Director: Frank McDonald
The second installment of the Torchy Blane series improves on the first by foregrounding the things that make the films unique. In the first picture, Steve McBride (Barton MacLane) largely served as the leading man, with Torchy (Glenda Farrell) offering up her expertise at crime-solving in small doses. Fly Away Baby is a much better showcase for Farrell and the writing does more favors for the actors by doubling down on the bantering–it is clear that Farrell and MacLane have already developed a much more comfortable rapport. Most interestingly, the picture prioritizes the feminist themes that are inherent to the series, with much of the conversation involving the significance of Torchy’s gender in the mystery context. McBride, dismissing Torchy’s expert analysis, argues, “It takes a masculine mind and years of experience to crack these cases! Now, you just go on back to your office and write a little story about what the women’s clubs are doing to promote world peace and then I’ll take you out to dinner.” With dialogue like this, the film becomes one that not only promotes the competency of women, but also makes a mockery of a certain brand of old-fashioned masculinity, defined by ignorance and pigheadedness.
Director: Frank McDonald
Having cut her teeth as a supporting player in countless pictures in the 1930s, Glenda Farrell was given the lead in a series of films for Warner Brothers that would see her cast as an investigative reporter with a knack for solving crimes. Smart Blonde is the first of nine Torchy Blane films, the start of her pairing with on-screen husband Barton MacLane as police lieutenant Steve McBride. Whereas Torchy is hungry for the story and is always looking for leads, McBride in this earliest installment largely wants her out of the way… only, as it turns out, her skills as an investigator are significantly more pronounced than his. Farrell is amusing in what is a typical role for her–she’s plucky and brash, the down-to-earth rebuttal to high class female sleuths like Nora Charles. Unfortunately, she largely takes a backseat to MacLane in this installment, who admittedly retools his persona as a heavy from other Warner Brothers pictures surprisingly well in this role. The screenplay isn’t up to the studio’s usual standard with this kind of programmer, but it does move at a nice clip.
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