Don't Talk

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.

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.

"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.

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.

Mark Sampson, the MGM crime reporter, brings us another story of how CRIME DOES NOT PAY. It's a story about how loose lips sink ships, or at least blow up bins of war-needed manganese because spies who run beauty parlors sneer at American democracy, but the Feds are on the case.

This is a mildly hysterical entry in the long-running series. It had begun in 1935, won some Oscars for short subjects, and was held in high enough esteem that many of the approximately 30 episodes were made into radio dramas. It also became a comic book, issued between 1942 and 1955. The series was a training ground for talent, particularly directors. Jacques Tourneur directed several of the episodes, as well as Joseph Newman, who directed this one. Always maintaining a moral tone, the episodes ranged from excellent to to mildly ludicrous. This is a dry but good one.