The Adventurous Blonde

This is the Poverty Row take on films like The Front Page/His Girl Friday, one of a series with perky Glenda Farrell playing a reporter called Torchy Blane. In this one she gets herself involved in the solving of a murder mystery: who strangled the matinée idol? Like The Front Page, there's a running gag about a postponed wedding. There are several nifty one-liners, too, and actors run in and out of scenes so fast that it's easy to forgive the implausibility of the plot, and to forget that this is all talk. It's nice to see Barton MacLane in a lead role for a change, and the supporting cast, especially character actors such as Frank Shannon, Jimmy Conlin, George Guhl and Houseley Stevenson, are worth the price of admission alone. Hardly a comedy masterpiece but there are worse ways to while away an hour. This is the second in the Torchy Blane series.

The Adventurous Blonde (1937)

*** (out of 4)

The third film in the series has Torchy Blane (Glenda Farrell) and Lt. MacBride (Barton MacLane) soon to be married, which drives her fellow reporters crazy because they feel she'll get all the scoops. To get even with her they get a famous actor needing publicity to pretend to be murdered so that Torchy will report the story and then get in trouble. The tables turn however when the actor ends up murdered just the way the joke was supposed to happen. This third film in the series is actually the best up to this point thanks in large part to the cast doing a fine job but the story here is also extremely well-done with a couple nice twists at the end. The idea of a "joke" murder getting into the newspaper is a bit far-fetched but I really thought this was rather fun at the start of the picture. The jealousy of the male reporters was quite funny but once the murder takes place things get a lot more serious. As someone who watches every "B" murder/mystery that comes on TCM, I must admit that the story here was quite good and especially the various suspects and their connection to the victim. Farrell and MacLane are both at the top of their game here with the chemistry flying high. Anne Nagel, George E. Stone and Tom Kennedy are all good in their supporting bits as is Anderson Lawler, , Leyland Hodgson and Virginia Brissac. The twist at the end is something I won't give away but I serious doubt anyone will see it coming.

Glenda farrell is torchy blane, on a train, heading east to get married. Co-stars the usual barton maclane and tom kennedy. It's a battle of newspapers, and the other reporters want to put torchy in her place. So they stage a fake murder. Which turns out not to be fake. Will she ever get married? Some funny lines. Fast action. Well done who-dunnit, wrapped up in sixty one minutes. We were still pretty happy go lucky, between the two wars. I really liked the energy of this one... not a minute wasted. It really moved along. Fun stuff. Directed by frank mcdonald; he made six films with farrell. Torchy blane character by writer fred nebel.

Torchy and Steve just might get married this time around: they've got the license and the minister and are meeting at the station. But wait—the boys from the rival paper hatch a plan: they stage a phony murder, arrange for Steve to be called in to investigate, and hire an actor to play the corpse.

—Heavy on the comedy so far, but when the "corpse" is really murdered, the plot thickens into a somewhat convoluted but very funny comedy-mystery, the third film in the Torchy Blane series (and third of the same year!).

Barton McLane is fine in his third go-round as Steve McBride, serious-minded police detective; gruff but loyal and tenacious, Lieutenant McBride seems to be getting smarter and more appealing as the series progresses.

Glenda Farrell is just great as reporter Torchy Blane, once again mixed up in a murder investigation…once again scooping her rival reporters…and once again staying approximately one step of Steve in a case that sorely interferes with their wedding plans.

Tom Kennedy is also back as Officer Gahagan, composing poetry in his spare moments and hopefully asking, "Siren and all?" every time McBride orders him to drive somewhere in a hurry.

It's an unsettled first fifteen minutes; that phony murder plot really makes little sense. Once the real plot starts rolling, however—and once Torchy is on the case—this picture is great fun and moves at a terrific pace.

The supporting cast is steady if unspectacular; the plot itself is rather complicated at times, partly because Farrell talks so fast. Luckily, the appealing main characters, and a script that gives them some good moments together, do keep things zipping right along, whether they're talking murder or marriage:

Steve: "I never know what you're gonna do next." Torchy: "You wait'll we're married."

Exceedingly light but delicious.

For what was considered a Warner Brothers B series, the Torchy Blane series was fantastic. Torchy (Glenda Farrell) is a reporter and spitfire engaged to police detective Steve McBride (Barton McLane) who is equally tough. They don't have traditionally romantic moments, but they are a great team for solving murders and have great chemistry. You can see them probably acting the same to each other the day before they are married, the day after, ten years later, twenty years later. They are tough people in tough jobs and they get one another. Should everybody be that lucky.

In this installment of the series, the reporters of the other papers are talking about how Torchy always scoops them because of her close association to McBride. So they decide to set up a fake murder, let Torchy report on it and have it go to press, and then reveal that the whole thing was a fake just to embarrass her. They get a ham actor (Harvey Hammond) to play the part of the corpse. They get an assistant at the coroner's office to pronounce death and probably cause of death - strangling, and then have other actors that they have hired to play the servants. Well the whole thing blows up in their face when it turns out Hammond actually HAS been strangled! So Torchy scoops the other reporters again because their hoax is a real murder.

Now to find out who did it. It turns out that there are any multitude of suspects, and that strangely enough that Hammond was a lady's man, although he had been married for twenty years and honestly he came across like a stuffed shirt and was not good looking at all. What was the attraction? Torchy solves this one, but she makes one leap of logic that you have to rewind to the beginning of the film to figure out HOW she figured it out. Several people persuade various suspects to falsely confess, and one of these false confessions outs the murderer.

You know, watching this fast paced entertaining film brings up a few questions. For one thing, why does Torchy think of doing standard investigative techniques that the cops should have thought of? Does Torchy REALLY want to get married? You can tell she loves McBride, but it is he that seems to be the sentimental one, and she always seems to be coming up with excuses as to why they need to wait. As she drives off at one point McBride is frantically waving at her, and when several other detectives think he is hailing them he seems suddenly embarrassed by this display of affection by "a tough guy" like himself.

Highly recommended if you like the B crime movies of the 30's and 40's. Oh, and Barton McLane and Glenda Farrell were so good together that outside of the Torchy Blane series they did "Prison Break" together for Universal in 1938.