Don Marquis Movies
Based on a Broadway musical by Mel Brooks and Joe Darion, the animated feature Shinbone Alley is an adaptation of the Don Marquis stories. The film is about a love-struck cockroach named Archy (voiced by Eddie Bracken) and the object of his affections, a carefree cat named Mehitabel (Carol Channing). The movie is arranged as a series of episodic adventures and though it never quite gels into something cohesive, it has a number of fine moments, particularly when it sticks to the music. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Bracken, Carol Channing, (more)
- 1956
"I waited there with a dead head sitting on a dead spine waiting for the crack of doom." This is how young businessman Mason Bridges (Robert Horton) describes his predicament when he is forced to participate in a high-stakes poker game with wealthy client Sam Klinker (Robert Middleton). Though Bridges had intended to play only a few hands, Klinker bullies him into staying in the game, raising the stakes all along the way. Ultimately, the fate of Bridges' business -- and indeed, his future career -- rests in a single poker hand. "Crack of Doom" is based on a story by journalist Don Marquis, best known for his whimsical "Archy and Mehitabel" pieces. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1937
Good Old Soak was based on a story by Don Marquis, creator of the immortal "Archy and Mehitabel." Wallace Beery is well-cast as town drunk Clem Hawley, a blot on the escutcheon of a small Prohibition-era Midwestern town. When a large sum of bank money is stolen, Clem immediately falls under suspicion. His previously spineless son Clemmie (Eric Linden) rushes to his dad's defense, insisting that he, and not Clem, is the thief. But the "good old soak" manages to recover the money and expose the thief, a respectable "social" drinker and stock-market swindler whose hypocrisy is in stark contrast to Clem's bibulous honesty. In one of his last film roles, Ted Healy manages to steal quite a few scenes from Beery (no small feat) as a cheerful bootlegger. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wallace Beery, Una Merkel, (more)
- 1931
Percy Crosby's popular newspaper comic strip Skippy comes to life in this 1931 film. Designed as a vehicle for Our Gang's Jackie Cooper -- then all of nine years old -- Skippy jettisons most of the trenchant cynicism of Crosby's creation (the strip was something of a 1930s Calvin and Hobbes) in favor of sentiment. Skippy, the son of the local health inspector (Willard Robertson) conspires with his best friend, Sooky (Robert Coogan), a poor kid, to raise enough money for a dog license. The mutt in question is eventually shot by the mean dogcatcher, and the effect on Skippy and Sooky (not to mention the audience) is devastating. The tragedy leads Skippy's dad to soften his disciplinarian stance and to draw closer to his son. Skippy was followed by an even more lachrymose sequel, Sooky, also released in 1931. Twenty-five years later, Jackie Cooper, by that time a prominent TV producer/director, tried to revive Skippy as a weekly series, with future My Three Sons co-star Stanley Livingston in the lead. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jackie Cooper, Robert Coogan, (more)
- 1926
Don Marquis' bucolic stage comedy-drama The Old Soak was first brought to the screen in 1926. Jean Hersholt plays the title character, Clem Hawley Sr., the town drunk in a small rural community. When his beloved son Clemmy (George Lewis) is falsely accused of a crime, Clem Sr. nobly takes the blame. Eventually he clears himself, but not before exposing the hypocrisy of several of the town's "leading citizens." Though The Old Soak veered towards sentimentality, actor Jean Hersholt and director Edward H. Sloman kept the bathos firmly under control. The property was remade in 1936 as the Wallace Beery vehicle Good Old Soak. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean Hersholt, George Lewis, (more)
