Wanted! Jane Turner

Lee Tracy and Gloria Stuart are a couple of Postal Inspectors. They're following the trail of a major postal robbery, which has been remailed to "Jane Turner" at a city's general post office. When some really named Jane Turner (actress Ann Shepherd) picks it up, the situation goes all pear-shaped, with Paul Guilfoyle willing to kill anyone who stands in the way of his pay-off, even Frank Yaconelli, who keeps showing up with a different bunch of dogs.

It's a nice adventure-romance-thriller with a pleasant screwball edge, thanks to some fresh performances by Lee Tracy -- who must have been relieved not to be playing a news reporter -- and Gloria Stuart. Director Edward Killy may have been more accustomed to to being an assistant director on some distinguished projects, but with a fine cast, he just had to make sure they stood in the right place and then turn them loose. With Barbara Pepper, Dick Elliott, and the ubiquitous Queen of the Dress Extras, Bess Flowers.

In "Wanted! Jane Turner", Lee Tracy plays a rather typical sort of character. He's brash, fast-talking and full of himself. Often this means he is playing a reporter but here he's a postal inspector. He's assisted with a female postal inspector (Gloria Stuart) and they and their fellow inspectors deal with several cases. The most important one is tracking down a crook who committed a deadly robbery of a mail truck (Paul Guilfoyle).

This is a very well made and enjoyable B-movie...the type Tracy made often in the 1930s...but still well worth seeing. The writing is very good for a B and the story is told economically and well.

... because it involves postal inspectors trying to track down the thieves who robbed a mail truck of ten thousand dollars and killed the driver.

The two inspectors on the case are Tom Mallory (Lee Tracy) and Doris Martin (Gloria Stuart), and they find the letter with the robbery loot in it mailed general delivery to the titular Jane Turner, a fake name for a go between who will distribute the loot to the gang in Los Angeles. Solving the crime itself doesn't take that much time or effort, so some subplots are fed into it. These include a bank employee who has been falsely accused of embezzling bank funds, a man with an Italian accent who goes around delivering dogs, and a marriage racket perpetrated by two women who bilk lonely men.

I like both Stuart and Tracy, but they just have no chemistry together. They seem like they are acting when it comes to any fire that might be between them, and that is the main drawback of the film. It is interesting to see people walk up to the post office window and claim mail and packages with absolutely zero identification. It's not like that would have helped anyways, since California drivers licenses had no picture on them into the 1960s. Keep a look out for Barbara Pepper as a gangster's girl. She played Doris Ziffel on the TV show Green Acres during the 1960s.

This 1936, hour-long B-movie has a rating of only one star in the film guide that pops up on the digital cable system I subscribe to -- which implies it's one of the worst films ever made. While it's slow paced and not terribly exciting, it includes some fun glimpses of a couple actresses we know from very different work. Leading lady Gloria Stuart had only been working a few years when she got star billing in this film -- and of course it would be 60 years before she was nominated for an Oscar in one of the great "comeback" stories in Hollywood history, playing "Old Rose" in the 1997 megahit "Titanic." Stuart does well with a mediocre script here, though she's not on screen as much as her billing would lead you to hope for. She plays a glamorous postal inspector, with stylish hairdos and daringly low cut dresses that showcase a sexy side that will surprise viewers who only know her as "Old Rose."

Stuart's love interest is played by Lee Tracy, who starred in an impressive slew of movies in the 1930s. There's no chemistry between him and Stuart – making the predictable (and unnecessary) love story seem especially contrived.

An amusing subplot features game vaudeville comedienne Irene Franklin in a small role as a flinty blonde involved in a mail-order bride con game. She has a fun scene when one of her intended husbands corners her at the General Delivery window at the L.A. post office: Seeing the mustached, heavy-set sheep farmer, she cries out, "I'd just as soon marry a buffalo!" She tells a postal inspector, "I didn't intend any fraud, but I simply can't marry a sheep herder!" Her tune changes when she discovers just how many sheep he herds, and how much those future lamb chops are worth. It's one of those cases where it's a pity someone didn't realize the subplot could have been expanded into a better movie than the main story turned out to be.

The other actress worth watching for is Barbara Pepper, who has a small but flashy supporting role as Marge, a sizzling blonde bad girl, who also deserves a bigger part in the movie. Pepper is best remembered as the hefty, slovenly adoptive mother of a pig on the '60s sitcom "Green Acres" – but here she's thin and gorgeous, and dripping in diamonds.

"Wanted! Jane Turner" contains some well-shot vintage exterior footage of Los Angeles, which adds some interest. And lots of the small roles – like a crooked dog catcher – are filled by studio contract players instantly familiar to movie lovers. Overall, it's certainly not one of the worst movies ever made, but it's more notable for what might have been than what actually made it on the screen.

Yes, it's a typical Lee Tracy film. It's as fast paced, and as much fun as most of his films of the period are. But, there are a lot of subplots, and unusual scenes, that make it rise above the ordinary. The marriage by mail con has been mentioned, as has the crooked dog catcher. Another is the little old guy who comes to the PO every day, expecting a letter from his son. The whole seeing the public through the eyes of the PO worker in the window bit is a marvelous slice of life of the day. The film also has one of the strangest "interrogation" scenes I've ever seen. Three cops work on a suspect by being annoying, all psychological, no rough stuff at all. Great stuff. I also loved the art deco interior hallway in Tracy and Stuart's hotel. They don't make 'em like that any more. I think this film is a keeper.