Torchy Blane is A-OK!
Working my way through the set of Torchy Blane films and she's really cute!
I love how she solves all of her homicide detective boyfriend, McBride's, cases!
The Torchy Blane movies were based on the "MacBride and Kennedy" stories by Louis Frederick Nebel. They are actually very faithful adaptions, except for one notable difference: they took the drunken, hard-boiled Kennedy of the Free Press, rewrote him as a woman, gave her an affinity for steaks instead of alcohol, made her Steve MacBride's love interest instead of merely his foil, named her "Torchy Blane", and cast Glenda Farrell because of her performance in "Mystery of the Wax Museum".
One time, they asked Nebel if he minded the change, to which he replied:
"Hell, they always change the stuff around. But I don't mind--as long as I don't have to make the changes."I, for one, believe they actually made an improvement. After seeing Torchy brilliantly brought to life by Glenda Farrell, I doubt if they would have been as good with Kennedy instead.
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Glenda Farrell just carries the day in these films! She's truly wonderful!
I've seen her in a couple of other non-Torchy roles and these are by far my favorites of them all.
I can't imagine the films being very good without her and clearly they aren't as good, based upon the two Torchy films she didn't appear in.
Thanks for posting the other info - I didn't know!
Glenda Farrell just carries the day in these films! She's truly wonderful!I like her a lot in pretty much everything she's in, but Torchy Blane is my favorite of her roles. According to a cigarette card she wrote the caption for and signed, it was her favorite as well:
I've seen her in a couple of other non-Torchy roles and these are by far my favorites of them all.
http://i1361.photobucket.com/albums/r665/hbenthow/Glenda%20Farrell/My- Favorite-Part-Side-1_zps47e75bab.jpg
http://i1361.photobucket.com/albums/r665/hbenthow/Glenda%20Farrell/My- favorite-Part-Side-2_zpsecc7b13e.jpg
She also said in an interview that she tried to make Torchy different from the other movie newspaperwomen of the era:
"They were caricatures of newspaperwomen as I knew them. So before I undertook to do the first Torchy, I determined to create a real human being – and not an exaggerated comedy type. I met those who visited Hollywood, and watched them work on visits to New York City. They were generally young, intelligent, refined and attractive. By making Torchy true to life, I tried to create a character practically unique in movies."
I can't imagine the films being very good without her and clearly they aren't as good, based upon the two Torchy films she didn't appear in.The Torchy Blane movies were all about the characters. Take out the actors who played the characters best, and they fell flat.
Many other movie series of the 1930s also depended on the characters, and worked so well because of the casting.
Nowadays (and probably even back then), simple stories that depend on the characters to give them life don't get as much respect as high-concept movies, which is rather unfortunate, as many of these movies are delightful.
In case you're interested, here's Dan Van Neste's "Glenda Farrell: Diamond in the Rough", a great biographical article about Glenda Farrell. (For some reason, the page is mis-titled as a nonexistent article called "Glenda Farrell: Film Music Genius" by R. E. Braff, but it's really "Glenda Farrell: Diamond in the Rough" by Dan Van Neste.)
http://web.archive.org/web/20030102160325/http://www.classicimages.com /1998/may98/glendafarrell.html
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Watching this one right now and I really like it -- and her!
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