Fly Away Baby

Some of the Torchy Blane films are better than others and Fly Away Baby falls in the middle. Now you have to approach these series films with a more charitable perspective. Except for The Thin Man series all the series films back in the studio days were B picture programmers.

Fly Away Baby has reporter Torchy Blane hot on the trail of a jewel thief and murderer. She's got one suspect in her sights, but another comes as a bit of a surprise to her. Of course she's once again treading on the toes of her homicide cop boyfriend Barton MacLane as Lieutenant Steve McBride. MacLane is the original alpha male, but Glenda Farrell gives as good as she gets.

In fact even when the plots are sub par as this one really is, the Torchy Blane series always has that marvelous chemistry between Farrell and MacLane. Farrell in this series gets a chance to shine in a way she never did mostly getting parts that Joan Blondell rejected at Warner Brothers. These two are like a working class Tracy and Hepburn.

And Barton MacLane I'm told was a whole lot like Steve McBride other than a lot of four letter words peppered his daily conversation. Usually he's a bad guy in his early film days, but it's a treat to see him on the side of the law. Folks always seem to be a step ahead of him though whether it's Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon or Torchy in this series.

Also there's Tom Kennedy who gives a droll performance as that thick as a brick assistant. Torchy and McBride are miles ahead of him.

Its rather amazing that this series isn't more widely seen.

Superficially, they are B movies and at the cheapy end. They have incredibly uninteresting stories, stuff about the mob.

But they're really impressive in a way. I guess it doesn't register today, but these were either important in their day or if you wish reflected something important.

For non-US readers, you have to know that women couldn't vote until very late in the history of the US. Blacks first, then women. The time of this movie is five times further away from us than it is from the first national election where women voted.

A woman could be a wife, a nurse, teacher, secretary, whore.

Or, in movies if she was bright, a newspaper reporter. You have to understand also that the thirties was a period of great experimenting in narrative folding: stories that in some way included the making of stories. One common fold was the newspaper guy who "got the story" just as we are. He was our avatar, our representative in the thing.

These experiments from the thirties played with different notions of storygetter, some comic, some inverted.

So here you have a bright woman reporter. Feisty. Pretty. She's engaged to an "official" detective, a cop. But she keeps missing the wedding because she goes off chasing the story.

Together, they get the crook and solve the case, but always with her in the lead. He protects and she loves him, the "big lug." Though this is black and white, the audience would know (from posters, fan magazines and her name) that she is redheaded.

It was a long-lasting sequence of movies, as many as, say, the Charlie Chan ones and with far more than the celebrated "Thin Man." So I invite you to watch this — or any of the series. She's an icon that's all the more fascinating because it has ceased having power. Now that's interesting.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Lieutenant Steve McBride (Barton McLane) stalks away from reporter and girlfriend Torchy Blane (Glenda Farrell). "You've wasted all of my time that you're gonna," he growls back at her. "From now on I handle this case alone."

–Of course, Steve should know better…it's clear by this point that Skipper (as she affectionately calls him) probably wouldn't get anywhere without Torchy's persistent "interference." Glenda Farrell is excellent in this second Torchy Blane series mystery. Perky, pesky, self-assured—Farrell is perfect as the adventurous newshound. McLane is good, too as the affectionate but gruff detective.

The case begins with a diamond robbery and the murder of a jeweler. The leading suspect, at least in Torchy's book, is a rival publisher's son, who is about to embark on a round the world trip as a publicity stunt. On the spur of the moment, Torchy decides to follow him—as does a third reporter, and they all talk their publishers into promoting it as a race.

Also on the trip is Sergeant Gahagan (Tom Kennedy), Steve's one-time driver who has actually quit the police force to set out on a secret new career. Gahagan must have made a hit in the first Torchy picture, because his role here—the lumbering cop with the heart of a Romantic—is much expanded.

