HEADLINE CRASHER (1937)

Jimmy Tallant, the young and brash son of Senator Tallant, speeds to get a lovely hitchhiker to the airport to catch a flight in what she claims is a life or death situation. He gets her there but gets a ticket from the cops, and also learns that the young woman is just in a hurry to get to a dance. Newspaper owner Atwood, running against Tallant in the upcoming election, orders his reporters to keep following Jimmy and make him look bad in the papers as a way to tarnish the senator's reputation. Though Jimmy claims he only gets into trouble because he always wants to help, the negative headlines work and Jimmy decides to make himself scarce for the duration by going away to stay at the family vacation lodge. He tells his dad's secretary, Edith, where he's going; when she finds out that the young woman Jimmy helped to get the airport may have actually been in a robbery involving gangster Tony Scarlotti, she heads to the lodge to warn him. Reporter Larry Deering follows. As it happens, Tony and his men are hiding out at a cabin in the same woods, and poor Jimmy gets into more trouble when he helps a wounded gang member get to the hideout. As the gang tries to use Jimmy as bait to bring the senator, can Larry and Edith overcome a certain amount of animosity and work together against the mob?

In the late 30s, young Frankie Darro (Jimmy) and serials and action star Kane Richmond (Larry) were paired in a few movies by indie studio Conn Pictures. They did not play the same characters (sometimes but not always they were brothers), but the set-ups were the same--one has to help the other out of a jam. This cheap-looking but fast-paced and light-toned crime movie is fun, though because they don't share a lot of screen time, it's difficult to judge their effectiveness as a team. Both are B-movie favorites of mine so I'll probably try to hunt down a couple more of their films. There isn't much of a climax; the final showdown just sort of fizzles out. Otherwise, this is mostly indistinguishable from any other Poverty Row film of the era--an hour of painless entertainment which provides a couple of chuckles and a couple of passable action scenes. Pictured above are Darro and Richmond. [YouTube]