Jane Wyman . . . how did you get here? Once again they tried to to recast the whole formula. Jane Wyman is news gal Torchy Blane. Allen Jenkins plays her lieutenant fiancee Steve McBride. And Gahagan is still Tom Kennedy. Why doesn’t that guy ever get recast? Also, this movie was made THE SAME YEAR as the two previous movies. Stop messing with our heads, Warner Bros. Also, the movie is listed everywhere as “Torchy Blane Playing with Dynamite”, but the posters all say “Plays with Dynamite”. Warner Bros. - the master of the stupid gaslighting.
Torchy decides to get herself arrested so she can get the scoop on a woman who’s been jailed for shoplifting. What the police who picked her up don’t know is that the woman is a girlfriend of a notorious bank robber and murderer named Denver Eddie. Torchy (called Helen at the prison) befriends the girlfriend from another inmate (who appears to be the only African American woman in the cell block) and the pair break out together. Steve follows, hoping the girlfriend will lead them to Denver Eddie (how’s that for a name, by the way). She and Steve meet in a bookstore and use make-up plot descriptions to tip each other off. Meanwhile, Gahagan is forced to fight in a wrestling match for . . . reasons. I don’t know. This movie is only an hour long and the story still got a little lost. The one spoiler I will give away is that another reporter blows Torchy’s cover! Is there no honor among journalists? Oh wait. No, there isn’t.
That’s the end of the Torchy Blane films and by the end of #9 she and Steve are still not married. All I have left to say is this - run, Jane Wyman! Run before Ronald Regan tries to marry you!
