HERE'S FLASH CASEY (1938)

The frat boys at Moo Moo Moo house are upset that the popular boy Flash Casey is leaving college before graduation. He's worked his way through college as a photographer and was relying on winning a photo contest but never heard back. But his roomie, a freshman named Joe, accidentally threw away the notice that he'd won. After getting a spanking from Flash, Joe finds the notice and the prize money of $100, so Flash can graduate after all. In the big city, Flash applies for a job at the Globe Press and doesn't get it, but heading for the elevator, he literally runs into reporter Kay Lanning  and they click enough that sparks fly. At this point, things start happening at such a fast pace, I wasn't always sure where plot points were coming from, but here we go. Flash temporarily gets a job at the Globe, though editor Blaine only hires him long enough to get hold of and suppress a picture he took of Rodney Addison, son of the Globe's owner Major Addison, kissing sexy French dancer Mitzi LaRue, of whom his father disapproves. Flash is taken under the wing of seasoned photographer Wade and also becomes friendly with Pop Lawrence who runs the struggling photo magazine Snap News, which Major Addison also owns. Photographer Gus Payton takes pics for Snap but gives the best ones to Blaine who hopes to drive Lawrence out of business. A gangster named Ricker sets Payton up with a camera shop as a front for a business in which they develop people's photos and keep copies of scandalous ones to use for blackmail. Once Flash sneaks some photos at a high society charity event, things move even faster. In the last fifteen minutes, Major Addison gets shot, Kay gets kidnapped, Flash gets photos of the bad guys, then leaves his camera in a drug store phone booth. Wade and Lawrence both step in to help Flash, fisticuffs occur, Ricker and his men are captured, and it appears that Flash and Kay are headed to the altar. 

This hour-long B-film is crammed full of incidents, to its detriment if you're following plot but to its benefit if you just want speedily delivered dialogue and a string of quick action scenes. I watched this because Eric Linden (Flash, pictured above) is a favorite juvenile actor of mine. He was in over thirty movies (B-movie leads, A-movie supporting parts) in the 1930s, but never made the transition to adult roles and retired from films by the age of 32. He has cute boyish looks but an oddly strong New York accent that kind of clashes with his face. He's mostly a rather passive presence in films, and though he's OK in his action scenes here, he seems a bit awkward. Still, I liked him well enough and, at the age of 28, he could still pass for college age. I'm not sure what the opening fraternity scene is doing here. Except for Flash, none of the characters involved remain in the movie. Maybe they just needed some padding to get to second-feature length. Boots Mallory (Kay) had a short and undistinguished movie career; she's fine here, but this was her last credited role. She wound up with two famous husbands: William Cagney (brother of James) and later the actor Herbert Marshall. The only supporting player I recognized was Joseph Crehan (Blaine) who has nearly 400 credits on IMDb. I liked Cully Richards as Wade. There's a cute blond frat brother in the beginning; IMDb identifies him as Sven Hugo Borg, but that may be an error. Flash is based on a pulp magazine character called Flashgun Casey, but this Flash bears little resemblance to the crime photographer of the magazines. This is watchable but it would have been better with about ten more minutes to let the plot breathe. [YouTube]