BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Holstra Boring, long, and too preachy.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Charles Herold (cherold) After watching the profoundly mediocre Torchy Blane in Chinatown I decided that I wouldn't bother watching any more movies in the Torchy series. But when I saw this on TCM, I thought, well, it's the first movie in the series so perhaps it's a bit better. After all, it inspired a series.Maybe it is better - I didn't watch enough of it to be sure - but it's certainly not very good. There is a clunky amateurishness about the film and its performers that puts it below a big percentage of B movies. It's more of a C movie.Still, if I hadn't already had a poor impression of Torchy I might have given the film more than 20 minutes. Maybe it gets better after that.

oldblackandwhite Dynamite comes in small packages. Which describes both short "B" second feature Smart Blonde and its cute, perky star Glenda Farrel as Torchy Blane. Initial entry in the highly successful Torchy Blane series, Smart Blonde runs on open throttle for its entire 59 minutes. It is smart, tough, breezy, lightning paced, with funny, snappy dialog delivered incredibly fast. This picture is nothing if not fast-talking. Glenda Farrell reportedly could speak 390 words per minute, and she demonstrates it throughout. But co-star Barton MacLane, who plays her tough cop boy friend Steve McBride, may actually have surpassed her in the motor mouth department in a couple of scenes. Most of the other Runyonesque characters in this entertaining mystery do likewise. If all the dialog in this movie had been delivered at a normal cadence, the running time would have been at least twenty minutes longer. This picture along with other Warner Brothers gangster movies of the 1930's makes you wonder if the studio had a course in fast talking for its stock players.Stock players were exactly what Farrell and MacLane were. Usually in supporting parts, she the hard-boiled broad, he the burly, loud-mouthed gangster or cop. But the Torchy series gave both a chance to use their special talents in leading roles, and both made the best of it. The pair had crackling chemistry together, with cozy affectionate interludes only occasionally breaking their constant rat-a-tat wise-cracking. Torchy is a smart girl reporter who solves the cases Steve isn't sharp enough to dope out on his own. At least that's the way she sees it.Farrell and MacLane get solid support from a crew of other Warner Brothers stock players, especially Addison Richards as a shady, but on-the-level night club/race track operator around whom the murder mystery swirls, Wini Shaw as the beautiful singer who loves him, and Charlotte Wynters as the high class dame he loves. This role as a tough, but likable borderline hoodlum was a real change of pace for Richards. In 400 movie and television appearances from the 1930' to the 1960's the tall, lanky actor rarely played other than judges, district attorneys, doctors, high ranking army officers, and other dignified types. MacLane may have showed good chemistry with the pretty, vivacious Farrell, but it was Charlotte Wynters who became Mrs. Barton MacLane about a year after Smart Blonde's release.Smart Blonde is a delightful, stimulating little mystery potboiler, full of plot twists, intrigues, and explosive bursts of action. Characterization is colorful and well developed. As a big studio "B" picture, the sets and cinematography are nearly as good as in one of Warner Brothers' top productions. Director Frank McDonald, a life-long "B" picture specialist, keeps all on target throughout. To compress all that happens in the story into less than an hour running time, even considering the machine gun dialog delivery, should rate as a masterpiece of film editing for Frank MaGee. Acting was first rate all around but especially from the two likable leads.An enduring example of how the big studios of Old Hollywood could turn out good looking, entertaining pictures when only half-way trying.

Neil Doyle This is an enjoyable little comedy/mystery in the Torchy Blane series that starred GLENDA FARRELL and BARTON MacLAINE on the trail of a killer involved in a nightclub mystery.Farrell is a fast-talking newspaper reporter smitten by her policeman boyfriend MacLaine. The breezy byplay between the reporter gal and her boyfriend is snappy enough to keep the plot moving briskly towards a solution of the murder. JANE WYMAN pops up as a flighty hatcheck girl who has almost no bearing on the plot.Interesting to spot ROBERT PAIGE in an early role before Universal groomed him for a bid toward stardom opposite stars like Deanna Durbin (in "Can't Help Singing").Passes the time but strictly a programmer.

bkoganbing Smart Blonde is the first film of the Torchy Blane series with Glenda Farrell as former showgirl turned reporter with a real keen sense of a scoop. She works the police beat where she constantly runs up against her boyfriend, homicide cop Barton MacLane. Depending on how you view things, Torchy's a help or a hindrance. But in this case she was literally on top of the story. Seconds after being interviewed by her, nightclub impresario Joseph Crehan is shot down in Union Station.Crehan was going to buy a nightclub owned by Addison Richards who was getting out of the business and getting ready to marry Charlotte Wynters and go into the real estate business with her and her brother Robert Paige, leaving his club singer Wini Shaw all in distress. Another one in distress is Max Wagner, Richards's gunsill because there's not much call for his line of work in real estate.One murder later of course Torchy's put it all together for MacLane and gets her paper the scoop. But the plot does take an interesting twist or two, it's not who you think it is.Jane Wyman has a small supporting role as a hatcheck girl with a tendency to gossip which aids Farrell in her story. This was of course at the beginning of Wyman's career which included a film as Torchy Blane herself when Farrell quit the series.Smart Blonde proves how popular the Torchy Blane series was at Warner Brothers and why it was so well received in the late Thirties.