Command: Find a new Little Miss Marker.
Question: Who is the new Little Miss Marker?
Answer: The new Little Miss Marker is a little girl who is six years old. Her name is Sara Stimson, and she is from Helotes, Texas. She has dark hair and dark eyes, and she has a line of little girls’ clothes named after her, a doll that looks more or less like her named after her, and a fruit punch for anybody who wants to drink it also named after her. Her mother, who goes with Sara wherever Sara goes, carries in her pocketbook a can of Band-Aids, a small bottle of Mercurochrome, a jar of baby aspirin, a tube of medicated ointment, and packets of Baby Fresh towellettes. Sara’s mother’s name is Dana. Dana says, “We are from near San Antone, Texas. I was working as a secretary at the V.A. hospital when a friend of mine came in and said they were interviewing little girls for a movie—a modern remake of the old Shirley Temple movie Little Miss Marker. You know, if you have kids, you like to expose them and you want to see if they have a talent
for something. I told Sara to get dressed and comb her hair, and I would take her and see if she wanted to talk to these people. Well, when she got there, she just chatted with them and really opened up. They videotaped her and sent the tape to Universal Studios. Universal liked it and asked us to come for a screen test. It will be a year ago tomorrow that we went out to Hollywood. When they asked us to come out, I thought it would be an adventure for Sara. She had never flown before. Now she has flown a bunch. There were eight little girls tested that day. We went back home and waited, and then they called us one Tuesday and asked us to come back on a Sunday. Of course, you lie in bed and you say, ‘What is this going to be? Are you going to end up with a Judy Garland or a Marilyn Monroe?’ I would like to see Sara have a normal life. That’s what’s important to me. The money? I don’t care about the money. It took them three months to make the movie. Now comes the big publicity. She has done Dinah Shore, Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas. She is an extremely bright little girl. She has good manners, and she is very unselfish. She is just the furthest thing from self-centered that you can find. She cleans up around the house, makes her bed, plays with the neighbors. She likes applesauce, chocolate ice cream, Twinkies, bubble gum, I Love Lucy. She goes to public school and is in the second grade. She’s never had an acting lesson, and she has no problems learning her lines. On the set, she liked everybody. It’s as if God said, ‘Where can we find a kid who will be just great to play Little Miss Marker?’”
—March 17, 1980