Some neat stock footage of foreign locales, ships, airplanes and even a zeppelin add interest; the plot, while it covers a lot of geography, is admittedly pretty basic. In any case, it's the trio of main characters—especially Torchy—who are the main attraction in this very enjoyable comedy-mystery.

Second in this entertaining series sees Torchy taking to the air by plane and zeppelin in order to catch a murderer. One of the better Torchy Blane movies. Glenda Farrell as Torchy and Barton MacLane as her boyfriend Steve the cop are both pitch perfect. Fun support from Tom Kennedy and Hugh O'Connell. The cast is good and the runtime is brief so things move along pretty quickly. Perhaps there's not a lot of meat on the bone with movies like this but they sure are enjoyable.

Back in Jules Verne's steam-powered 19th Century, a trip around the World in only 80 days was considered astounding. In 1924 two U. S. Army aviators managed it in a new world record of 15 days, 11 hours. But that was nothing! In 1937 Warner Brothers second feature Fly-Away Baby, Glenda Farrell as irrepressible, smart-girl reporter Torchy Blane zips around the world in less than 30 minutes, using only the final half of the fast-moving, action-packed one-hour movie. All done with stock footage of the vehicles used and still pictures or footage of the various cities Torchy passes through, the mood for each locale set with appropriate regional music. All the while, a bold line meanders across a map of the Pacific Ocean, Asia, and Europe with the shadow of an airplane following along, motors humming. Lengthy scenes in Honolulu and Stuttgart are economically but artfully dispatched with small sets and back-projection. You may be so swept away by this Old Hollywood magic, and so absorbed into this engrossing, lightning-paced mystery pot-boiler, you will feel as if you've actually been to San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Suttgart with Torchy. And wow! what a window into time! You get to see file footage of a huge China Clipper taking off from a choppy sea, a gigantic Zepplin majestically gliding though the clouds, and a shot of the yet unfinished Golden Gate Bridge -- not to mention the usual swarms of boxy , spoke-wheel automobiles to be seen careening about the streets of 1930's motion pictures.

The Torchy Blane series was a chance for reliable Warner supporting players Glenda Farrell and Barton MacLane to strut their stuff in lead roles for a change. And they both shine! He's Torchy's tough cop boy friend Steve McBride, who needs her help to dope out the cases he's not sharp enough for. At least that's the way she tells it. Fly-Away Baby has the crime-solving duo after a diamond thief/murderer. The main suspect (Gordon Oliver), who is a columnist of a newspaper rival to Torchy's, is making an around-the-world promotional trip. Torchy and Steve suspect the crook will try to sell the hot diamonds somewhere along the way, so Torchy convinces her own newspaper publisher (Henry Davenport) to spring for her to follow along in what is promoted as an "around the world race." Hugh O'Connell provides sophisticated comedy relief as another reporter in the so-called race. A dandy with a rich wife, he's always bragging to his no-class cronies about spending her money and playing around on her. Little does he know his suspicious spouse has hired Steve's muddled, philosophical driver Gahagan (Tom Kennedy) to tag along and keep an eye on him. Steve joins Torchy in Stuttgart, where another murder takes place, then they take off aboard the Zepplin for the final leg of the journey and the exciting denouement. The airship scenes are very impressive for a B-movie.

Fly-Away Baby is not quite so good as the first in the Torchy series, Smart Blonde (1937) (see my review). But Smart Blonde was something special, really a tough act to follow, and Fly-Away Baby is still wonderful. Fast-talking, fast-moving, breezy, funny, engaging, exciting, beautifully filmed, and expertly acted, especially by the two charming leads -- a delight from beginning to end. All handsomely wrapped up in polished production values only a slice below what you would expect from one of Warner Brothers' top "A" pictures. Director Frank McDonald, a career B-picture specialist, and film editor Doug Gould pack so much action into sixty minutes of running time, it's like five gallons of slick, smooth Classic Hollywood entertainment concentrated into a half-pint movie!

It's never ceases to amaze how the big studios of Old Hollywood could turn out these minor masterpieces while bringing to bear only a fraction of their available resources.