One of the best of the Torchy Blane series is one that really puts her in the most danger in Torchy Gets Her Man. That title does not mean that Glenda Farrell and Barton MacLane finally wed. In fact the title is a misnomer in that the object of her story nearly gets Torchy with Geohagan thrown in for good measure.This is one bold as brass crook, a notorious counterfeiter played by Willard Robertson who impersonates a Secret Service man of all things. He's got a scam to use the racetrack to spread his phony bills and he's using the cops as shields because they think he's part of a sting.Torchy using the ever gullible Geohagan played by Tom Kennedy catches on, but they're both taken captive by the gang who plans to do them in. How she gets out is for you to see.Once again Tom Kennedy as lovable, but thick as an adobe brick Sergeant Geohagan steals the film. How he ever passed the civil service for the police is beyond me. And Barton MacLane turns out to be handy to have around.
... View MoreReporter Torchy Blane bumps lightly into a cop as she breezes through the police station's front door. "Oh, sorry," she says. "I meant to knock you down." Torchy's friendly smirk pretty much sums up her attitude toward the police: they're supposedly in charge but they sure move a lot slower than she does.Glenda Farrell returns as spunky girl reporter Torchy Blane in this amusing but uneven series entry. Farrell is excellent as usual—Torchy is a quick thinker and a fast talker, and Farrell presents just the right mix of wit, charm and silliness.Tom Kennedy is equally good as Gahagan, the lumbering police chauffeur who is liable to burst into poetry at any moment. This time around, Gahagan is given an unscheduled vacation, the other cops figuring that keeping him off of the case entirely is the only way to prevent him from spilling inside information to Torchy.Barton McLane's role as Lieutenant Steve McBride is, alas, rather dry. The plot sets him up to be the eventual hero but boy, it sure takes him a while to sort things out. What's worse, he's not only dumb, he's boring.The story, for what it's worth, concerns a master counterfeiter known as "Hundred Dollar Bill" Bailey (Willard Robertson) playing an elaborate trick on an extremely gullible police force. Posing as an ace federal agent, this Bailey sets up shop behind a window at the racetrack, where he exchanges his phony bills right under the cops' noses. Needless to say, Torchy catches on that something is fishy long before Steve or the other cops.Highlights include Gahagan's system for betting on the horses (it involves the fact that 6 x 6 = 37); and a rented German shepherd that only understands German (Torchy rents a phrase book along with the dog).Very silly and enjoyable when Torchy and Gahagan are on the scene .not as lively during passages involving counterfeiters or detectives.
... View More***SPOILERS**** Gabby and unflinching woman news reporter Torchy Blane, Glenda Farrell, ends up breaking up a counterfeit ring by ending up being taken hostage by it. Torchy get a bit ticked off when her fiancée police Det. Steve McBride, Barton MacLane, keeps her in the dark about the counterfeit ring that he and G-Man Charles Gilbert, Willard Robertson, are tracking down headed by the mysterious master counterfeiter $100 "Dollar Bill" Bailey.Bailey plans to pass off, or launder, as much as $300,000.00 in counterfeit $100.00 bills at the Hollywood Race Track together with a number of his hoods posing as horse betters. It's when Det. McBride's friend and chauffeur Gahagan, Tom Kennedy, is given a forced-after screwing things up-two week vacation he ends up at Hollywood Park with a foolproof system, involving higher mathematics, that he uses to almost break the track. This all draws attention to him by not only the counterfeiters and race-track officials but by Torchy, who's at the track tracking down her fiancée Det. McBride, as well.With Torchy and a confused, in being involved in her birdbrain actions, Gahangen ending up getting caught by the counterfeit ring and held hostage Det. McBride gets his rented, from a local pet store, bloodhound-like sniffing German Shepard Bitzer. It's Blitzer who, unlike Torchy & Gahagan, escaped the clutches of the counterfeit gang to lead Det. McBride together with a squad of police and G-Man Gilbert to the gang's hiding place. It's there where their keeping both Torchy & Gahagan tied up with a nitroglycerin bomb, that's to blow the place to smatterings, set to go off at any moment. It's then that we get to find out just who Mr. Big, $100 "Dollar Bill" Bailey, really is by him being forced, by Det. McBride, to be at the place just as it was about to blow! And with him being there and not wanting to end up as dead as both Torchy & Gahagan, as well as the cops who raided the place, he's forced not only to reveal is true identity but where the bomb is and when it's about to detonate!Typical Torchy Blane flick with Torchy getting things done her way against the advice of her, at first, fumbling boyfriend Det. McBride. In the end it was Det. McBride who by tricking $100 "Dollar Bill" Bailey into exposing himself, in him knowing that Torchy loves stake dinners, ended up rescuing Torchy and his bumbling driver, known to his friends as the Irish Police Poet, Gahagan. But Det. McBride didn't solve the case of the $100.00 counterfeit bills all by himself he needed both Torchy and the courageous and scent sniffing German Shepard Blitzer, the real hero of the movie, to help him do it!
... View MoreWith the fifth of Glenda Farrell's seven Torchy Blaine films, the Warner Bros. series would begin to drift away from knotty whodunits to more cops-and-robbers action with which the series would remain, incl. the two non-Farrell Torchys made after hers. Too bad, because now, instead of two sweethearts partnering to solve a murder, Torchy and Barton MacLane's Detective Steve McBride relationship now becomes adversarial reporter vs cop. Ho hum. Still, it was fun while it lasted. The chief pleasure of the series remains; Glenda Farrell as the brassy, intuitive and unstoppable newshound, Torchy Blane - greatest of all 30s Hollywood B movie female reporters.
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