Glenda Farrell, often cast as a wise-cracking gold digger, found a fitting role as clever reporter Torchy Blane in Smart Blonde, the first of a series of nine pictures from Warner Brothers (Farrell played the role in seven of them). In this initial outing, she is right on the scene when a fellow buying a …
Monogram Monday: Bowery Bombshell (1946)
This early entry in the Bowery Boys series offers another example of the blend of crime and comedy so often found in the films. This time, thanks to a photographer friend, Sach (Huntz Hall) ends up suspected of involvement in a bank robbery, one in fact committed by a gang led by Ace Deuce (Sheldon …
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Weekly Reader — January 8 – 14, 2023
I finished five books and one magazine this week. Monday Mob, by Don Pendleton — The 33rd book in Pendleton’s highly successful series about Mack Bolan, the Executioner, kicks off a Hell Week as the warrior brings his special brand of destruction to the Mafia before retiring from that war to tackle a different threat …
Sunday Fun: Winter Sport
Five to One (1963)
A small-time crook (John Thaw), his gal (Ingrid Hafner), and his pal plot to rob a bookie (Lee Montague) who doubles as a fence of a bundle they induce him to put together on the promise of loot from a different robbery. But unexpected actions on the part of their target complicate matters, and the …
Funny Friday: Doing Fine
A-Haunting We Will Go (1942)
A-Haunting We Will Go opens with our heroes, Laurel and Hardy, being warned to leave town after a night in jail. To accomplish that, the boys, who are down on their luck, take a job escorting a coffin to Dayton, Ohio. Yet unbeknownst to them, the coffin contains not a cadaver, but a notorious criminal, …
Alias John Law (1935)
Cowboy Everett Tarkington John Clark (Bob Steele) looking forward to a long-awaited reunion with his mother stands in for a wounded pal, Marshal Lamar Blyth (Jack Rockwell), and sets out to round up the Kootney Kid (Earl Dwire) and his gang. The project becomes personal when he learns that the Kid is pretending to be …
Monogram Monday: Law Men (1944)
U.S. Marshals Nevada Jack McKenzie (Johnny Mack Brown) and Sandy Hopkins (Raymond Hatton) are sent to investigate a series of bank robberies and stage holdups, arriving just as the latest crime occurs. As is common with this series, they both go undercover: Nevada follows the escaping crooks and tries to get in with the gang, …
Weekly Reader — January 1 – 7, 2023
The year 2023 is off to a pretty good start on the reading front, as I finished 6 books through January 7: The Lone Rider (I Must Ride Alone), by Jackson Gregory — First published in 1940, though I read the Popular Library paperback whose cover is shown above. This is a reasonably effective western …