I have a weakness for . . .

Second features. Unfortunately, they're usually a disappointment. They're short, which is nice. They're slight, which is fine. But they tend to have stock plots and situations, and an overall air of "it'll do." Now and then, however, you get a series that tells you something about the times, and this is one of them. Meet . . . Torchy Blane.

First role in 1928; last role in 1970. She's best known for seven Torchy Blane pictures. (The character appeared in nine.) Wikipeda sums it up:

During the pre-World War II period, newspaper reporter was one of the few roles in American cinema that positively portrayed women as intelligent, competent, self-reliant, and career-oriented -- virtually equal to men. Of these role models, Torchy Blane, a smart, beautiful, wisecracking female reporter was perhaps the best-known. The typical plot of movies featuring the character have the resilient, fast-talking Torchy solving a crime (the central element of the film's plot) before her less-than-perceptive lover, loud-mouthed police detective Steve McBride, can.

He's played by Barton MacLane, who seems familiar to me from a hundred similar roles.

We begin with newspaper headlines, of course:

We meet Torchy as she leaps from a car on to a moving train . . .

To get an interview, of course! Shortly thereafter there's a murder, because otherwise what's the point of these things. Someone rich and morally questonable has to die in the first ten minutes to remind the audience that money and class are no insulations whatsoever - why, you're even more likely to be shot! Those heels. Those high-hat white-shoe cads.

Time to go see what's up at the most 30s Nightclub name ever:

Choke on that, ya saps! We're rollin' in it. We meet a singer who might be involved . . .

Wini Shaw. "She is best remembered as the girl who introduced the Harry Warren/Al Dubin song 'Lullaby of Broadway' in Busby Berkeley's movie "Gold Diggers of 1935". She had a few more movies to go, and after that it was USO tours and nightclubs.

At one point they race through the streets of Los Angeles, and while it's hard to find out where this was, it's not impossible.

The key is the theater, of course. It says "Broadway," which was the original name of the Cameo.

So do you need to know anything more? Not really. The movie sets up all the recurring characters, including a phlegmatic desk sergeant:

George Guhl. Made about a million movies.

Jane Wyman. Married Ronald Reagan. (Nice comic turn in this movie.)

There's a bit more inadvertant documentary:

Backlot? I think so. There's one name - Molineaux - but the rest of the signs say "Great Tire" and "Snooker" and "Bakery," with nothing other than generic names.

Anyway, it's brisk and breezy, and Torchy is a motormouth ace deductress. You can't help but enjoy it.

Until:

Never occured to them how that would look some day. Don't think they would have cared.