Sorrowful Jones is a cheap bookie in the 1930s. When a gambler leaves his daughter as a marker for a bet, he gets stuck with her. His life will change a great deal with her arrival and his sudden love for a woman also involved in gambling operations.
Acting
Matthau's growly tenderness with zero sentimentality
Writing
Depression slang that actually lands
Costume
Andrews somehow glamorous in gangster-adjacent world
Director
Walter Bernstein
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This is a remake of a 1934 Shirley Temple vehicle—swapping child star for Matthau's world-weary cynicism completely inverts the original's saccharine tone.
Walter Bernstein directed only this one film after decades as a blacklisted writer; the Depression setting mirrored his own experience of professional exile.
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