A Night for Crime
Director: Alexis Thurn-Taxis
Year: 1943
Rating: 5.0
I was a bit depressed to see that Glenda Farrell
was in this PRC picture. She is one of my favorite actresses from her smart
mouth tough attitude roles at Warners, often teaming up with Joan Blondell.
But this was partly her fault. In 1939 she had refused to renew her contract
with Warners because she felt she deserved a raise and as she told them,
she was tired of playing a tough talking reporter who solved crimes. Referring
to her many Torchy Blane films. She went on to appear in the theater and
appeared with her co-star in this film, Lyle Talbot for over 600 shows of
Separate Rooms. She was a free agent now, but only signed up for a few films,
none in which she was the star. Except this one. And what does she play here?
Yes, a fast talking independent reporter who solves the murder. Basically,
Torchy Blane on the cheap.
This is alright for a low budget crime film.
It has a bit of imagination, moves fast and has a denouement more confusing
than a dozen monkeys juggling. This takes all its cues from the Torchy films;
a guy that wants to marry her, her preference to be a reporter, she is the
smartest one in the room and Ralph Sanford replaces Tom Kennedy as the dimwitted
police comic foil. It is 1943 and Los Angeles was having mandatory black
outs because of the war. During one, Farrell and her boyfriend Talbot
hear a woman scream across the hall from her apartment. They find a dead
female. At the same time a top actress has disappeared from the studio that
Talbot works for. The budget is so poor that the studio is represented by
an office. In one very odd scene, the coroner gathers about ten people in
the morgue who knew the corpse and after describing how they knew the dead
person, asks them to identify her. One after another. Was this how it was
done back then? It is all connected of course and Torchy, I mean Susan Cooper,
beats them all to it.
