Don't Talk

"Don't Talk" is a Warners short film that exists as little more than a curiosity piece today, and is an example of the kind of ridiculous propaganda that movie studios at the time were feeding the American people in order to keep morale up for the war.

This forgettable film revolves around the plans of a Communist group planted within the United States to carry out terrorist attacks through their contacts at a war ammunitions plant. The moral of the story is that the American people have to be vigilant and on the lookout for subversive behavior -- in other words, when our country is at war, everyone is a soldier in that war. Sound familiar?

What this movie proves is that things haven't changed all that much in the intervening years.

MGM presents A Crime Does Not Pay Subject. Someone blows up a plant and the FBI is on the case. They suspect a waitress had been overhearing loose talk and transferring the secrets to a sabotage group intending to take down American democracy with the use of the menu board.

This is a wartime Crime Don't Pay short. It is the months following the Pearl Harbor attack and everybody is pitching in. This is perfectly reasonable for this series to do some war propaganda. It is loose lips sink ships. It is the fifth column. It is all the fanciful espionage tricks although the menu board is going too far.

"Don't Talk" is a cheesy, simplistic film made in the throes of WWII. The message was "don't talk" about anything important out loud, you never know who is listening. Acting was stiff, but it was still a fun short film to see. Everything was black and white, probably as it had to be in the early days of WWII.

But the message was important. You never knew who was listening to your conversations and even seemingly innocuous bits of information strung together by someone with less than pure motives was potentially a danger.

I am not sure it is clear who the baddies were, Nazis or commies, but I assume Nazis since we were allies with the commies in WWII.

We ought to know by now, that "Crime Does Not Pay" but just in case we had forgotten, this one combines with "Dangerous Talk Costs Lives" to warn us of the dangers of idle chatting in wartime. An explosion at a factory causes the FBI to suspect that some fifth columnist saboteurs are up to no good, but how on earth did they know of this precious shipment? The workforce are all entirely trustworthy and adamant that they have ever said a word to anyone. These are smart cookies, these Hoover boys, and so swiftly look for what these men have in common. The café across the street, and a waitress who once visited the Aya Sofia in Istanbul. Is she gleaning the odd snippet of conversation and putting two and two together? We know all along who is pulling whose strings and given the nature of the series, we know that the Feds will get their man, but it's nonetheless one of the more action-packed and sinister of these twenty minute features and I kept expecting Basil Rathbone to emerge from somewhere too.

Part of the MGM Crime Does Not Pay series, Don't Talk is supposed to serve as a stern warning to not be talking too freely about your work in war related industries. In this case some nasty Axis saboteurs are operating out of both a beauty shop and a hash house.

In this rather dated short personally I liked Gloria Holden as the waitress who listens for information from the factory workers at a tool& dye plant and passes it on to her superiors. But intrepid FBI agent Barry Nelson is definitely on to her and eventually catches on to how she passes the information. Quite clever really.

This Oscar nominated short subject is part of the propaganda the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover encouraged the film industry to make. Funny thing is that they did do a good job in preventing sabotage which was more of a threat then folks would admit today. And Hoover's historic reputation would be in great shape if he had retired in 1945.