

Adorable Sybil Jason tugs on the heartstrings of everyone save the most hard-boiled gangsters in this obvious attempt by Warners to come up with their own Shirley Temple. It almost works! Sybil plays an abandoned little girl whose innocence wins over a small-time con man (Armstrong) and his partner-in-petty crime (Edward Everett Horton). Indeed, Horton's presence here lends some humanity to the big lug that Armstrong plays--anyone with well-meaning bumbler Horton as his best pal can't be all bad. The gang warfare that underlies the plot makes for an uneasy ride for the little girl and the audience, however. Sybil is both charming and heart-rending as "The Countess", and the highlight is her rendition of the title song on the street to make some money for her new-found adopted father figures. But when the plot explodes in a burst of gunfire in a deadly police raid at movie's end it is clear why this movie failed at building a Shirley Temple-like franchise for Warners: falling back on their tried-and-true gangster formula, they mixed a bit too much death and danger into this story to make it a winner with family audiences. It's a shame, too, because Sybil Jason was definitely star material and could have given Temple a run for her money. (Jason later got to serve at the feet of the prototype herself (literally!) when she winningly played a Cockney chargirl to "The Little Princess" in 1939.)