The Age of Commercialism

Fantastic!

Absolutely brilliant

The acting in this movie is really good.

A taxi races along beside a moving train. The passenger leans forward: "Driver, let me off at the next crossing, will you?" She hops out, takes a few running steps, then leaps aboard the very last car as the train rolls by. –That's our first glimpse of Torchy Blane, ace reporter. This snappy opening is a good introduction to our heroine: fast talking, quick witted, and pretty much fearless. Boarding a moving train is typical of Torchy's style—she simply wants to snag an interview with an incoming businessman before his arrival in town, so she hops the train he's on. Sure enough, she gets the interview…and gets herself a mystery along with her scoop when the man is murdered a few hours later. Glenda Farrell is just about perfect as Torchy—sweet smile, rapid fire delivery, irrepressible charm. Also on the case is Barton McLane as Torchy's boyfriend, Lieutenant Steve McBride. Torchy appreciates his manliness ("All he needs is a leopard skin"), but she is consistently a step or two ahead of him in the investigation—which fact he grudgingly admires but finds annoying as well. Tom Kennedy is wonderfully goofy as an assisting cop named Gahagan who loves life and composes poetry ("I love the night!" he exclaims, more or less at random). And a young Jane Wyman is hilarious in a small role as a hat check girl who, among other adventures, comes home from a party with a St. Bernard: "I wish I knew where I got that dog," she muses.A nice plot keeps us guessing and ties up neatly; likable characters and lively dialog add up to a very entertaining quickie. My favorite exchange comes when Torchy is trying to talk her way into a murder scene. (She's there well ahead of Steve, naturally.) "I'm from the Herald," she argues to the cop guarding the door, "I'm Torchy Blane." His deadpan response: "I don't care if you're Flaming Youth, you can't go in there."

"Smart Blonde,' an above-average entry in the very popular "Torchy Blaine" B-film series about the feisty girl reporter who inspired the Lois Lane character, may be guilty of the same subconscious prejudice that pervaded many of the films of the Thirties.Although it is otherwise a wonderfully entertaining low-budget mystery, there is an isolated scene where tough guy cop Steve McBride, Torchy's boyfriend, insists that she remain in a locked car after he leaves her because they're in a "rat-hole" of a neighborhood. Glenda Farrell's Torchy is an especially aggressive and brassy professional in the typical fashion of other 1930s Warner heroines like Joan Blondell and Bette Davis, and she usually is confidently resourceful enough to strike out on her own in pursuit of a story in any circumstance.Four individuals are then shown in the street of that "rat-hole" neighborhood The first is an African-American aimlessly loitering by leaning against the wall of the building where Steve enters. The second is an Orthodox Jewish-American with beard, glasses, and hat walking past the door. The third is a Chinese-American who walks past Torchy in her car and suspiciously eyes her. The fourth is in the far background and not clearly identifiable as a ethnic type."Smart Blonde" was nothing more pretentious than any standard, assembly line programmer of the period. The "rat-hole" neighborhood was meant to suggest an area that the usually plucky and independent Torchy should be wary of. Although it's doubtful that any overt racism was intended, it's notable that the signifiers of the bad neighborhood are three readily identifiable minority types.Director Frank MacDonald was a workmanlike studio journeyman who told stories as quickly and efficiently as possible. The source material was one of the Kennedy and McBride stories by Frederick Lewis Nebel and went through six different Warner staff writers, emerging as assembly line product.Kennedy, the reporter half of the crime-fighting duo, was a male alcoholic in the original stories, so the problems of presenting drunks heroically under the newly-implemented motion picture code was easily solved by transforming him into the sober, female Torchy Blaine, whose only vice was a good sirloin steak. That change eliminated the problem while maintaining tensions in the relationship.It should be noted that pulp crime fiction writer Nebel(under the name Brett Halliday) was also the creator of another popular screen detective, Michael Shayne, portrayed by Lloyd Nolan in seven films for Fox in the Forties. Given the alterations of both characters by the studios only confirmed Nebel's contempt of Hollywood.

Smart Blonde is the first film of the Torchy Blane series with Glenda Farrell as former showgirl turned reporter with a real keen sense of a scoop. She works the police beat where she constantly runs up against her boyfriend, homicide cop Barton MacLane. Depending on how you view things, Torchy's a help or a hindrance. But in this case she was literally on top of the story. Seconds after being interviewed by her, nightclub impresario Joseph Crehan is shot down in Union Station.Crehan was going to buy a nightclub owned by Addison Richards who was getting out of the business and getting ready to marry Charlotte Wynters and go into the real estate business with her and her brother Robert Paige, leaving his club singer Wini Shaw all in distress. Another one in distress is Max Wagner, Richards's gunsill because there's not much call for his line of work in real estate.One murder later of course Torchy's put it all together for MacLane and gets her paper the scoop. But the plot does take an interesting twist or two, it's not who you think it is.Jane Wyman has a small supporting role as a hatcheck girl with a tendency to gossip which aids Farrell in her story. This was of course at the beginning of Wyman's career which included a film as Torchy Blane herself when Farrell quit the series.Smart Blonde proves how popular the Torchy Blane series was at Warner Brothers and why it was so well received in the late Thirties.

Tiny Torgenson had just purchased the Million Club and various gambling/sporting enterprises from Fitz Mularkey (who has decided to quit the racket due to his upcoming marriage to Marcia Friel), but Torgenson is immediately killed arriving in New York. Morning Herald reporter Torchy Blane, who was with Torgenson when he was killed, goes with her boyfriend, Lt. Steve McBride, to the Million Club to tell Mularkey of what happened. Mularkey, being very good friends with Torgenson, decides he'll catch the murderer before the police get him, but McBride advises him to do otherwise. Torchy suspects Chuck Cannon (Mularkey's bodyguard) of the murder since Mularkey won't have much use for him after the racket, but McBride suspects one of the other purchasers of the Mularkey's interests. McBride's leads end up nowhere and he goes after Cannon, as does Mularkey. Cannon is later found murdered, and evidence leads McBride to think Mularkey is the killer. Torchy has other ideas however and tries to convince McBride. Okay entry in the series, yet based on this film you wouldn't think 8 more films would follow. Much of the film does seem like its parodying the blue collar-gangster films typical of Warner Brothers in the 30s. Farrell and MacLane have great chemistry together, which shows throughout. The script did seem like it was repeating itself and aiming at clichés typical of the movie mystery/newspaper reporter/stubborn cop/racketeers. Rating, based on B mysteries, 6.