Warner Scrubs Get A Chance

Gangland On A Budget: Smart Girls Don't Talk (1948)

Warners rejuvenated a B unit in '48 and put Saul Elkins (producer) and Richard Bare (director) to delivery of quickies using talent that might otherwise collect weekly pay for nothing, a stance not permissible at WB. Do these bottom-half programmers deliver? Not all perhaps, but Smart Girls has bounce in Virginia Mayo gone undercover to avenge brother Robert Hutton's disposal by gangster Bruce Bennett. I'd have once preferred Bogart rather than Bennett for this commission --- now it's the other way around, my regard for plow-pullers like this one-time Tarzan having increased with recognition that less dynamic players must eat too. It's refreshing to watch BB execute kiss scenes and rough stuff as if he were a Bogie or Cagney --- I checked bio/memoir Please Don't Call Me Tarzan for Smart Girls Don't Talk, but there's scant mention. Did assignments blur to such extent for utility folk? Smart Girls was an "original" insofar as scribe credit (William Sackheim), though the story smacked of Marked Woman and multiples that had gone before, second feature audiences inured to strict application of formula. Amazing Richard Bare (lately turned 100) was director vet of Joe McDoakes foolery and handled smoothly this, his inaugural go at features.