Smart Girls Don't Talk

It's an interesting film and entertaining. The plot keeps moving, and there is an unexpected death. What makes it unusual is that, except for Mayo, it doesn't have any big stars. They have some solid supporting actors like Bruce Bennett and Tom D'Andrea.. But on a bigger budget there would be Cuddles or Jack Carson or Alan Hale. What this does is give lesser known actors bigger roles, like Bennett, who plays a bad guy in contrast to his loyal good-guy husband in Mildred Pierce, and Helen Westcott, who a year later had a marveous moment in the Adventures of Don Juan playing one of Don Juan's previous lovers whom he doesn't remember but she seizes the opportunity to reignite with him. Two years later, she would have the prime role of Gregory Peck's estranged ife in The Gunfighter. There's even Phyliss Coates, the first Lois Lane in The Adventures of Superman TV series, in her first role as a cigarette girl. It is norish and has a romantic ending that does come out of nowhere. But it's worth a look.

A romantic relationship between a charming, erudite gambler/hood and a wayward rich gal. Sounds like it could be promising, especially when the girl is played by Virginia Mayo with whom it is almost always worthwhile spending time. Unfortunately, the clunky screenplay by William Sackheim resolves the central conflict between these two halfway through the friggin picture so that the second half lacks any dramatic tension whatsoever. Plus, Sackheim's dialogue is, with the exception of a few Tom D'Andrea zingers (the future Gillis on "Life Of Riley" is here playing the Eve Arden role), humorless and stiff with lines like: "We are two trains meeting in a depot and now going separate ways". Oh, lordy. Also not helping matters is overscoring from David Buttolph (a poor man's Bronislau Kaper) and undistinguished cinematography from the usually good Ted McCord that gives the film a most generic back lot look. Give it a generous C plus, mostly for Mayo.

This is one of those movies that ought to be good, but isn't. Probably because the dictates of plot require characters to change their stripes every 10 minutes, so that by the time we reached plot twist number 20, the willing suspension of disbelief is gone.

Too bad, too, because the setup is a good one, and star Virginia Mayo is a babe of the first order. Is Virginia Mayo a selfish wench that does not care that she is dating a gangster who casually orders his enemies killed? Or is she just clueless, because the gangster has been to the right schools, and does romantic banter in the best old movie tradition? Who knows? The tension could have been interesting, but the melodrama of the plot requires that those questions be dumped, as the well-educated, successful gangster makes some really stupid business management decisions, and new characters show up, act foolishly, and kick the plot in predictable directions. But hang on until the absolute end of the movie to see perhaps the most inappropriate romantic gesture EVER.

Petty criminal Johnny Warjack and his gang hold up the Club Bermuda, a casino nightclub. Club owner Marty Fain (Bruce Bennett) allows them to escape and orders his men to track them down later. Fain is covering all his customers' stolen cash. Not all the claims are believed. Broke socialite Linda Vickers (Virginia Mayo) insists that she lost expensive jewelry. In turn, Fain insists on seeing her insurance policy... at her apartment. On the next morning, Warjack is found murdered and police Lieutenant McReady (Richard Rober) comes to interview Vickers.

It's crime B-drama. It has some limited noir style. Virginia Mayo is doing yeoman's work. I like the premise and how it starts. It could go harder. A modern movie would play up the erotic part and add in more action. The story is not that dramatic. It has an interesting spin but it's nothing outstanding. It's solid work all around.

The one with the brains in Smart Girls Don't Talk is Virginia Mayo, a good-bad girl a little down on her luck who's open to some fudging when it comes to a buck. So when she's gambling in Bruce Bennett's Club Bermuda the night it's knocked over, she claims her paste ear-bobs were real diamonds. Bennett, eager to cover his clients' losses so the police don't come snooping around, sees through her ruse but falls for her anyway. (He drives her off to a ritzy roadhouse where they feast on châteaubriand - and after-dinner martinis.)

When her kid brother (Robert Hutton), just appointed to the surgical staff of a New York hospital, hits town, he meets the club's canary (Helen Westcott, who treats us to `The Stars Will Remember' - twice). But he disapproves of the company Mayo keeps. Deep down, so does she, and breaks off her affair with the casino boss. In a foul temper, Bennett kills a welsher in trying to recoup a bad debt, but takes a bullet himself. He staggers back to his club where Hutton is romancing Westcott; the surgeon is press-ganged into patching Bennett up. Rebuffing a payoff, Hutton raises fears that he, too, will turn canary, and one of Bennett's trigger-happy goons shoots him down. At first, Mayo refuses to believe that Bennett could be involved in the murder. Police detective Richard Rober (`I'm a policeman - I'm paid to have suspicions') tries to change her mind, and the wheels begin to turn....

Smart Girls Don't Talk is a brisk, big-town story with serviceable work from Mayo, Bennett, Rober and Tom D'Andrea (as Bennett's 2iC). Its director, Richard Bare, would work with Mayo again the next year in Flaxy Martin, where she played a duplicitous blonde (of course, she always played a blonde). She fares better here. Mayo lacked the tense skills necessary to project a believable femme fatale, but was quite appealing as a basically decent woman who's been around the block. That's what made her so smart.