Smart Blonde on AllMovie

As originally conceived by detective novelist Frederick Nebel, hotshot girl reporter Torchy Blaine was a male news-hound named Kennedy. For the purpose of Warner Bros.' Smart Blonde, the character's name and gender was changed -- thereby inaugurating one of the most popular and enjoyable movie series of the 1930s. Glenda Farrell, she of the mile-a-minute mouth, was an inspired choice for Torchy Blaine, while burly Barton MacLane was equally well cast as Torchy's boyfriend-nemesis, police lieutenant Steve McBride. In this first series entry, the only one actually based on a Nebel story, Torchy and Steve join forces to solve -- what else? -- a baffling murder case. McBride thinks that crook-gone-straight Tom Carney (Craig Reynolds) is the guilty party, but Torchy determines that the killing was the handiwork of one of Tom's old underworld cronies. It takes a second murder for McBride to admit that Torchy is right as usual.